Hollywood Smothers tore his MCL and is done for the year, and that's not a footnote for No. 7 Texas, that's the engine coming out of the car before a road trip to No. 18 Missouri.

Smothers was the guy who scored the final two touchdowns of Texas' fourth-quarter comeback over then-No. 1 Ohio State, 74 yards on the ground in that quarter alone as the Longhorns put up 21 straight points to steal a 24-23 win. He finished with 283 yards and two scores on the season in six games, five starts, after transferring in from NC State off a 939-yard, first-team All-ACC campaign. The arc was already bending the wrong way before the MCL: he missed Tennessee with a lower-body injury, missed Ole Miss with a shoulder issue, came back and ran four times for minus-6 yards against Mississippi State, then left that game with the injury that ends his year.

What Texas Longhorns injury news means for the Missouri line

This is the kind of injury news a market actually moves on, not because one running back is irreplaceable in a vacuum, but because of the timing and the company it's keeping. Texas is already down an edge rusher in Colin Simmons, who's missed two straight with a high ankle sprain and is still just questionable. Starting receivers Ryan Wingo and Cam Coleman are questionable. Nickel corner Graceson Littleton, who's started every game, is questionable too. Lose the lead back on top of that cluster and you've got a depleted two-deep traveling to a ranked road environment, which is exactly the setup that tends to push a total down and nudge a spread toward the home side before kickoff, as books price in a less explosive, more uncertain Texas offense.

I don't have this morning's market in front of me, so I'm not going to tell you a number already moved, because I'd be making that up. What I can tell you is the mechanism: fewer short-yardage and red-zone answers behind an offense that just lost the player who provided two of its biggest fourth-quarter plays of the season, layered on top of three other game-time calls on the other side of the ball. That's the kind of stack that invites a line to open soft and get corrected fast once bettors and books both see the full injury report.

What I'm watching next

The questionable tags on Simmons, Wingo, Coleman and Littleton are the next thing to confirm. If two or three of those guys sit alongside Smothers' absence, this stops being a one-man story and becomes a depth story, and that's when a number tends to actually move rather than just get talked about. Nothing cleared my number this morning because there's no market in front of me yet to grade against. The math says pass until the injury report firms up and a real line exists to compare it to.

checked the almanac: that Ohio State win was a genuine top-of-the-season moment for this program, a 21-point fourth quarter against a No. 1 team, and the back who authored the final two scores of it just lost his season. That's not nothing for a roster trying to replicate that kind of finish on the road.

If you're tracking this one into kickoff, treat any early market reaction as exactly that, early. This is entertainment with variance, 21+ where legal, and if any of this ever stops being fun, 1-800-GAMBLER is there. BOL.