Texas Longhorns Lose Key Player after Agonizing 37-31 Loss in Sugar Bowl

After an agonizing 37-31 Sugar Bowl loss, a key player for the Texas Longhorns is lost.

Xavier Worthy, the No. 1 star wide receiver for the Texas Longhorns, announced on social media that he would be entering the NFL Draft.

Sports Illustrated published an article in which Worthy discusses his gratitude for his time as a Longhorn.

Worthy’s two receptions for 45 yards during the College Football Playoff game were all he had. Even though he didn’t produce much, being the team’s top wide receiver allowed Ewers to distribute the ball to everyone on the field. Ewers completed 24 passes to eight different Longhorns for a total of over 300 yards passing.

This season, Worthy was the only Longhorns player to surpass 1,000 yards. His seventy-five receptions surpassed the next-most on the Texas squad by twenty. Although wide receiver Adonai Mitchell only had 845 yards on 55 receptions, he had 11 touchdowns compared to Worthy’s five.

Worthy had his worst receiving performance of the season against the Huskies in the College Football Playoff game. There were only two other games this year where Worthy had fewer than 45 yards in receptions, and his two was the lowest total. Those were two blowout games.

Worthy had two receiving touchdowns of more than 100 yards, and his best game of the year came in the TCU Horned Frogs game. He finished with 10 receptions for 137 yards and a 29026 victory. Despite being hurt, Worthy had 86 receiving yards in the Big 12 Championship game against the Oklahoma State Cowboys.

With 2,755 receiving yards, Worthy will finish with the fourth-most in Texas history. All the other players in the top 10 had another season at Texas as wide receivers. Worthy, a junior, had just under 1,000 receiving yards as a freshman and made an immediate impact.

Over the past few weeks, Texas football has played through a crucial stretch of Big 12 play with a relatively clean sheet of health. In the past two weeks, Texas’ injury report has been significantly smaller than it was during a period in the middle of Big 12 play when the team lost almost a dozen important two-deep players to injuries.

Quinn Ewers, a redshirt sophomore quarterback, was one of the important starters from Texas who returned in recent weeks. However, after missing at least one game apiece due to various injury concerns, sophomore interior offensive lineman Cole Hutson, senior offensive tackle Christian Jones, and senior safety Jalen Catalon have all returned to the starting lineup in recent weeks.

Kyle Flood, the offensive coordinator and line coach for the Longhorns, will benefit from having Hutson as the sixth player on the offensive line to add depth when injuries occur, as they did against Iowa State. Last season, Hutson started more than a dozen games for the Longhorns.

Considering the conditions he encountered in the trenches in a boisterous road environment, Hutson excelled at run blocking and pass protection. In Week 12, he was Texas’ second-highest graded pass blocker and didn’t allow a single quarterback pressure.

In his press conference on Monday, Sark stated that he “feels pretty good” about Campbell’s condition going into the Texas Tech game in Week 13 and that he “doesn’t foresee” Campbell missing the Black Friday finale.