Initial thought from Texas’ 30-7 blowout loss to Iowa State

Texas lost — again — this time to Iowa State in blowout fashion, 30-7.

I have just one thought, and I’ll keep it fairly brief because there are much better ways to spend your Saturday night than reading about a bad football team.

Steve Sarkisian’s first season has been a complete failure. Nothing that happens between now and the end of the regular season can change that, even if Texas miraculously wins out. Through nine games, Texas is sub-500 at 4-5 behind four straight losses. This marks the program’s worst streak since 2010 and includes three collapses and an overall hard-to-watch loss in Ames, which wasn’t a “collapse,” but the Longhorns led 7-3 at the half before going MIA yet again and getting outscored 27-0 in the second half.

Texas hasn’t won a game since Oct. 2 — think about that — and with what we’ve seen since the first half of the Red River Showdown, there’s no telling when Texas’ next win will come.

So, nine games in, Texas has just four wins (impressive, honestly), and the only notable victory came against a Group of 5 team — Louisiana.

Worse yet amidst all the losses, there’s almost no signs of development across the board. At the least, Texas fans could feel optimistic if there were encouraging signs from a player or positional standpoint, but that’s just not the case. As is, Texas still doesn’t have an answer at quarterback with Casey Thompson and Hudson Card each seemingly more suited for a reserve role, the offensive line remains atrocious and that’s a long-term issue that doesn’t get resolved in a season, and the list goes on into the receiver room and throughout the defense.

All in all, this is a team that’s underdeveloped — at least the results of any development aren’t visible in games — and plays without any sense of confidence or the ability to execute.

Strip away the “TEXAS” across the chest and recruiting rankings and the reality is this just isn’t a good football team. And now, Sark’s team is effectively in free-fall mode and an additional potential consequence of that is the impact it could have on recruiting. Maybe more than anything, Texas needs better players nearly across the board, and getting those higher-level guys is a little harder to do when the product on the field is what it is.

Wildly enough, things seemed quite fine just a month ago, but since then, Texas has been exposed and embarrassed not one, two, or even three times, but four. The result is a losing team that just played like its spirit and will has been broken, and the best-case scenario is them clawing and fighting just to be bowl eligible.

So, yeah, Sark’s first season in Austin has been a failure, and it’s worse that that can be said with a few games still on the schedule.

Things are bad right now, and there’s no easy fix in sight.