Has Texas underachieved this year? Certainly, if you look at expectations from the media and fans, the answer is a resounding ‘yes.’ Texas was the No. 1 team in both the coaches poll and AP poll, meaning both groups felt the Longhorns were the best team coming into the season.

But now that Texas has three losses, questions are being asked. Especially, of coach Steve Sarkisian. Longtime Longhorns beat writer Kirk Bohls asked Sark about underachieving today. And Sarkisian got a little defensive with the Houston Chronicle reporter.

Kirk Bohls: “What are the reasons this team has underachieved?

Steve Sarkisian: “According to who?”

Kirk Bohls: “Well, when you’re preseason No. 1, I think most people would agree three losses is not achieving what you are capable of.”

Steve Sarkisian: “I guess that goes into who voted us No. 1. What I think is this team has competed their tail off. They’ve been faced with a lot of different adversity and injuries and a lot of stuff has come across this team’s plate. And I’m very proud with their resiliency.”

When asked by @kbohls about why Texas has underachieved, Steve Sarkisian responded with “according to who?”

Sark went on to talk about how he’s proud of the team’s resiliency and the expectations for the remainder of the season…

“By the end of the season we’ll play of our 12… pic.twitter.com/hD4fsEpuT8

— Cory Mose (@Cory_Mose) November 17, 2025

Sarkisian goes onto point out the difficulty of the Longhorns schedule this season. Indeed, currently Texas has the sixth toughest schedule in the nation and half of UT’s games have been against Top 10 teams.

Steve Sarkisian: “At the end of the day at the University of Texas, we’re held to a very high standard. The standard is to compete for championships year in and year out. We’re going to play the best teams in the country. We’re going to schedule the best teams in the country.

But by the end of the season, we’ll play, of our 12 regular season opponents, five of those teams will be Top 10 teams when we played them. So nearly half our schedule. So we have an opportunity at the end of the regular season to do what no one has done since 2019, and that’s beat three Top 10 ranked teams in the regular season. The least team to do that was LSU with Joe Burrow.

So, have we been faced with a pretty difficult schedule. Have we been face with high expectations? Sure, but that’s why we came here. We’ll be ok.”

This article originally appeared on Longhorns Wire: Has Texas Football underachieved? Sarkisian gets defensive