Golden: After Baylor blowout, No. 3 Texas is all business and surging

WACO — So long, Baylor.

Those 122 years went by pretty fast, huh?

Many thanks for the SWC/Big 12 memories, but the Texas Longhorns are moving on to bigger game.

So bring on the next challenge.

Bring on the unbeaten Kansas Jayhawks.

Bring on the unbeaten Oklahoma Sooners.

Bring on the CF—

Let’s hold off on that P for now.

It's not that the Longhorns beat a 17-point underdog 38-6, but it was how they did it.

Saturday night's Big 12 opener was all business. Expected and carried out with brutal, systematic efficiency. They showed up in Waco and — to steal a line from The Rock — proceeded to layeth the smackdown on the Baylor Bears.

If you thought the beatdown was something, the postgame interviews were as workmanlike as the game itself. To a man, Texas' players speak like a team that knows it’s going places.

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“I had to remind the guys, let’s not take winning for granted,” head coach Steve Sarkisian said. “It was almost like, ‘OK, let’s get ready for Kansas.’ ”

The Horns knew they would work the Bears before they ever stepped foot in McLane Stadium. They don’t hope to win anymore. They have utter belief in one another and believe they are better than whomever they line up against. The lessons learned in that program-changing win at Alabama are morphing into something potentially historic.

“We have a bunch of guys in that locker room that endured 5-7 a couple of years ago, that came into this stadium and lost a really tough ballgame,” Sarksiain said. “So I wanted to make sure that we appreciate these wins.”

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The Horns are 4-0 for the first time since Mack Brown’s penultimate season and just became the second of Sarkisian’s 10 teams to start a season with four straight wins.

So is Texas really this good? You won’t get any argument out of yours truly, who might have been off on his preseason prediction of 9-3 and a Big 12 title game appearance. Either way, the Horns have sent a message to the Big 12 and potential January opponents that it will take a big effort to unseat them.

This rivalry’s finale in front of 49,165 raucous fans went according to plan. There were a few hiccups on special teams with a couple of lost punt muffs and a bobbled kickoff, plus an uncharacteristic Bert Auburn miss on a chip-shot field goal, but the defense was so stifling that it didn’t matter. Five times the Bears ventured inside the Texas 20-yard line, but they were held out of the end zone each time.

Even when the Bears hit on a big play — Sawyer Robertson’s 55-yard pass to Monaray Baldwin in the third quarter put them within 4 yards of pay dirt — the defense had the answer; in this instance, linebacker Jaylan Ford’s end zone interception came as a result of intense film study and some expert eye reading.

Offensively, the Horns had few problems. They ran it on the Bears, and that included spry quarterback Quinn Ewers, who turned the corner in the second quarter like a young Colt McCoy. Now that he’s a few Chick-fil-A sandwiches south of 218 pounds, he’s showing he can move when necessary.

So they ran it. They threw it. They got stops.

It’s the blueprint for great teams, minus those flubs.

Kudos to the offense for playing turnover-free ball for the third time in four games. That group has settled into its role as caretaker while the defense wrecks everything in its path.

When the Horns play like this, they will be one tough out.

“It’s a testament to what Sark says all the time,” linebacker David Gbenda said. “It’s the new Texas, and we’re here to show y'all.”

Prince sang of joy in repetition — I’m sure he wasn’t singing about football, but the title works here — and the Horns have been up to the task four straight weeks. They put together their most dominant performance of the season, even if the special teams play was beneath coach Jeff Banks’ lofty $1 million-a-year standards.

Yes, the Alabama road win was monumental for the culture and a shockwave on a national scale, but they gave up a fourth-quarter lead before rallying for the win. Baylor certainly was a gigantic step down in competition, but there is something to be said for a heavy favorite to come in and take care of business while not even playing its best game.

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Texas came in No. 3 in the country and did what most national contenders would do to an unranked club playing a backup quarterback. The Horns worked the Bears like a part-time job.

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Those first-half struggles? That’s so last week. The Horns reached two touchdowns in the first half for the first time all season and added two more for good measure to take a 28-3 lead.

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Thankfully TxDOT has finished that marathon reconstruction on Interstate 35 because it was mostly one-way traffic in this one road affair. When asked about this team’s upside given its dominance on the road so far, Ewers took a couple of beats before answering.

“We’ve got a lot of games left,” he said. “We’ll see. But it’s fun to play on the road.”

The competition will go up a few levels with the 4-0 Jayhawks and electric quarterback Jalon Daniels visiting Austin on Saturday, followed by the Red River Showdown against resurgent and fellow unbeaten Oklahoma on Oct. 7 in Big D. The failures of two years ago are in the rearview in some respects, but the ones who were there still remember the hurt and embarrassment from that bowl-less finish and are part of the fuel that’s driving this team to return the program to special places.

“Five and seven. We’ve been there before,” defensive lineman Byron Murphy II said. “We don’t want to go back to that.”

His team is surging and has a special look about it.

But bigger tests are coming.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas football takes care of business, flexes its muscle in Waco