FanPost

2022 Football Predictions: Post ‘South Plains Swoon’ Edition

Going into the game against Texas Tech, I think it would be safe to say that Longhorn Nation was very optimistic about this year’s team. Despite having one loss already, it was a ‘quality loss’ to Alabama, that showed the college football world that Texas could in fact hang with the big boys of the SEC.

Then we traveled to Lubbock, saying all the right things, and looking the part of a humble contender that has learned its lesson in hubris and is starting to earn its way back into the power circle of college football. This wasn’t the arrogant, undisciplined Texas teams of the recent past. Or so we thought…

It turns out, we still look a lot like Texas football looked in 2021. And that’s not a good thing. Now, the season so far is still largely preamble, there is a lot of room to change the narrative of our 2022 season, but old fears have been brought to light again in the worst way.

So, now that we’ve had a couple of days to cool down—a little bit—what is the vibe amongst the fans? Predictions for what the rest of the season holds?

Personally, I still haven’t processed through my PTSD and am not sure we can string together a winning season. Hope is empty calories for this fanbase. There is the hope that Quinn Ewers might be a significant enough upgrade at QB to get us through the rest of the season with, say 2 more losses. But the way we lost in Lubbuttocks has me envisioning somewhere around a .500 season.

I think a general upgrade in talent combined with the likely improvement of our younger players in the secondary and on the offensive line should get us to 7 wins, maybe 8, but I’ll be damned if I could predict which games are wins and losses. We can lose to anyone, anywhere, anytime. Any road game is a likely L with this squad, and close games are a likely L, but despite our stumble against Tech, I am still moderately optimistic about this team. They did fight their way back into overtime and I do think this team is pretty tight knit, but they are still very much in the ‘prove us wrong’ phase of our program. Please prove us wrong Texas.

I think new expectations for this season should be

1) Beat Baylor and/or OU (give us at least 1 of these, okay?)

2) Improve your W-L record by at least 2 games from last year

3) Win a road game comfortably

4) Win a close game

5) Do not break Quinn Ewers

6) Play well enough to make our deserving players like Bijan relevant in this year’s NFL draft

Hook ‘Em

All comments, FanPosts, and FanShots are the views of the reader-authors who create them.