Texas Longhorns bowl projections

A sloppy and largely disappointing performance against the Kansas Jayhawks on Saturday evening hasn’t had much apparent impact the most recent round of bowl projections for the Texas Longhorns.

Sitting at 5-5 on the season with two games remaining, the ‘Horns will need to secure a win against the Mountaineers or Red Raiders in order to automatically qualify for the postseason. It’s also possible that Texas could play in a bowl game at 5-7, but that would depend on the number of eligible teams and other factors.

Here are the current projections:

• One ESPN analyst has Texas playing in the Texas Bowl against Utah, while the other has head coach Tom Herman’s team in the AutoZone Liberty Bowl against Missouri.
• The Sports Illustrated projection has the ‘Horns in the Texas Bowl facing off against the Golden Bears.
• SB Nation also predicts a Texas Bowl appearance, but believes that Texas will play against Mississippi State.
• For CBS Sports, the pick is the Liberty Bowl against Kentucky.

The projections overall are probably a little bit more high on Texas than the win probability based on the team’s statistical profile — before the game against Kansas, the odds of beating West Virginia stood at 34 percent and the odds of beating Texas Tech at 51 percent.

An extremely poor offensive performance against TCU — it ranked in the third percentile — likely dropped those odds significantly.

The possible return of All-American left tackle Connor Williams and likelihood of more playing time for quarterback Sam Ehlinger, running back Toneil Carter, and center Zach Shackelford are all causes for optimism, but...

Well, it’s going to be hard to score enough points to win if the defense can’t improve against the pass.