It may have taken 10 games to get one, but Texas's defense finally has a bone-jarring hit worthy of the highlight film.
Midway through the second quarter as Kansas faced third-and-7, Jayhawk quarterback Zac Wegner faced pressure from both outside angles in a five-step drop. Texas defensive end Michael Boudoin rushed from Wegner's right and forced him to spin back into the pocket.
Unfortunately, Wegner spun around just in time to catch UT strong side end Aaron Humphrey delivering the hammer. Although a sparse crowd saw it and some other wincing shots, ohhs, ahhs and whiplash were rampant at Royal-Memorial on Saturday.
It could be argued that it was the hardest hit the Longhorn defense has given all year. A unit that ranks 89th in the nation in total defense has seen opponents light up the scoreboard for an average of 34 points per game.
Opponents have taken full advantage of UT's big-play susceptibility. Kansas, following everyone else's lead, scored on a 77-yard touchdown pass from Wegner to Termain Fulton, who caught the pass despite triple coverage.
But Texas' don't-bend-just-break defense held the Jayhawks to 1-of-9 third-down conversions, and it registered two sacks. The Kansas rushing game could mount only 101 yards, but it was Wegner's arm -- and the sloppy play in the UT secondary -- that kept KU in the game until the fourth quarter.
The only bright spot in the Texas secondary was Tony Holmes, who started the game at strong safety even though the junior had been playing most of the season at cornerback. Holmes broke up three passes with blanket coverages and added three tackles.
In the third quarter, Wegner found a streaking Fulton down the west sideline for a 30-yard catch with UT's Quinton Wallace draped all over him. Wegner then found Akili Roberson for 18 yards to fuel another touchdown drive.
"Giving up the big play has been the same thing for us all year," Humphrey said. "We seem to give up a couple of big plays every game and that's been costing us. But fortunately, those big plays didn't help them out. It put them in the ball game for awhile, but our offense pulled away."
According to some of the Texas players, it was amazing how Kansas could have been only trailing by six upon entering the final stanza, because they felt that Kansas lost its enthusiasm when UT tied the game at 14.
"Most definitely, they didn't want to play," Humphrey said. "They came out and put 14 points on us, and then when we came right back and put 14 points on them, it just seemed like they just gave up. I don't know if that's the way their offense plays and that's why their dead last in [total offense], but it probably cost them."
Wait a minute. Kansas, which needed only one more win to qualify for a bowl berth in head coach Terry Allen's inaugural campaign, gave up?
"Our kids have not quit on us all year," Allen said. "That is a tribute to our kids and that's what you need to build a program."
Whether Kansas threw in the towel or not, Texas will take a victory any way it can get it these days. The Longhorns were poised to set the new record for most home losses in one season (four) if they fell to the Jayhawks.
Instead, UT hopes to carry the momentum into the team's season-ending showdown against Texas A&M, who clinched a spot in the Big 12 Championship game by defeating Oklahoma on Saturday. For the 23 seniors who were honored, the Aggie matchup will be their last shot at going out a winner as a Longhorn.
"We've gone four straight weeks without a win," Humphrey said. "Anything that can give us momentum is good."
For one day at least, Royal-Memorial Stadium became a 75,512-seat time machine Saturday.
Gone was the current season of almost perpetual disappointment. Erased was the losing record and the shattered hope of postseason glory. Forgotten was the string of unprecedented losses and unparalleled futility.
After trouncing Kansas 45-31 Saturday in their last home outing of a dismal 1997 season, the Texas Longhorns were taken back, if even for a brief instant, to a time when late season games and victories still carried some shred of meaning.
On a day in which 23 departing Texas seniors were honored, it was 1995 or '96 all over again. Texas' offensive machine moved the football at will on one of the nation's best defenses. The UT defense bent and bent and bent, but seldom broke. And the Horns, as they've done so many times before, walked away with a victory many thought improbable.
Texas, which skidded into the contest on a four-game losing streak, won its first game since early October, and in doing so avoided the embarrassment of tying a 27-year-old record for consecutive losses.
"We were definitely forgetting what it felt like to win," said senior placekicker Phil Dawson. "I told the guys before the game that I wanted to see the tower lit orange. It's hard to reverse that downward spiral once it starts, but we finally turned it around and won a game today."
Key to the Longhorns' return to past form was the play of their offense, a formerly explosive unit that had been stagnant for much of the season.
Tailback Ricky Williams again led the charge, scampering for 211 yards and 3 touchdowns, including a 59-yard knockout blow late in the fourth quarter. Even more amazingly, Williams racked up those numbers in only three quarters of work, after sitting out the first period as punishment for missing a team function earlier in the week.
Williams' outing was his school-record sixth 200-yard day of the season and brings the junior within 34 yards of Earl Campbell's all-time school rushing mark for a season.
Quarterback James Brown, who broke out of his season-long doldrums last week against Texas Tech, was almost perfect all afternoon, connecting on 27 of 34 pass attempts for 290 yards, and perhaps most importantly, no interceptions.
With the effort, Brown became Texas' all-time leading passer by yardage, surpassing Peter Gardere's old mark of 7,396. The senior, who now holds 26 total UT records, also matched his old single-game mark for passes completed, first set in last season's Fiesta Bowl.
"I think James was the difference in the game," UT coach John Mackovic said. "He made a lot of big plays, but didn't try to do too much. When he plays like that, our offense is at its best."
The Jayhawks (5-6, 3-5 Big 12), playing for their magic sixth win and an almost certain bowl bid, came out fired up.
Kansas took a 14-7 lead early in the second quarter when quarterback Zac Wegner found his favorite target Termaine Fulton had sprinted behind triple coverage on a fly pattern for a 77-yard touchdown bomb.
But the Longhorns soon countered with back-to-back scoring drives, riding a Phil Dawson field goal into the locker room with a 17-14 halftime lead.
"We wanted to get out as well as we could," Mackovic said. "All in all, we had a very good feel for what we could do in the game and ultimately win it."
The two teams continued to trade blows after intermission, until a 21-yard scoring jaunt from Williams and the ensuing two-point conversion gave Texas a fourteen point lead with just over seven minutes left to play.
Texas would pad the lead one possession later when Williams capped a one-play, 59-yard touchdown drive with an untouched stroll through the KU defense to paydirt.
Williams' final two scores, the school-best 42nd and 43rd of his career, drove the nail in the heart of the Jayhawks' November bowl run, though a David Winbush one-yard dive with 1:29 to play would make the final score respectable.
"When we got up 14 points on them, I could sense them easing up. I could see it in their eyes," said Longhorn linebacker Brandon Nava. "I don't know if they thought they were going to be able to come in and push us around or what. But on a day like today, it would have been tough for any team to beat the Texas Longhorns."
Offensively, Kansas put up 399 total yards, but most of that total came courtesy of a few isolated big plays. In addition to the 77-yard pass to Fulton, KU got a 65-yard dash from reserve tailback Winbush and a 29-yard jump-ball reception by Fulton deep in Texas territory.
But Kansas also converted only one of nine third-down attempts, and surrendered two sacks, including a second-quarter kill shot from Aaron Humphrey that nearly put Wegner out of commission for good.
"I thought we came out and played hard," said Humphrey, UT's sophomore defensive end. "We knew their offensive line wasn't very good, so we made it a big focus to pressure the quarterback, make him make a bad throw, an interception or whatever."
The win gives Texas a shot in the arm heading into a day-after-Thanksgiving showdown with Texas A&M in College Station.
The Aggies are currently 8-2 overall, 5-2 in the conference, and thanks to a 51-7 win over Oklahoma Saturday, have already clinched the Big 12 Southern division. The Longhorns will be hoping that their recent sojourn to the past will continue against A&M, who has dropped two-straight to Texas.
"We're not going to quit, we're going to keep playing," Humphrey said. "Winning tastes good, and hopefully it will carry over, because winning at A&M would be sweet."
After tasting victory at home for the first time in over two months, Ricky Williams stood upon the Royal-Memorial Stadium playing surface and saw a million reasons to play there again.
His Texas offense had just performed like the high-octane machine everyone had expected before the season. Fans that had previously only raised their voices to boo the home team suddenly erupted in chants of "Stay, Ricky, Stay." And most importantly, Williams said, the Horns' 45-31 triumph had made college football fun again.
But even though this year's probable NCAA rushing champion hinted that the win may make him want to return to Texas for his senior season, it is still unclear whether or not Williams' 59-yard scoring romp in the fourth quarter represented his last run in Austin.
"I've thought about [leaving] but I haven't decided," said Williams, who totaled 211 yards on the day. "It just feels so good to win that it makes you shift back to wanting to stay."
During the weeks that led up to Saturday's seemingly meaningless contest with Kansas, Texas' star running back openly discussed his frustration with the mounting losses and negative publicity, and how it got to the point where every 200-yard rushing game did nothing more than cause Williams' NFL stock to rise.
And while declining a chance to become an almost certain top-15 pick may be a difficult temptation to resist, remaining an integral part of an attack that compiled 562 yards on Saturday is pretty enticing as well.
"When you have James Brown, Ricky Williams and the guys up front," Kansas coach Terry Allen said, "that's a scary thing."
Allen's reaction spoke volumes about the late-season blossoming of the Texas offense, which finally managed a solid all-around showing on the week after the Horns were eliminated from bowl contention.
James Brown followed last week's 397-yard game against Texas Tech with a 27-for-34, 290-yard effort, breaking the UT single-game record for completions. Kwame Cavil was Brown's main target, hauling in seven receptions for 82 yards, including his first career touchdown catch in the first quarter.
And for Williams, the records just kept coming. His first of three scores broke Earl Campbell's career rushing touchdown mark, and he later set the Big 12 conference record for single-season scoring. Williams has now reached the end zone on 43 different occasions during his three years at Texas, with 23 of those scores coming this year.
"This was definitely the way we've wanted to come out on offense all year," tight end Steve Bradley said. "It's been frustrating the way we played, because for the past four years we've always been clicking."
What made Williams' day even more amazing was the fact that he posted his sixth 200-yard game of the season on a day when he didn't even step foot on the field during the first quarter. Williams was denied a starting slot for missing a team function earlier in the week, and the Horns had found themselves in a 14-7 second-quarter deficit by the time he entered the lineup.
He then proceeded to steadily rack up big chunks of yardage in his usual fashion, bowling over would-be tacklers between the tackles and simply outrunning them on the outside. But when Texas took possession of the ball with 5:45 remaining, Williams still felt like he had to put an exclamation point on his day while lengthening his lead in the national rushing race.
"Someone told me on the sideline that I had 152 yards and that [Iowa tailback] Tavian Banks had 168," Williams said. "So I kind of wanted to break a 50-yard run."
And on the first play of the drive, he did exactly that. Williams took Brown's handoff, utilized great trap-blocking by the left side of UT's line, and sprinted 59 yards for the touchdown that put the contest, as well as memories of his idle first quarter, completely out of reach.
"I talked to our seniors about [Williams' punishment], and we felt that if he sat out two series, it would be an appropriate amount," said head coach John Mackovic. "He came in and made up for it."