If Texas fans knew before the season that this would be the state of the program after Week 6, they wouldn’t have believed it. The preseason No. 1 squad has become an absolute disappointment. Sadly, Steve Sarkisian might have to do just the bare minimum because of the embarrassing show so far.

Urban Meyer sounded an alarm for all of teams that saw upset losses in Week 6. That roped in Sarkisian, who fell to an unranked Florida on Saturday. “I’m guessing at the end of the year it’ll be [an] 8/9 win for each of these teams. And they’ll go to some bowl game and try to go again,” he said in an October 8 episode of The Triple Option. This means that even the playoffs won’t be a realistic goal for Steve Sarkisian. That’s quite the fall from grace for Texas, who had 25 first-place votes in the AP poll before the season.

Texas seems to have lost its identity this season. Arch Manning is not the Arch Manning, and the standout players have done little to do so. This is nowhere near the squad we saw the last two years, which made back-to-back trips to the semi-finals. Now, even the playoffs have become a steep climb. The easy part of the schedule is done and dusted. Now, Sarkisian has to navigate SEC play, featuring Oklahoma, Vanderbilt, Georgia, and Texas A&M. The margin of error has narrowed by a lot for the former National Championship-favorites.

A bowl game win being the only postseason fate for such a program is a major embarrassment. “This is going to go one of two ways. It’s not going to be medium,” Meyer said. “They’re either going to fall off the cliff and it’s going to be an embarrassment for both places, or they’ll fight back,” he added, about the road ahead for Texas and its Big 10 contemporary, Penn State. Steve Sarkisian is rooting for the Longhorns to pick up the latter option.

Steve Sarkisian doubles down on Texas energy going into Week 7

Texas was the easy favorite entering the Florida game. Billy Napier’s job was on the line, having recorded only 1 win in the season until then. He’s still in the danger zone, but it was his team that stunned the seemingly better Longhorns into a defeat. That Gators defense woke up, and was out for the Texas offense. Arch Manning had little help from the O-line, and the Texas defense was no match for DJ Lagway and Co. Yet, Steve Sarkisian is refusing to kill the engine.

“We don’t have time for the ‘poor me.’ We don’t have time for the ‘woe is us,'” he said at a presser after the Florida game. “We’ve got to come to work, and I think I have to exemplify that. I can’t let my actions betray my words, and if I’m going to say those things, well, I have to be a model of that, and that’s in our preparation,” Sarkisian added. Texas faces a rivalry game against Oklahoma, that too being unranked for the first time in a long time. Brent Venables doesn’t have John Mateer, but he is still in charge of one of the best defenses in town. This is a crucial SEC game, which Texas has to win to keep their playoff hopes alive.

Steve Sarkisian and Texas, after 6 weeks of the season, are yet to show a semblance of what made them seem so elite. The Longhorns weren’t just supposed to be one of the bests, but the best in college football. But a loss that stings as harsh as the Florida loss will be tough for Sarkisian to scrub clean.