Note: This story is featured in the 2026 edition of Dave Campbell's Texas Football's Summer Magazine, which you can order here.

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In a completely different timeline, or at least one with more hours in the day, UTSA head coach Jeff Traylor believes he’d excel at smoking briskets.  

He likes the idea of it. The preparation. The simple complexity. The time it takes. Traylor turned Gilmer High School into a perennial state champion and the Roadrunners into two-time conference champions. He’s never suffered a losing season one time as a head coach at either level.  

But barbecue is a fickle dance partner and any pitmaster will attest that changes in the ingredients or the wood that creates the smoke can lead to inconsistency. Traylor knows it now, too. UTSA finished the regular season at 6-6 in the last two years and only crept above .500 because of bowl wins.  

A head coach’s job at the college level wasn’t all that dissimilar to the one he did at Gilmer, minus maybe the recruiting. Maybe. Now? The college game is more like the NFL than the UIL. Traylor is forced to adjust. He needs to cook his brisket in the microwave. That’s another truth he understands.  

“Without a doubt, I need to adjust, and obviously I haven’t done a good enough job with that because our record has gone down the last two years,” Traylor said in the spring. “We feel like we’re making those adjustments.”  

One of those adjustments arrived in the form of new offensive coordinator Rick Bowie. The 40-under-40 member spent 2025 at Western Kentucky where his offense led Conference USA in passing yards per game and 2024 at Abilene Christian where an offense led by QB Maverick McIvor nearly upset Texas Tech and was fourth in the FCS in total offense while scoring 33.8 points per game.  

Bowie is the fourth OC at UTSA since Traylor arrived, joining a club that includes Kentucky head coach Will Stein and Illinois OC Barry Lunney Jr. Traylor says he picked Bowie because he was the best teacher he interviewed. In the microwave world of college football roster construction, it doesn’t matter how much you know as a coach. It matters what you can teach your players.  

Bowie prides himself on making simple schemes feel and look complex to opposing defenses and that might be one key in reversing the Roadrunners’ fatal flaw since 2024 – road games. UTSA is 10-2 in the Alamodome and 2-10 in true road games over the last two seasons. UTSA has proven it can still beat the cream of the crop in the American with victories over the likes of Tulane and Memphis. But over that same span the Roadrunners have lost at Rice, Tulsa, and Temple.  

“We’ve struggled on the road. We’re as good as anyone in the world at home,” Traylor said. “Why is that? That’s been our greatest study and priority this offseason. We’re not even close data wise home and away and that has to be a mental toughness thing. We have to figure that out and it starts with me.” 

The 2026 schedule offers early tests for measurable progress on the road. UTSA heads to Texas State for a Week 2 clash on a two-game losing streak against the Bobcats. Week 3 is a road game 30 miles further north on IH-35 to face a Longhorns squad that could be No. 1 in the nation if they beat Ohio State at home the week before.  

Traylor is relying on existing relationships to populate his roster. Some are players who went the Power Four route and find themselves looking for playing time at UTSA. Others went to lower levels of college football and are now Roadrunners. Of the roughly 40 guys added to the roster, Traylor says he knew 37 of them through prior visits or trips to camps as high school recruits.  

“For a guy who is a slow cooker, for a guy who likes the relationships, for the guy who is all about trust, it gives me great comfort. We’ll see how good they are, but so far, they’ve been a joy to coach.”