With Houston trailing 17-7, Houston linebacker Latreveon McCutchin tipped a Keyone Jenkins pass to himself and returned it to the UCF 2-yard line. Conner Weigman, whom Willie Fritz described afterward as "sick as a dog," then ran for three second-half touchdowns without throwing for one. UCF led 17-0 early in the third quarter at TDECU Stadium; Houston scored 27 unanswered points from there and won 27-17.
That is the first time this season Houston has had to win from genuine trouble, and the defense did most of the heavy lifting. UCF's run game shrank to 73 yards on 21 carries, with Duke Watson's 37-yard third-quarter run accounting for roughly half of it. Scott Frost defended his playcalling by pointing to RPO reads tied to Houston's box counts, which is another way of saying Austin Armstrong's front made him stop handing it off.
What the comeback did not fix is the stuff Houston keeps doing to itself. The Cougars were flagged seven times for 60 yards, and they came out of the first half scoreless on three red-zone possessions. A 17-point hole at home against a depleted opponent is survivable. The same start in Manhattan is usually not.
The trip: Houston at Kansas State, Saturday, 2:30 p.m. Central on FOX
Houston arrives at Bill Snyder Family Stadium ranked No. 22 against a Kansas State team that is unranked and not receiving votes. Nobody is treating that gap as real. Sportsbooks have Kansas State as only a 2.5-point home favorite, and ESPN's FPI splits it 50.9% to 49.1%. Our own simulation is less charitable to Houston, giving the Cougars a 24% chance on the road.
The last time Houston played in that building, Kansas State won 41-0 in October 2023, with Will Howard going 15-of-17 and DJ Giddens running for two scores. Almost none of that roster is involved now, but the venue is, and so is the question of whether a team that just proved it can rally at home can do anything close to that in front of a crowd that wants the opposite.
The good news is where Kansas State broke. In its loss at Cincinnati, the Wildcats gave up 271 rushing yards, with first-half runs of 22, 30 and 53 yards and shaky outside containment. Collin Klein did not hide from it. "We're not going to win many games giving up [that much] yards rushing, and we've got to get that fixed. It starts with me and our staff," he said, citing "some misfits and missed tackles". Kansas State then had a bye to work on exactly that.
So watch the run game early, and watch who is carrying it. Re'Shaun Sanford II ran for 120 yards on 17 carries at Georgia Southern, his first 100-yard game of the year, outcarrying nominal starter Makhi Hughes by one carry and leading Houston's ground game that day. If Sanford and Hughes are moving the line on first down, Houston can play the possession football Slade Nagle has run since he arrived, and Weigman will not have to run it 13 times himself again.
That last part matters because of who is on the other sideline. Klein was Texas A&M's offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in 2024, the season Weigman started, got hurt, came back to beat Missouri, and was ultimately benched for Marcel Reed before transferring to Houston that December. There is no reported feud there; what there is, is a head coach with a full season of first-hand knowledge of Weigman's mechanics and habits, which is not normal opponent scouting. Weigman just played a full game ill, and Houston's only evidence behind him is Keisean Henderson's Week 2 work against Southern, when he went 6-of-7 for 83 yards, scored twice through the air and led touchdown drives on all three of his series in a rout. Nobody wants to find out whether that travels.
The structural reasons for optimism are real but boring. Fritz is in his third year, and both Nagle and Armstrong are back for a second season in their coordinator jobs, so nothing about this team is still being installed. The reason for worry is the calendar. Houston went 6-0 on the road in 2025, the only FBS team to do it, and this year's nine-game Big 12 slate again sends them out five times, with first-ever trips to Colorado and West Virginia still ahead.
The prize for winning is modest in absolute terms and large in relative terms. A win puts Houston's playoff odds around 5.6% and its Big 12 title-game odds near 3.8%; a loss drops those to roughly 1.1% and 0.5%. Neither branch makes Houston a contender in October. But at 5-1 with a Big 12 road win banked, the rest of the schedule starts looking like something other than a holding pattern, and Oklahoma State visits Houston next week as a heavy underdog.
Nothing else on Saturday's board moves Houston's math, so this is a single-screen week. Settle in for the opening fifteen minutes. If the Cougars are running it, not jumping offside, and finishing drives inside the 20, the comeback at TDECU will start to look like something the program can do anywhere.
See the week's interactive guide and how the numbers are built in our methodology.