Sam Ehlinger Says Texas 'Deserves Better' After Loss to Unranked TCU

The unranked TCU Horned Frogs stunned the No. 9 Texas Longhorns with a 33-31 road win on Saturday.

Afterward, Texas quarterback Sam Ehlinger said the Texas "deserves better" from its football team.

"Losing bothers me the most," Ehlinger told reporters, per ESPN's Sam Khan Jr.

"This university deserves better. And it's very frustrating when it's self-inflicting and it's preventable by attention to detail and playing the way we all know that everybody is capable of playing in this program."

Per B/R Betting, Texas was a massive -420 money line favorite ($420 bet to win $100) pregame, but TCU only trailed for 5:55 of game time en route to its two-point win.

Per ESPN, the loss marked Texas' sixth as a ranked team against an unranked opponent since head coach Tom Herman took over in 2017.

Texas has struggled since going 10-4 in 2018 and beating Georgia in the 2019 Sugar Bowl.

The 2019 season ended with Texas going 8-5 overall and just 5-4 in the Big 12, well outside the national championship conversation despite starting the season ranked 10th in the Associated Press poll.

The Longhorns began 2020 with an emphatic 59-3 win over UTEP, but they need a miraculous 15-point comeback in the final three minutes of regulation to force overtime and eventually beat unranked Texas Tech, 63-56 last Saturday.

On Saturday, Texas trailed for more than half the game and fell behind 23-14 at one point. The pass game was largely inefficient, with Ehlinger completing just 17-of-36 passes at 6.6 yards per attempt.

The defense allowed 226 rushing yards on 4.52 yards per carry. The Longhorns also committed 12 penalties in an ugly game where TCU had 14 infractions of their own.

Still, Texas had a chance to take a late lead after running back Keontay Ingram broke off 68 yards on two plays to put the Longhorns at the TCU 1-yard line with four minutes left and his team down 33-29. However, Ingram fumbled the ball on the next play.

TCU was able to run out the clock for the win after getting a first down and then purposely taking a safety with no time left.

Texas doesn't have much time to get right with arch rival Oklahoma next on the ledger in Dallas' Cotton Bowl.

No. 17 Oklahoma State, which is the lone remaining undefeated Big 12 team, looms large on Oct. 31 when they welcome Texas into Stillwater, Oklahoma.