D'Onta Foreman, Defense Lead Texas Football to Road Win vs Texas Tech

It wasn’t pretty and it was way more stressful than it probably needed to be. However, Texas football finally won on the road. Thanks to big-time performances from D’Onta Foreman (again) and the defense, the Longhorns (5-4, 3-3 Big 12) pulled off the 45-37 win in Lubbock over Texas Tech.

First and foremost, D’Onta Foreman is the best back in college football. He quickly extended his 100-yard rushing streak to 10 games in the first half and just kept on grinding. The bruising junior finished the game with 341 yards rushing and three touchdowns on 33 carries. Foreman finished the day averaging a preposterous 10.3 yards per carry. That’s the third highest rushing single-game rushing total in school history.

This was yet another dominant performance for Foreman. It turned out be much-needed as well as the Texas passing offense struggled, particularly in the second half. Whenever the team needed yards or a conversion, Foreman was ready to blow Tech off the line. He was so dominant, he didn’t even need both shoes. Foreman scored a 74-yard touchdown in the second half, out-running the Red Raider secondary, after losing a shoe at the line of scrimmage.

More surprisingly, the defense stepped up when they needed to in this game. Coming into this one, the Texas secondary has been a major weakness for the Horns. Facing the top passing offense in the nation in Texas Tech, there was legitimate cause for concern. Early on, that concern was warranted. Tech QB Patrick Mahomes was rolling early and the Red Raiders rolled up 212 yards of offense in the first quarter and had a 16-14 lead.

Charlie Strong, however, got his team on the right page. Texas’ defense got after the Red Raiders, allowing just 270 yards after the first quarter. Texas contained Mahomes to 367 yards passing, 70 yards under his season average. Tech as a team managed just 482 yards of offense. They entered the game as the No. 1 offense in FBS, averaging 603.4 yards per game. They forced Tech to complete long drives, rather than giving up big chunks of yardage, and held Texas Tech to just 7-of-20 on third down conversions while forcing a pair of turnovers.

This was a complete team win with D’Onta Foreman leading the way on offense and the defense rallying to support him. The win is their first on the road in 2016 and sets them up nicely at 5-4 to become bowl eligible this season.