Nov 09, 2017 by [ "James R. Miller"
]
Categories:
football
Tags:
football
longhorns
HornMafia at Barking Carnival pretty much laid out my thoughts on the state of Longhorn Football in a recent post.
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Here’s what stood out to me:
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I have seen this season before. It was 2014 when Texas had a new coach, a supposed new culture, a stout defense and an offense that couldn’t move the ball enough to win many games, but the excuse was a poor offensive line and injuries at quarterback.
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We were told it was a lack of talent. And sure, that was a valid concern. But at the end of the day it was a below average season with promises of a brighter future.
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And two years later that new coach was fired before the Thanksgiving turkey was even cold.
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Tom Herman and his staff deserve the requisite time to get it turned around in time, but 3/4 of the way through the season I am just seeing a bunch of the same that got the old coach fired.
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Ineptitude on offense. Penalties. And not just penalties. Personal fouls. Three in the span it takes you to go to the bathroom and get a beer the other night. And worst of all, no sense of urgency to get things fixed.
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The same offensive issues that plagued this team against Maryland and USC plagued them against TCU.
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And while I understand the issues on the offensive line, there are 120+ teams in the country that have injuries and some of them have injuries on the offensive line and they manage to field a more than adequate offense each and every week.
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Texas is still paying their last two coaches a lot of money, and they are paying the current coach a lot of money, and they are paying this staff that he brought on a lot of money, and this staff was brought on supposedly because of “alignment” and being on the same page was supposed to fix a lot of issues.
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But 9 games in we just have a bunch of excuses for why once again Texas is scrambling just to be bowl eligible.
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Excuses. Texas fans hear them every week. And have been hearing them for 8 years now.
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Enough already.
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Amen. Enough Already.
The Maryland loss angered me but at least the defense made adjustments and improved over the next 8 games. I wish I could say the same about the offense.
Yes, we have an entire O-Line’s worth of injuries. Yes, we’ve had banged up quarterbacks at different times. Yes, we’ve had RB injuries. Every season and every team is going to have to deal with injuries. Texas fans feel like it’s a curse, spanning back to the ‘Bama game and Colt going out.
But like the linked post says:
And while I understand the issues on the offensive line, there are 120+ teams in the country that have injuries and some of them have injuries on the offensive line and they manage to field a more than adequate offense each and every week.
Part of football is scheming around your injuries and putting your best 11 guys on the field. If you can’t do that, what are you doing at Texas?
You evaluate your players that can play, you design plays and strategy around their strengths and attempt to mitigate weaknesses. And I’m not seeing that; I’m seeing stubbornness, and a grab-bag shotgun approach to play calling. You have a super accurate passing quarterback who is not strong enough to take big hits. You have an O-line that can’t block long enough for deep balls or for much ground yardage. You have a deep WR core with size advantages against many teams.
Why not get the ball out of the QB’s hands as soon as possible? Mitigate the OL weakness. Try to get some baby steps on O. It seems when we’ve run slants and short passes, they’ve had some success. We also showed some nice screen plays in the middle of the season that we’re not running anymore.
We do not have a power running team; we don’t even have a smash-a-loaf-of-bread O. Our strengths are decent (albeit young) QBs and WR depth. Play to that strength.
What I’m looking for is just about any sort of offensive improvement against a decent team. Sure, we’ll likely beat Kansas this week, but that’s not saying much. With our recruiting (yes, Charlie needed to go; but no, Charlie did NOT leave the cupboard bare) we should be able to improve over the course of 9 games. That’s a lot of coaching time. Just show me some improvement, an ability (willingness?) to adjust. And I’ll be much less critical.