Unranked Florida rallied from a 14-point hole to beat No. 7 Texas 27-24 in Austin, leaving Arch Manning sacked and the Longhorns’ playoff path suddenly shaky.
Florida finished the job Saturday on the road, snapping a two-game skid and handing Texas a second straight defeat that dropped the Longhorns to 1-2 in SEC play and 4-2 overall. The Gators improved to 3-2 in the league and 5-2 on the season after climbing out of a 17-3 deficit and controlling the ball after halftime.
NBC Sports reported the final as Florida 27, Texas 24, with the visitors hanging on after a late Longhorns touchdown. For a Texas team that sat atop the AP Top 25 only last month, the home loss put the program back on the edge of missing the College Football Playoff for a second consecutive year.
Arch Manning completed 14 of 20 passes for 173 yards and a late touchdown to Cam Coleman. He also went down five times under Florida pressure and fell to 0-2 in his career against the Gators.
Texas never found a steady first-down rhythm. Short-yardage failures on third and fourth down defined the afternoon as much as the final score. The Longhorns were held under 300 yards of offense at home.
Coach Steve Sarkisian did not hide from it afterward.
Sarkisian said he was “Extremely disappointed,” then spelled out where the game slipped:
"We didn’t play very good football today outside of about the first quarter. Kinda bled out. They ended up controlling the ball in the second half. Our inability to be effective on first down and also our inability to convert in short-yardage situations, third and short, fourth and short, really was the snapshot of it all."
He added that the roster is better than the product on the field and that fixing it is on him.
Sarkisian told reporters:
"Very disappointed. We’ll work and get back. We’ve got a better team than we are right now. It’s my job to get us to play closer to and ultimately to our potential."
He also did not rule out benching Manning as the staff evaluates every part of the operation. That is a live question for a quarterback who starred in a 21-point comeback over Ohio State not long ago and helped push Texas to No. 1 last month.
Florida turned to Tramell Jones Jr. for his first career start after Aaron Philo went down injured. Jones threw two touchdown passes to Lacota Dippre. Jadan Baugh added an 11-yard rushing score. Patrick Durkin knocked through a 28-yard field goal as the Gators built a 10-point cushion before Texas’s late answer.
The visitors looked lost early. They opened 0-for-7 on third down and trailed 17-3. Then the offense found its footing and strung together five straight third-down conversions, the last a touchdown that tied the game at 17 with 6:50 left in the third quarter.
Coach Jon Sumrall framed the win as growth after recent collapses.
Sumrall said:
"We played about as awful as we could in the first quarter, and we kept fighting."
He drew a straight line from prior weeks to Saturday’s response:
"We didn’t do that the last couple of weeks. When things got tough, we flinched the last couple of weeks. Our team grew today because we fought."
Jones kept the message simple after the final whistle.
Jones said:
"Started out a little slow, offense picked it up, and that’s how you finish a football game."
Florida’s side also celebrated a forced fumble by Myles Graham that Kanye Clark recovered, part of the defensive stands that helped the Gators close it out. The win was Florida’s second this season over a top-10 opponent, following an earlier victory against Ole Miss. After a 4-0 start that had the Gators as high as eighth, the two-game slide is over.
Two weeks ago Texas still looked like a team in control of its own destiny. A home loss to an unranked Florida squad changes the math in a hurry. The Longhorns are already 1-2 in SEC play. Another slide would make a second straight College Football Playoff miss more than a talking point.
The Manning name still draws a national spotlight. Peyton Manning went 0-3 against Florida during his Tennessee career, and Arch is 0-2 against the same foe so far. Pedigree does not move chains on third-and-short. Five sacks and a stalled first-down attack do show up in the standings.
Draft chatter already follows Arch Manning into the next cycle. A sidebar discussion around Mel Kiper’s early 2027 board noted how a deep group of quarterback prospects could push him down the board. Saturday’s film will not quiet that noise. What matters more in Austin is the next SEC game, and whether Sarkisian’s group can stop the bleeding on early downs and in short yardage.
Florida leaves town with a signature road win and proof it can finish after flinching in recent weeks. Texas leaves with a bruised ranking, a restless quarterback conversation, and less room for error than it had a month ago when it sat at the top of the polls.
Talent and résumé get a team ranked. Execution on first down, third-and-short, and in the trenches decides who is still playing in December, and who is explaining another early exit.
