No. 11 Texas Smothers Mississippi State 31-3 as Rasheem Biles Leads Seven-Sack Halloween Rout

Halloween night in Austin had a costume theme, and the Texas defense picked the scariest one available. Mississippi State spent four quarters at DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium trying to find somewhere to stand, and the Longhorns kept taking the ground away.

No. 11 Texas beat Mississippi State 31-3 on Saturday, sacking two Bulldogs quarterbacks seven times, scoring a defensive touchdown and holding a team that scored 41 points at South Carolina in September to a lone field goal. Arch Manning was sharp when it counted, going 16 of 20 for 220 yards and three touchdowns, and the Longhorns moved to 6-2 overall and 3-2 in the SEC. Mississippi State fell to 4-4 and 2-4 and has now lost four straight.

It was not a pretty night for either offense. It did not need to be.

A fast start, then a long fight for field position

Texas needed four plays to score on the opening drive. After a sack set up second-and-12, Manning found Cam Coleman for 47 yards down the field, then hit Coleman again for a 14-yard touchdown with 12:59 left in the first quarter. Coleman, who hurt a shoulder in the win over Ole Miss a week earlier, had been listed as ready to play on the SEC availability report. Two catches for 61 yards and a touchdown in the first two minutes settled that question.

Then the game turned into a punting contest. Texas went three-and-out on each of its next two possessions. Mississippi State punter Ethan Pulliam kept flipping the field, and the Bulldogs put together their best drive of the night late in the first quarter, a 12-play march that reached Texas territory. The drive ended with Kyle Ferrie's 38-yard field goal sailing no good early in the second quarter.

Texas answered with patience. The Longhorns ground out a 13-play, 44-yard drive that ate 6:51 off the clock, helped by a 10-yard Manning scramble and a Mississippi State personal foul, and Gianni Spetic made a 45-yard field goal for a 10-0 lead with 5:41 left in the half.

The Longhorns nearly broke it open moments later. Ryan Niblett took a Pulliam punt 84 yards for a touchdown, and the stadium went up, but an illegal block in the back brought it back. Texas then lost six yards on a three-and-out. For a minute, it felt like Mississippi State might get out of the half down only 10.

The turning point

It did not. With about 1:15 left before halftime, AJ Swann dropped back to pass and Rasheem Biles got there first. Biles sacked Swann and knocked the ball loose, and Maraad Watson scooped it up at the Texas 39 and ran 61 yards the other way for a touchdown. Spetic's extra point made it 17-0 with 1:13 left in the half.

That sequence was the game. Mississippi State had just forced a punt and had the ball with a chance to run out the half trailing by 10 against a Texas offense that had gone quiet. Instead, the deficit grew to three scores, and Parker Puckett took over at quarterback for the rest of the night. Swann had been efficient before the fumble, completing 12 of 15 passes for 97 yards. Puckett went 3 of 10 for 22 yards the rest of the way and was sacked over and over behind a line that had no answers for the Texas front.

Biles, Watson and a defense that never blinked

Biles was the best player on the field. The senior linebacker, who was named a Butkus Award semifinalist this week, finished with eight tackles, three sacks and four tackles for loss, and the forced fumble was the kind of play that flips a game by itself. A week earlier, Biles intercepted Trinidad Chambliss at the goal line against Ole Miss and was named SEC co-defensive player of the week. Texas keeps asking Biles to make the big play, and Biles keeps making it.

The depth of the pass rush was the real story. Five different Longhorns were credited with sacks, with Colton Vasek, Zina Umeozulu, Justin Cryer and Justus Terry each getting home once. Jelani McDonald, whose end-zone interception sealed the Ole Miss game, led Texas with nine tackles.

Mississippi State had one real chance to make the second half interesting, and the Texas defense took that away too. After a Manning fumble on a sack gave the Bulldogs the ball in the third quarter, Mississippi State gained 16 yards in seven plays and settled for Ferrie's 30-yard field goal to make it 17-3. Later, trailing 24-3, the Bulldogs went for it on fourth-and-2 at the Texas 40 early in the fourth quarter. Puckett's pass for Anthony Evans III fell incomplete.

Mississippi State finished with 187 total yards and 68 rushing yards on 41 carries. Fluff Bothwell, who ran for 111 yards in the loss to Oklahoma last week, was held to 49 yards on 17 carries. Marquis Johnson was the one Bulldog who found consistent room, catching six passes for 61 yards.

Manning picks the moments

Manning took five sacks, and Texas ran for almost nothing, so the offense lived on a handful of big throws. The first was the 47-yarder to Coleman. The second came right after the Ferrie field goal in the third quarter, when Manning hit a 37-yard completion on the first play of the drive and later found Raleek Brown for 22. Brown finished the 75-yard drive with a 4-yard touchdown catch, and it was 24-3 with 5:35 left in the third.

The third was the dagger. Early in the fourth quarter, Michael Terry III and Derrek Cooper moved the chains on the ground, and then Manning threw deep for Emmett Mosley V, who caught it for a 42-yard touchdown with 7:56 left. A week after Mosley could not handle an onside kick that let Ole Miss back into the game in the final minute, Mosley led all receivers with four catches for 98 yards and a touchdown.

After two interceptions against Ole Miss, three touchdowns and a clean sheet were exactly what Texas needed from its quarterback.

The numbers that matter

Seven sacks. That is the number. Texas spent the night in the Mississippi State backfield, and the Bulldogs' running game never had a chance to take pressure off whichever quarterback was in the game.

Texas also won the game without much help from its own ground attack. The Longhorns finished with 60 rushing yards on 32 carries, with sacks dragging the total down. Mississippi State's defense sacked Manning five times, with Zakari Tillman forcing the third-quarter fumble that Tillman also recovered.

The rest of the sheet: Texas outgained Mississippi State 280-187, went 6 of 14 on third down to Mississippi State's 6 of 18, and each team lost one fumble. Texas was flagged five times for 42 yards, a big improvement over the 14 penalties for 134 yards it committed against Ole Miss. The full numbers are in the official box score (opens in a new tab).

What it means

For Texas, this was a reset. Two weeks ago, the Longhorns were coming off back-to-back losses to Oklahoma and Florida, and the noise around Steve Sarkisian's program was loud. Now Texas has two straight wins and a defense that has carried it for most of both.

The schedule does not get easier. Next up is a trip to Missouri on Nov. 7, then a road game at LSU on Nov. 14, before Arkansas visits Austin and the season ends at Texas A&M. If Texas wants a College Football Playoff spot, it probably needs to win out, and November in the SEC rarely allows that.

For Mississippi State, the slide continues. Jeff Lebby's team started 4-0, including a 31-24 win over Missouri, and has not won since. The quarterback situation, already shaky after Kamario Taylor left the Oklahoma game injured, got murkier with Swann giving way to Puckett before halftime. Mississippi State hosts Vanderbilt on Nov. 7 and Auburn on Nov. 14, and those two home games will go a long way toward deciding whether this season ends in a bowl game.

The last word

Texas came into Halloween needing a night with no drama, and it got one. The offense was not perfect. The run game was invisible, and Manning spent too much time on the turf. But the Longhorns never let Mississippi State believe, and that is a change from a month ago, when double-digit leads had a way of disappearing.

Nobody in burnt orange is calling this team fixed. But a defense that collects seven sacks and scores its own touchdown buys a lot of patience heading to Columbia.

Sources: ESPN box score and play-by-play, Texas Athletics and Undrafted's previous coverage of both teams. More college football coverage on Undrafted.

Photos: Texas Athletics (file photo from the Ole Miss game on Oct. 24, 2026).