The No. 20 Texas Longhorns beat the No. 9 Vanderbilt Commodores 34-31 on Saturday at DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin, and if you watched only the first 45 minutes, you’d think the Longhorns had finally turned a corner.

Up 34-10 in the fourth quarter, they were cruising behind a freshly cleared Arch Manning … until they weren’t.

A desperate Commodores rally – Diego Pavia’s TD run, a 67-yard strike to Eli Stowers, and a final touchdown to Richie Hoskins with 0:33 left – turned a laugher into a near-collapse that required the onside kick to trickle out of bounds to survive.

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“A great win,” Steve Sarkisian said. Maybe. Or maybe Texas just avoided a headline they couldn’t live down.

Manning’s return from concussion protocol looked like a Hollywood rehab reel. He was 25-of-33 for 328 yards and three touchdowns, including a 75-yard catch-and-run to Ryan Wingo on the game’s first snap. He added scoring throws to C.J. Baxter and Emmett Mosely V, popped up after a hard shot on the third, and, for once, enjoyed clean pockets.

Sarkisian called it “the best protection he’s gotten all year,” and it showed.

Quintrevion Wisner churned 18 carries for 75 yards and a score; Wingo needed only two grabs to post 89 yards.

So why the side-eye? Because a top-10 road scalp shouldn’t require a near choke. Texas’ defense bullied Pavia for three quarters – six sacks, bottled-up scrambles – then promptly let him stack a career-high 365 passing yards and 408 total by the buzzer.

Vanderbilt was a missed 48-yard field goal (third quarter) and a few inches on an onside kick away from erasing a 24-point fourth-quarter deficit. If that sounds familiar, it’s because this program’s margin for error keeps shrinking the moment game pressure hits.

Texas will take the ranking bump and the “November matters” cliché.

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They’ve won four straight after falling out of the polls, and a win over a top-10 opponent keeps the College Football Playoff dream on life support. But the film won’t be kind: soft zones late, leaky tackling, and a defense that went from suffocating to scrambled in minutes.

Manning looked the part; complementary football didn’t.

Sarkisian said he’ll have something to “rip their (butts) about” on Monday. He won’t have to look far. Style points are gone, and Georgia awaits on Nov. 15. If Texas brings the first-three-quarters version to Athens, they’ve got a puncher’s chance.

If they bring the last-five-minutes version, they’ll be another cautionary tale about believing your own press clippings in November.

Vanderbilt, now 7–2 (3–2 SEC), hosts Auburn on Nov. 8 and will wonder how different this looks if the onside kick stays inbounds. Texas, 7–2 (4–1 SEC), can call it resilience. A cynic might call it a warning.