Predicting whether every SEC team goes over or under their 2024 preseason win totals

SEC win projections — Texas: 10.5

I was really surprised to see this number for the Longhorns. Though the SEC gave them a very favorable schedule overall, it’s Alabama/Georgia level to be able to make it through the muck of the SEC with only one loss.

That’s not even considering the fact that the second game of the year is a trip to Ann Arbor to face the defending champs. It may be a shell of the defending champs playing for a different coach, but that’s still no easy task.

The rest of the non-conference is easy (Colorado State, UTSA, and ULM). Back to back games against OU and UGA will be tough—I feel as though the odds are very low that the Horns can win both of those. In honesty, they had better hope they win the OU game—UGA takes no prisoners, and I have a hard time foreseeing Texas having a chance at all in that one.

So let’s say they do beat OU, though. That means they have to go undefeated the rest of the way: at Vanderbilt, Florida, at Arkansas, Kentucky, at A&M.

Again, the concern with what Sark has shown in his Big 12 years is that his teams just do not keep that intense concentration from week to week. They were able to overcome that against far less skilled teams in the Big 12, but especially looking at that three-game stretch at the end, I’m really unsure of Texas’s ability to pull each of these out.

Rivalry games against Arkansas and A&M sandwich a contest against Kentucky, who is exactly the type of team that a newcomer to the conference would overlook. This again is a situation where there are too many questions for me to feel comfortable with the over. 10.5 is a very high mark. I think 9 is the most likely number for the total, since I feel equally as confident in under 8.5 here as I do over 10.5, so give me the UNDER.