All of this is why the mood is what it is. We watched two years of football at that level after wandering the desert for 13 years with almost entirely mediocre to bad teams. This year feels more like the latter. The difference between last year's offense - a good but not great unit - and this year's would make an uninitiated observer assume there were major rule changes in the sport.
2010 is a comp but it's not the only one. 2010, 2011, 2014, and 2017 all featured strong defenses paired with bad offenses helmed by young QBs struggling to find their way. They all finished the regular season within a game of .500 and were 0-4 against a slate of OU teams that weren't particularly special, with the exception of 2017.
That script is hardly unique to Texas either. Recent OU teams in 2022 and 2024 had the same fate. Michigan had the same fate last year, though they got the payoff of upsetting Ohio State. The list goes on. Turns out it's pretty hard to win games in a game where the objective is to score more points than your opponent when you aren't very good at scoring points.
Barring a miracle it's pretty obvious where this is going. I wouldn't be shocked if we get to 8-4; we have 3 G5's instead of 2 and a generally soft conference schedule (I think we're going to beat Florida; Arch puts balls in the turf and the stands, Lagway puts them in defender's chests). Though I'd favor them at this point (you can still get OU anywhere from +6.5 to +9.5, apparently), anything can happen in Dallas and the front 7 is going to give OU fits. We could beat aggy, their defense is still bad and Collin Klein seems determined to counterbalance his playing career against Texas in his coaching career. But there are plenty more L's coming and the trip to Georgia is going to be humbling.