BRENDAN MALONEY- US PRESSWIRE
Through the first two games of the 2012 season, the Texas Longhorns have been met with little challenge. Between them, the Wyoming Cowboys and New Mexico Lobos could only manage 17 points, leading to two easy wins for Mack Brown’s squad.
Needless to say, Texas’ Week 3 battle against the Ole Miss Rebels in Oxford will be a much tougher challenge– regardless of what we may have all been led to believe up to this point about Hugh Freeze’s squad being one of the SEC’s weakest.
The Rebels come into Saturday’s contest with a 2-0 mark and have played with a great deal of confidence and swagger, led by quarterback Bo Wallace, who interestingly enough, was a short-term target of Major Applewhite and Bryan Harsin in the off-season when Texas was considering going with a JUCO transfer as a stop gap measure to allow the other quarterbacks on the Texas depth chart more time to develop.
Wallace runs an Ole Miss offense that will spread the ball around to multiple receivers and continue to test a Texas secondary which has been inconsistent through the team’s first two games, playing well against New Mexico, but struggling in large against Wyoming.
For Texas, this one will be all about ball control and pacing. The Longhorns will be looking to establish the run early and often to grind the pace down and then look for explosive plays in the passing game to keep the Ole Miss offense honest. As we’ve mentioned previously, success for Texas is measured in explosiveness, and explosive plays could in fact be the difference in Saturday’s game.
Can the Texas Longhorns exert their will in foreign territory, or, will Ole Miss shock the Big 12 and the SEC, for that matter, and score the upset and move to 3-0 on the young season.
We’ll find out when kickoff happens at 9:15 EST on Saturday night in Oxford.
Hotty Toddy everyone.
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Kris Hughes is the College Football Network Manager for Rant Sports and a member of the Football Writers Association of America.
You can follow him on Twitter or check out his Facebook page.
Kris is also the host of the Rant Sports College Football Hour on the TSC Radio Network on Sunday evenings at 8 Central Time and Rant Sports Radio on the Blog Talk Radio Network Wednesday evenings at 8 Central Time.
