As Arch Manning walked to the sideline just after throwing his second interception of the game early in the fourth quarter, it felt like the Texas Longhorns were set to continue the same story from the past two weeks.

The Texas defense dominated the first half, while the Texas offense showed the necessary signs of life to take a multi-score lead. This time, that lead was 24-3 over Ole Miss, as the same Texas team that was written off after a second straight blown lead in the loss to Florida played its best 30 minutes of the season to start the game Saturday night.

Arch Manning completed all but six of his 19 first-half passes and found the end zone twice—once with his legs and once with a 50-yard touchdown pass to Ryan Wingo. His lone blemish: an interception that ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit attributed to an Ole Miss player blowing his assignment and jumping Manning’s pass.

The Turning Point

Then everything turned. The second-half's opening drive ended with a score, just not for Texas, as Ole Miss recovered a strip-sack fumble in the end zone for its first touchdown. 

Texas punted on its next three drives, while Ole Miss’s offense scored two more touchdowns to tie the game before Manning’s fourth-quarter mistake. He uncorked a deep ball intended for Emmett Mosley, but several Ole Miss defenders blanketed him and intercepted it.

Ole Miss went to the locker room down three scores and still took all the momentum just minutes into the fourth quarter. For the third straight week, Texas saw a multi-score lead slip away, and they had no one to blame but themselves.  

Yet, unlike the previous two weeks, Texas didn’t suffer the same fate. The Longhorns' defense forced a punt in six plays after the pick, and Raleek Brown and the Texas run game took over. 

Brown ripped off a 47-yard run before Michael Terry III, the converted wide receiver playing running back, picked up 12 and 19 yards on back-to-back runs before Manning kept the ball on a quarterback rollout on the goal line to retake the lead.

Momentum returned to the Burnt Orange as the defense forced Ole Miss to settle for a 58-yard Lucas Carneiro field goal, which defensive tackle Alex January blocked, before the Texas offense added to its lead with a field goal of its own.

Even after Ole Miss gave Texas another “here we go again” moment by recovering an onside kick that went through a Longhorn's hands, Texas still showed the trait it hadn’t shown since the Week 2 win at Ohio State: the ability to finish.

A game-sealing turnover again played a role in the finish, but this time Manning watched from the sideline as Texas safety Jelani McDonald intercepted Trinidad Chambliss’s heave to the end zone.