SB Nation - Justin Tucker

Thoughts on Kansas and Texas A&M

GhostofBigRoy — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:48:57 -0000

There isn't a whole lot to talk about with the Kansas game that hasn't already been said here in the last couple of days or earlier in the season, so I'll just do it bullet style:

Before the Baylor game, I said that the two best receivers Texas would face this season on one team were David Gettis and Kendall Wright. Somehow I forgot about Kerry Meier and Dezmon Briscoe and that was just stupid. Meier didn't have a huge game, but Briscoe did, showing the combination of size and speed that should make him one of the top receivers in the draft if he decides to come out this year. Much like he did against Michael Crabtree last season, Curtis Brown really struggled against Briscoe, for a variety of reasons. Briscoe's speed was a problem, as was his size. Mostly though, Brown struggled because he kept on getting in between trying to break up passes and trying to make the tackle, often ending up doing neither. Blake Gideon didn't help him much by consistently being late getting over the top as well, though in fairness to Gideon, he was the single-high safety on several of those coverages, giving him a lot of ground to cover.

Aaron Williams actually got beat a couple of times. Astounding -- I didn't even know if that was possible. Apparently he is mortal.
It's really heartening that the Longhorns are looking down the field more often, especially when using play action. The deep post to Williams went for a long touchdown and McCoy targeted the big receiver on two other plays downfield, with Williams for some reason stopping on one route that would have been a touchdown and McCoy missing outside and long on another that would have gone for a score. The fact that they aren't quite on the same page with those throws illustrates what a crime it was not to have played Williams more early in the season. Had the coaches put him on the field, he and McCoy might have already worked through those problems. The good news is that Williams hasn't dropped any passes in the last two games and continues to block extremely well downfield. On the pass into the flat to Tre' Newton after faking the jet sweep, Wiilliams absolutely leveled a linebacker.
James Kirkendoll contines to come on as well, working harder on his blocking downfield, but more importantly, showing the precise route running Texas fans expected to see all season. McCoy is seemingly gaining more trust in him every week and it's clear that the benching after the Oklahoma game really lit a fire under him. Great to see.
The offensive line had two breakdowns in pass protection again, once by Tray Allen when he let a defensive tackle come free on McCoy's fumble early in the game when Kansas showed blitz with one linebacker on the edge, then the other, clearly confusing Allen with the protection scheme. The other came when Kyle Hix left Maxwell Onyegbule unblocked on the edge, leading to a hit on McCoy. Frustrating.
I can guarantee that since Justin Tucker fancies himself a real football player, he hated the fact that he couldn't catch Briscoe on the kickoff return. He'll probably be angry about it the rest of his life.
John Gold's punting effort was extremely poor, meaning that both the traditional and rubgy punting have struggled the last two weeks. They need to figure it out. Kickoff coverage as well, which was terrible at times.
After Jordan Shipley's fumble on a kickoff return, Marquise Goodwin should be given every chance to win the job until DJ Monroe comes back -- he didn't look quite as explosive, but Shipley's fumble was inexcusable and the second fumble he has had on special teams in the last month.
Texas struggled to get pressure on Todd Reesing during long stretches of the game -- a lot of credit should go to the Kansas offensive line, which probably played their best game of the season against Texas, doing a particularly good job picking up on the twists the Longhorns ran consistently. Part of the problem may have been that the defensive linemen were worried about staying in their lanes, but the lack of pressure helped lead to a lot of the breakdowns in the secondary.
The jet tempo package worked as well as it has all season, with the Longhorns running several bootlegs off of the play, one that resulted in a scramble for a first down by McCoy and one that resulted in the 38-yard touchdown to Shipley on a drag route. It's a good thing that Davis didn't abandon the jet tempo when it wasn't working like he did the Q package and the WildHorn, because it's giving the Longhorns an advantage right now.
The Longhorns ran power a couple of times against Kansas and it's a great addition to the playbook.

Some thoughts on the game against A&M:

The skill position players on offense are good for the Aggies, but the offensive line has struggled mightily at times this season and Jerrod Johnson often holds the ball too long in the pocket, a recipe for disaster against the Longhorns.
The key to stopping the Aggie offense may be limiting their ability to run the ball, putting them in third and long situations where Texas can put pressure on Johnson. However, the defensive linemen must stay in their lanes as they did against Kansas and Oklahoma State to limit the scrambling ability of the Aggie quarterback -- when Johnson is running the ball effectively, the Aggies are a dangerous team offensively.
Defensively, Texas A&M has virtually nothing besides Von Miller. Early in the Arkansas game, Miller was extremely disruptive until Arkansas started double teaming him and sliding their protection away from him. As long as the offensive line can keep track of him, possibly using a running back to chip him at times, Colt McCoy should have plenty of time to stand in the pocket and throw down the field against an extremely poor Aggie secondary. However, because of the need to slide the protection away from Miller or double team him, the empty set may not be the best choice this week.
The Aggies are one of the most heavily penalized teams in the country, getting flagged an average of about eight times per game -- something they cannot afford to happen against the much more talented Longhorns.
Unless several catastrophic things happen, the Aggies don't have a chance in this game. The Longhorns need to come out with focus and intensity and Colt McCoy needs another strong game to help his Heisman campaign. In other words, he needs to play better than Vince Young did against the Aggies in 2005. If you want to feel better about the game, just read this.

Afternoon Brewsky Sees Progress Along the Offensive Line

GhostofBigRoy — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:33:49 -0000

More photos » by Tony Gutierrez - AP

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Simplified running game makes progress. Cody Johnson may have had only the second 100-yard rushing game of his career, but the big story coming out of the victory over Baylor was the job of the offensive line. Before going into that, let's get one thing out of the way -- Baylor is not a good team at stopping the run. They rank 89th in the country at stopping the run; UConn gained 235 yards against them and Iowa State had 240, while even Kent State averaged well over six yards a carry against the Bears. So yeah, they're not any good.

However, several things were heartening about the running game, starting with Johnson. Though he doesn't always hit the hole as hard as he could and keep his legs driving on contact, Johnson did make his normal yards after contact and did avoid dancing around in the backfield. On a day the coaches wanted to give him 15-20 carries, Johnson responded with 109 yards on his 19 attempts, without ever looking like he tired as the game went on. Losing 20 pounds and getting into the best condition of his time at Texas has really helped him

More impressive, however, was the work of the offensive line. Even against much weaker units like the Colorado defensive line, the unit struggled, but the big guys in the trenches for Texas had one of their best performances of the season, generally avoiding the individual meltdowns that have characterized nearly every other game this year. Greg Davis attributed the improved execution to focusing on specific plays during practice last week:

We said these are the runs that we're going to focus on - weak side zone play, the counter play, the one back power and they really came out and did a good job. Across the board I thought Adam Ulatoski, Charlie Tanner, Chris Hall, Michael Huey and Kyle Hix along with Greg Smith at tight end really came up big and gave Cody and Tre' some great creases to get the ball into the secondary.

While the zone and the counter have been staples for some time, the most interesting play they worked on was the power, a downhill, man-blocking running play extremely popular in the NFL and college football. Without going through and charting every single running play, from what I recall the Longhorns ran the power mostly out of the jet tempo and from under center, although I do remember one instance of a guard pulling on a gun run that might have been the power. The consistent execution was impressive and giving the offensive line a chance to drive blocks is a breath of fresh air -- there's something beautiful about seeing the line of scrimmage moved down the football field. There's also a strong chance that it helps their overall aggressiveness by giving them a chance to fire off the ball.

Besides the execution, the effectiveness of the jet tempo was also a major positive from the game, as the production from those plays had decreased drastically throughout the season. Since FSN managed to catch only brief parts of most of those plays, it's hard to say exactly what worked so well, but breaking tendency at times in recent weeks surely helped. Davis said this week that there are only a handful of passing plays they can run since they have so little time to call the play before getting the snap off and that group of plays changes every week, but as long as they can bootleg and throw enough screens to keep the defense from selling out on the run, the jet tempo may continue to be effective, particularly as a way to add some drive blocking to the Texas offense.

Defense failed to finish. One of the first things that Will Muschamp mentioned after the game was that the second- and third-team players who gave up the two late touchdowns to Baylor did a disservice to their teammates by not finishing the game well. For young players, every repetition is important on the field, regardless of the score. In fact, since they are trying to earn more playing time, they should approach those plays with every bit of the intensity of the starters. Unfortunately, the end of the game was characterized by sloppy tackling and some missed assignments. Muschamp talks about having a lunchpail, hard-hat mentality throughout the entire game and the back ups played reasonably well, but didn't finish in the same way that they did against UCF, when they rose up to keep the Knights out of the end zone late.

The back ups who came into the game owe it to their teammates to finish games well because the final score reflects on the starters as much as it does on the back ups. For a team trying to stastically rank as the best defense in the country, the two touchdowns scored count against the starters in terms of perception, as most of the members in the national media won't realize that Baylor didn't score until late in the game. In recent weeks there has been more talk about the strength of the Texas defense, but it still lags behind Florida and Alabama in national perception and 47-0 looks a lot better than 47-14.

It's also disappointing because those players are only an injury or two away from having to contribute. Since there aren't many games left in the season, that's less of a concern right now than it would have been early in the season, but the fact remains that Ben Wells is a couple nicks away from having to play meaningful snaps in the secondary and he clearly isn't ready, despite the fact that he's one of the hardest hitters on the team. The defensive tackle position is even a bigger concern, as Tevin Mims and Tyrell Higgins aren't ready and they are probably only one injury away from having to take some snaps with Calvin Howell still sidielined after his concussion.

The bottom line is that the coaching staff expects all the players to play to a standard for 60 minutes every Saturday and the defense didn't do that. The coaching staff expects players to finish the game and they didn't do that. Is it unrealistic to expect that the back ups for Texas can stop the first team for Baylor? Given the fact that Texas recruited very few of those players, the answer is no.

Tracking: playmaking defense. The Acho brothers. Talk about a feel-good story -- it's just hard to overappreciate what those two smart, articulate, and mature young men bring to the Texas football program. Blessed wtih immense physical skills, it's their understanding of the mental part of the game that sets them apart. Matched against a wide receiver on Saturday, Emmanuel recognized the route, jumped it, and intercepted the first pass of his collegiate career. Earlier in the game, matched against Kendall Wright, probably the single most talented player on the Baylor team after Robert Griffin, Acho ran stride for stride with him across the middle of the field and forced an incompletion. Given his high level of play this season, his missed tackle on Baylor's last touchdown was a huge surprise. As for Sam, he continues to play with an incredible motor, hustling downfield to make the stop on a pass play and coming from his defensive tackle position to force the fumble on the speed option Baylor tried to run on third and long late in the first half. More so than almost any other players on the defense, the Acho brothers have had the awareness to strip the ball free.

Then there's Aaron Williams. The kid is so good he has to pray for opposing quarterbacks to test him. After Baylor marched down the field on their first drive, Williams demonstrated why he has had so few balls thrown his way. With Muschamp bringing max blitzes on second and third down, Baylor anticipated the blitz and called a blitz beater on the first play and a man beater on the second. On the first, Williams broke up the slant in the end zone and on the second, ran stride for stride on the corner route before showing his athleticism by leaping to make a touchdown-saving interception. Later, Williams broke up another pass on the only other time Nick Florence tried to test him. I love me some Aaron Williams and he proved on Saturday why no one wants to throw at him.

As great of a story as the Acho brothers are, the story of perseverance by Eddie Jones is almost as unique and inspiring. Sidelined with ankle and shoulder injuries throughout most of his first two seasons, there were rumors late in the summer that he might never step on the football field for Texas. Given his injury history, that didn't seem like a stretch. Well, Jones is back and is finally fulfilling his five-star promise. In the fourth quarter against Baylor, Jones saw the offensive tackle in front of him attempt a weak chop block and read the flare pass into the flat, stepping in front of it and showing off his speed by taking the interception 60 yards for the touchdown -- Jones is good enough to start at defensive end for any other team in the country.

Since Texas is intercepting just about every possible pass now, the only area for improvement is forcing more fumbles. The Acho brothers are stripping the ball well, but other players just aren't quite taking the techniques that they work on in practice and transferring them to the game. One play stands out in particular -- on Chykie Brown's cornerback blitz, he had a free shot at the unsecured football, but never attempted to strip it as he brought Florence down, leading Duane Akina to yell for him to strip the football from the sidelines. There aren't many areas in which the defense can improve, but forcing more fumbles is one of them.

Tracking: special teams. Welcome to the block party, Kenny Vaccaro. The biggest question on special teams after Curtis Brown picked up his block against Missouri was who would become the next player to join the block party. Vaccaro was one of the names I threw out there and he made it happen against Baylor, partially deflecting a punt to set up a short field for the Longhorns and take a 28-0 lead. Not only that, but his work on special teams continues to be excellent, as he made another tackle inside the 20. An unsung hero on the kickoff coverage team is fullback Aaron Smith, a walk on who has done more to deserve a scholarship than several players who have a free ride at Texas and is consistently around the football on kickoff coverage after greatly helping the unit last season when he got on the field.

The kickoff return game was not particularly impressive, as DJ Monroe had a 27-yard return in what will be last effort there for some time, while Malcolm Williams was only able to get 16 yards on his return. The coaches need to go back and look at the return game this week in an attempt to figure out what is keeping Texas from breaking the same type of long returns they enjoyed early in the season. Jordan Shipley, on the other hand, had his best day returning punts since the Colorado game, taking one back 25 yards and another 11-yard return. With Monroe's suspension, he will once again return kickoffs.

Hunter Lawrence continued his campaign for the Lou Groza Award with his clutch field goal before the half, though it could hurt him that he hasn't had to win any games late. Of course, his performance against Oklahoma was the difference between the Texas victory and a devastating loss, so that will definitely help his candidacy. With the wind at his back, Justin Tucker kicked two balls into the end zone for touchbacks against Baylor and he also made a tackle at the end of a 35-yard Baylor return. The punting game was not as impressive, though, as Tucker continues to struggle killing kicks inside the 10 yardline and John Gold, in his first early appearance in some time, kicked a ball well into the end zone with an opportunity to give Baylor a long field. In the end, it makes more sense to use Gold with a long field where he can use his big leg to boom punts than to have him try to punt it inside the 10, a skill at which Tucker's rugby punt should be much more successful.

Randomness. As always, done bullet style:

Kenny Vaccaro can lay the wood, as he knocked 200-pound Baylor receiver Ernest Smith back about 10 yards on a fourth quarter hit, earning himself the weekly Hard Hat Award in the process. With the depth in front of him, he may not get a lot of time at safety next season unless Earl Thomas leaves or he can beat out Nolan Brewster, but Vaccaro will contribute significantly before his Texas career is over.
Marcus Davis can lay the wood as well and looks like an extremely sure and physical tackler. He's probably not as far along as a freshman as Aaron Williams was last season, but it's hard to tell because Davis hasn't had to play as Williams did -- but even in limited action, it looks like Davis has the chance to be the next great nickel back at Texas.
After coming under fire last season for his hands, EBS hadn't dropped any passes this year. Until Saturday, that is. On the second possession of the game, Smith dropped a third-down pass that would have gone for a third down and extended the drive. Instead, the Longhorns went three and out. Then, on the last possession of the first half, he had a ball go through his hands and was lucky that it deflected to a waiting James Kirkendoll for an important gain to set up Hunter Lawrence's 41-yard field goal. It wasn't exactly a Peter Ullman volleyball set, but it was the worst performance in the passing game for EBS this season and it sets him back in his efforts to lose his nickname. With the two dropped passes, he now needs to score two touchdowns or have a 30-yard reception (up from one touchdown or a 25-yard reception) to rid himself of the EBS label. The good news is that he continues to be a major factor in the resurgence of the running game, so he is a very good Extra Blocking Surface.
Um, where was Malcolm Williams? The big receiver barely saw the field against Baylor, mostly in favor of John Chiles, who played early and often and failed to get out of bounds on the drive before the end of the first half, costing Texas a shot at the end zone and then dropped a third-down catch that would have given Texas a first down midway through the third quarter. The coaches are clearly working hard to give Chiles every possible chance, but the fact remains that Williams gives Texas the better chance to break a big play in a possible national championship game and needs the repetitions more than Chiles.
Dan Buckner saw him action at split end and just doesn't look explosive enough for the position -- he's probably going to remain at flex tight end until he improves his burst off the ball and after the catch. However, he still has the best hands on the team, as evidenced on his 22-yard snag on the first possession to convert a 2nd and 17 and his one-handed catch to convert a 3rd and 6 in the second quarter.
Kheeston Randall and Ben Alexander continue to play exceptionally well on the interior of line, as well as Lamarr Houston, who is close to becoming the same type of disruptive force that Roy Miller was last year. He doesn't quite have the same pure strength, but he's probably quicker. On the third-down play that set up the fourth-down stop of Nick Florence on the quarterback sneak, Houston engaged the Baylor offensive lineman, then threw him down to set up in the hole to stop the running back. Ridiculous. I mean, he literally just threw the guy to the ground. As good as Sergio Kindle has been this year, especially in stopping the run, Texas will probably miss Houston more because he won't be as easy to replace.
The Texas linebackers gave a look at what a post-Muckelroy future will look like, performing admirably in the game, paritcularly Dustin Earnest, who is now contributing at a level most probably thought wasn't possible after his first two mediocre years in the program. His fourth-down stop of Florence was particularly critical in the game.

Morning Coffee Loves Malcolm Williams

GhostofBigRoy — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:00:10 -0000

by Harry Cabluck - AP

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Running game suffers biggest struggles since Colorado. Not only was it clear that Central Florida was the best team at stopping the run the Longhorns will face until a potential appearance in the national championship game, but the Knights also loaded up to the stop the run, daring the Longhorns to throw the football. So throw the football they did, to the tune of 470 yards by Colt McCoy. The concern, however, is that Texas didn't run the ball successfully after three straight games coming close to or exceeding the 60% success rate the coaches want to achieve. Against Central Florida, Texas rushed for 67 yards on 25 carries, with a success rate of only 50%.

There are certainly a lot of reasons for the lack of success. Much like the Colorado game, the coaches were relatively stubborn about using the basic running plays -- the counter and zone plays with some zone read sprinkled in, while eschewing the Monroe Series after the first play from scrimmage and choosing not to run the actual misdirection counter play and the draw play debuted on the first play against Oklahoma. Though Cody Johnson scored his first touchdown on an inside zone play, all of his other attempts on the play were stopped by the Knights -- it just doesn't make that much sense to have such a big back running laterally down the line of scrimmage. The easy adjustment here is to run the same plays from under center, where Johnson would have the ability to come downhill more on the plays and square his shoulders to the line of scrimmage, though that is, of course, unlikely. In the two times the coaches used the jet tempo package, however, the Longhorns did use play action both times, so they did break tendency there. Congratulations, GD!

The coaches also have to be careful with their substitution patterns when they bring Johnson into the game. As Greg Davis effectively moved between 11 personnel and 10 personnel while alternating Johnson and Whittaker at the running back position, Johnson coming into the game often meant a running play and he's just not good enough in the passing game to establish much of a threat, despite his 14-yard gain late in the game in which he broke several tackles and then moved the pile at the end. Improvement in the passing game and picking up the blitz should be major points of emphasis for Johnson in bowl practices.

It looks like Johnson will get the start against Baylor after Fozzy Whittaker came out with the ones against UCF, with Brown speculating that he may get 20 carries. The question is how those 20 carries come about. The I formation look hasn't been particularly successful this season and it just doesn't make a ton of sense to only have two receivers on the field if Antwan Cobb isn't going to split out at all as a receiver -- recall that there was some speculation in fall camp that he would earn the role of third-down back.

The fact of the matter is that the current scheme doesn't suit Johnson particularly well and if the coaching staff is really intent on giving him more carries, they have to figure out what plays consistently work. With the success of the jumbo package, which debuted some actual runs behind the left side of the line for the first time this year, and the possibility of bootlegs and some play-action passing, that might have to be more of an option on any short-yardage situations like 3rd and 3 or even 4 in the middle of the field.

Another adjustment in the receiving corps. Aren't there ways to get Marquise Goodwin the ball on the move? The freshman speedster had three catches on Saturday, all three of which got him the ball standing still, where he had no chance to use his speed or even avoid tacklers. The first came on an obvious screen pass out of a bunch formation with Shipley and Buckner that quickly got blown up because there were too many players in a small area. No idea what Davis was thinking on that play -- it had virtually zero chance of success.

The Longhorns have not run any slip screens for him that give him more momentum on the catch and also did not appear to run any slants, crossing routes, or deep routes other than clear-out go routes out of the empty set for Goodwin. The crossing route in particular may be intriguing given his ability to run away from virtually any defender -- neither Jordan Shipley nor James Kirkendoll have that kind of speed. It will be extremely disappointing if the coaches aren't more creative and/or assertive in getting Goodwin the ball so he can be effective -- after debuting Goodwin on the jet sweep against Oklahoma State, he did not receive a carry against UCF.

Perhaps the coaches essentially sabotaged Goodwin's ability to produce in order to have an excuse to re-insert Kirkendoll as the starter. The blocking effort from the local product has been much more better since his demotion, so that's great. He's also done a better job of making opponents miss in space to turn short passes into nice gains.

Mack Brown offered a pretty lame excuse for Kirkendoll's struggles after the Wyoming game:

I thought we probably worked James too much in preseason. Receivers run all the time in this heat. Jordan (Shipley) came out and didn't spend as much time out there. I'm not sure that James didn't hit a wall after Wyoming. He just got tired a little bit. We just need to get him some rest and shake it up a little bit. He played great on Saturday. He was one of the great performers during the ball game with his blocking. Our downfield blocking with our receivers was as good Saturday as we've had. We feel like now when Marquise (Goodwin) and John (Chiles) hit a little wall we can give them a little break. I think James is ready now with Malcolm (Williams) to make the stretch run here.

It's a lame excuse because Kirkendoll hasn't even gotten that much rest, as he and Chiles have both played heavily in the three games of their demotion, enough to pretty much call them de-facto starters with Williams and Goodwin. The demotion resulted in better effort from both players, but the questions about their ability to create separation still linger. After all, that was the main reason they lost their jobs in the first place.

The good news is that Malcolm Williams continues to play well. Though he did fail to attack the ball on the post route that should have gone for a touchdown, McCoy did underthrow the ball slightly and the defender did make a nice play to knock the ball loose. In the last two games, though, Williams has not had the type of out-and-out drop that he did against Missouri, catching the ball away from his body well on every play but the one mentioned above. After that play, McCoy went right back to him on a stop route and Williams used a ridiculous big brother-like stiff arm to make it past the first defender before nearly breaking another tackle on his way to 16 yards. It's that type of physical dominance and speed that gives Williams so much potential.

Jordan Shipley. It's difficult to put words to the type of performance that Shipley had against the completely overmatched UCF secondary. About the only thing that is easy to say is that the 53-yard catch he had late in the second quarter would have gone for a 93-yard touchdown had McCoy hit him in the stride after Shipley left a defender trailing and flailing on a double move.

It's probably the proper time, now that Shipley is the all-time single game receiving yards leader in the history of the program, to reflect once again on just how far he's come. After leg injuries kept him out of his first two seasons, Brown advised him that maybe his football career just wasn't going to happen. Though he may not have the pure speed he did in high school, Shipley never stopped working and, in fact, admittedly may have worked too hard coming back from his first injury, leading to some of the hamstring issues he experienced. Tell the guy to take a day off and he would probably look at you like you're crazy.

The bottom line is that Shipley will go down as one of the best receivers, perhaps the best, in the history of Texas football. A tireless worker and true student of his craft, "The Roommate" never seems to run a sloppy route or drop a football and is not only an incredible representative of his university and football program, but tops it all off with a heaping dose of genuine humility.

It's hard to imagine that Shipley will finally end his college career in January, but the good news is that if his younger brother really can run routes as well as his older brother and really does have the hands to match, as all reports indicate, he will have an extremely successful career as well. Let's just hope he doesn't have to endure so many injuries first.

Tracking: special teams play. Headng into the game, it seemed unlikely that the Longhorns would find much success in the return game, given their top-10 national rankings in both covering kicks and punts. Add in the fact that Texas wasn't likely to get many opportunities to return kicks and it seemed that the normal advantage Texas holds in special teams would mostly be negated. It turns out that was mostly the case. On the opening kickoff of the second half, the Texas wedge got blown up, limiting DJ Monroe to a 17-yard return. In the punting game, Texas had a little more success, as Shipley had an 11-yard return and picked up three on another -- his 14 yards nearly matched the 17 Central Florida had given up all season.

However, Shipley was only able to return two of eight kicks and the Central Florida punter, normally one of the worst in the country, managed to average 42.5 yards per kick, including a 70 yarder, and pinned Texas inside the twenty on four different occasions -- on the day, he was probably the best offensive weapon for the Knights, consistently flipping field position.

In the Texas kicking game, Justin Tucker, perhaps finally unleashed to put the ball in the end zone, had touchbacks on each of his last two kicks, while the coverage units played well with the exception of a 27-yard return. Antwan Cobb was the star, making tackles on consecutive kicks, while Aaron Smith also had a nice day in coverage.

On the negative side, Hunter Lawrence had his first bad miss of the season, missing well left on a 44-yard attempt. Certainly one miss isn't enough to cause concern, but it does ruin his otherwise perfect season (his other two misses came on a block and the 52 yarder that hit the cross bar against UTEP) in a week that saw him named a semi-finalist for the Lou Groza Award, given to the best place kicker in the country.

The other major negative was a shanked punt off the foot of Justin Tuckern, raising further concerns about the rugby-style of punting Mack Brown has adopted at the exclusion of John Gold. No doubt it will be something the coaching staff revisits this week. The Longhorns also did not come close to blocking any punts either, though it did not appear that the coaches really sent them after the quarterback, for unexplained reasons.

Overall, Brown sounded disappointed in the special teams as a whole after bragging about them so much over the last several weeks. Of the three phases, the special teams have the most room for improvement going up to Waco.

Behind the numbers. Some notes on the Central Florida game and the season to date. Also here.

EBS not only caught his fifth pass of the season, but also had six knockdown blocks in the game to earn the Boss Hawg Award.
The defense had nine quarterback pressures, 13 hits on the quarterback, and seven sacks, the latter number representing the highest total this season.
The defense gave up only 151 yards on 57 plays (2.6 yards per play), despite giving up 75 yards on the final drive, which came against mostly second-string players. UCF gained only 76 yards on 38 rushes -- 2.0 yards per carry. On the other nine drives by the Knights, it took them 43 plays to gain 76 yards, only 1.8 yards per play.
Over the last six games, the Texas defense has given up 1.092 yards on 360 plays -- 3.0 yards per play. During that time, opponents have scored 58 points (9.7 per game) on nine scoring drives (six touchdowns, three field goals). That means that Texas has allowed scores on only 12% of 75 opponent possessions during that span.
Texas leads the country in total defense (230 yards per game) and rushing defense (55 yards per game), while ranking in the top 10 in pass efficiency defense (94.61 rating/5th), tackles for loss (8.2 pg/6th), turnover margin (+1.0/7th) and scoring defense (12.4 ppg/8th).
Opponents have scored more than 14 points only twice this season. In the last six games, no opponent has scored more than 14.
The Central Florida game marked the fourth time this season the Longhorns have held their opponent to under 200 yards of total offense and the seventh time Texas has held their opponent to less than 100 yards rushing.
The Longhorns also lead the country in scoring differential, having scored 369 points and given up 112. On average, then, Texas outscores their opponents by 28.6 points per game.
After struggling against Oklahoma, McCoy has returned to his 2008 form: Over the last three games, McCoy has completed 75-of-94 passes (79.8%) for 910 yards (303.3 ypg) and six TDs (2 INT) -- a 177.9 pass efficiency rating. Excluding sacks, he's also rushed for 93 yards on 23 carries (4.0 ypc). He's led the Longhorns to scores on 15 (12 TDs/3 FGs) of 25 drives (60%) in those game.
In the 117 years of Texas football, 43 of the 66 500-yard peformances by a Longhorn offense have come under Mack Brown.

Texas: Beyond the Box Score Preview

Bill C. — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:30:15 -0000

Saturday night Missouri plays in what could possibly be the last game of the regular season in which they are the underdog (unless Kansas avoids a tailspin). What kind of upset chances do the Tigers have? What do the stats tell us are possible opportunities (and serious threats) for our most losable Homecoming game in quite some time? To the numbers!

Offense

Texas: 2009 Beyond the Box Score Preseason Offensive Preview

As you'll see, I've made the switch from raw Sack Rate figures to the schedule-adjusted Sack Rate+ ratings. These numbers still have a bit of a small sample size issue, meaning that the highs and lows for each category are more extreme than in other categories. For instance, Auburn is #1 in Offensive Sack Rate+ with a rating of over 400--rarely will you see a rating of over 200-250 in most categories. Keep that in mind when you see Missouri's really low Defensive Standard Downs Sack Rate+--it's bad, but it's not quite as bad as the number you see.

Texas Offense vs Missouri Defense
Category	UT Offense	MU Defense
Close S&P+ (Rk)	120.5 (21)	121.6 (25)
Close Success Rate+ (Rk)	119.7 (12)	107.6 (39)
Close PPP+ (Rk)	122.4 (31)	143.1 (16)

Rushing S&P+	124.2 (18)	101.3 (66)
Passing S&P+	116.3 (36)	143.4 (15)

Standard Downs S&P+	129.0 (7)	116.3 (26)
Passing Downs S&P+	124.4 (29)	115.7 (34)

Red Zone S&P+	117.2 (44)	94.0 (77)

Q1 S&P+	131.4 (23)	100.5 (63)
Q2 S&P+	126.7 (25)	154.0 (8)
Q3 S&P+	151.3 (6)	100.7 (56)
Q4 S&P+	118.7 (30)	120.4 (23)

1st Down S&P+	143.4 (5)	116.0 (31)
2nd Down S&P+	121.7 (26)	113.8 (35)
3rd Down S&P+	120.5 (29)	111.0 (40)

Line Yards+	99.3 (72)	104.5 (54)
Close Sack Rate+	147.3 (27)	85.7 (84)
Standard Downs / Passing Downs Sack Rate+	164.7 (27) / 137.0 (38)	49.3 (106) / 91.0 (70)

Analysis after the jump.

Let's start with where Missouri has the rankings advantage:

Close PPP+
Passing S&P+
Q2 S&P+
Q4 S&P+
Line Yards+

To win this game, Missouri must defend those rankings, first and foremost. They have been one of the better teams in the country in terms of not giving up big plays (PPP+), and that must continue. Their "allow the short passes and tackle well" approach has worked for the most part, and that must continue. They get stronger as the half moves on, and that must continue. Texas simply has not run-blocked very well this year, and Missouri must take advantage of that.

Other thoughts:

Here are the categories where Texas holds the biggest advantage: Rushing S&P+, Red Zone S&P+, Q1 S&P+, Q3 S&P+, 1st Down S&P+, Standard Downs S&P+. While Missouri must maintain the advantages they do have, they also need to minimize the damage done here. Early-half stops. Big-time run support from the likes of Sean Weatherspoon, Will Ebner, Aldon Smith, etc. Figuring out some way, any way, to get pressure on Colt McCoy on 1st Downs and not allow him to get off quick pass after quick pass.

Quarterback

Can Colt McCoy possibly approach his 2008 numbers in 2008? I say no, and I have one major reason why: Texas actually did better on Passing Downs (1.01 S&P) than Standard Downs (0.97 S&P) in 2008. Think about that. They were a better offense on 3rd-and-7 than 2nd-and-4. That makes no sense, and while I don't have enough year-to-year data to show what happens to teams with disproportional success like that, how in the world can you maintain that?

In a lot of ways, this disproportionality reminds me a lot of a baseball measure that has significantly grown in popularity recently: BABIP (Batting Average on Balls In Play). Over time, most players and pitchers produce roughly the same BABIP. It can vary depending on the ratio of ground balls to line drives and fly balls, but over time, most BABIP will regress to the mean of around .290. When a pitcher gives up a BABIP of .350 or .220 one year, it's probably pretty quickly going to revert back toward .290. Therefore it can be used to spot flukes, seasons that were particularly good or bad depending on whether ground balls tended to sneak between 3B and SS or go straight at a defender.

To me, disproportional success on Passing Downs might end up being a lot like BABIP in picking up on some amount of fluky success. Texas certainly had a good offense no matter what in 2008, but I think it may have been a little too good to maintain in 2009. Especially considering McCoy will be playing without two major third-down bailout options, Chris Ogbonnaya and Quan Cosby, I'm thinking Colt may end up having a year where Texas struggles at times, and there's no clear explanation why (kind of like when you're hitting a ball hard, but right at the shortstop). A few more 3rd-and-7 passes fall incomplete, and the Texas offense could slow down in a hurry.

Colt McCoy: 156-for-223 passing (70.0%), 1,537 yards (6.9/pass), 11 TD, 7 INT; 48 rushes, 91 yards (1.9/carry), 1 TD

Last season, Texas ranked 24th in Standard Downs S&P+ and 2nd in Passing Downs S&P+. So far this year, they are up to 7th in Standard Downs S&P+, but only 29th in Passing Downs S&P+. Has McCoy regressed? Did he somehow become less "clutch"? Doubtful. Granted, Texas' offensive line probably isn't the best in the conference, but I still think Texas' struggles (and "struggles" is used loosely here--29th in Passing Downs S&P+ is nothing to scoff at, though McCoy's already thrown 7 interceptions this year after only throwing 8 last year) are most explained by simple regression to the mean. All in all, McCoy's numbers are absolutely respectable--70% completion rate, almost seven yards per pass, etc.--but human. Regression to the mean was the single biggest reason I didn't think McCoy had a chance at this year's Heisman (his chance was last year, when almost everything went right), and so far I've been proven correct on that one. Of course, he could complete 80% of his passes and throw for 350 yards and 4 TDs a game from here on out, and he could still win the big trophy...but I doubt it.

Running Back

The Longhorns have a host of talented-yet-flawed athletes in the backfield. Cody Johnson is an awesome short-yardage back, but can he see every-down success? Can Fozzy Whitaker stay healthy enough to live up to the massive promise seen by Burnt Orange Nation readers over the last couple of years? Can Vondrell McGee, UT's most well-rounded overall back, assert himself a bit more in 2009? Can any number of other highly-recruited options break into the rotation?

Vondrell McGee: 46 carries, 260 yards (5.7/carry), 2 TD; 8 receptions, 37 yards (4.6/catch)
Tre' Newton: 41 carries, 203 yards (5.0/carry), 3 TD; 3 receptions, 21 yards (7.0/catch)
Fozzy Whittaker: 23 carries, 121 yards (5.3/carry), 2 TD; 6 receptions, 24 yards (4.0/catch)
Cody Johnson: 29 carries, 104 yards (3.6/carry), 5 TD; 2 receptions, 13 yards (6.5/catch)
D.J. Monroe: 17 carries, 91 yards (5.4/carry)

Gosh, what torture Mack Brown must go through trying to figure out ways to find carries for five different running backs. Makes you feel sorry for him, huh? Right now, the amalgamation of Texas' five main backs, "Vozztre' Monson," has put together a workmanlike 156 carries for 779 yards and 12 TDs. That's 5.0 yards per carry and 130 yards per game...for the season, that would be roughly what LeSean McCoy produced for Pittsburgh last year. Plus, Vozztre Monson has one luxury that McCoy did not--extra limbs. In case a shoulder or ankle or knee gets injured, he has plenty of other sets upon which to fall back.

Texas' running game will lull you to sleep--nobody here averages over six yards per carry (for comparison, Alabama's Mark Ingram is currently averaging 6.7 per carry, Virginia Tech's Ryan Williams 6.0), but they are quite efficient, and even though they've gotten little contribution from McCoy so far, the run game ranks in the nation's top 20. They're doing something right, even if they don't have any one guy as good as someone like Jamaal Charles.

Wide Receivers / Tight Ends

If Texas can replace Quan Cosby's reliability (and Brandon Collins--10 of 12 third-down catches moved the chains--looks like he could be up for the challenge), then this receiving corps could be one of the best in the country. Jordan Shipley returns for his 17th year (what? only his 6th?), and the rest of the depth chart is simply littered with big-time recruits. Malcolm Williams awed everybody in the country with his 91-yard touchdown catch at a key moment against Texas Tech, but he only caught 19 passes all season. Dan Buckner passes the eyeball test...but only caught five passes. With Cosby gone, it is time for at least a couple of these guys to become reliable, every-down receivers.

WR Jordan Shipley: 51 catches, 605 yards (11.9/catch), 3 TD
WR Dan Buckner: 29 carries, 333 yards (11.5/catch), 4 TD
WR John Chiles: 22 catches, 177 yards (8.0/catch), 2 TD
WR James Kirkendoll: 20 catches, 198 yards (9.9/catch), 1 TD
WR Marquise Goodwin: 14 catches, 127 yards (9.1/catch), 1 TD
WR Malcolm Williams: 8 catches, 84 yards (10.5/catch)

TE Greg Smith: 3 catches, 22 yards (7.3/catch)

Where would this team be without Jordan Shipley? He's the only main Texas receiver averaging over 11.5 yards per catch, and he has caught as many passes as the Longhorns' #2 and #3 receivers combined. No offense to the guy (hey, did you hear he roomed with Colt McCoy?), but I kind of wish the NCAA hadn't given him an extra year of eligibility after his 17 career injuries. Kinda wish they'd inflicted the John Dausman "Yeah, you tore up your knee twice and missed 1.9 full seasons, but your team just isn't important enough for us to care about you too much...but you better not do anything illegal, because we need to throw the book at somebody for USC's violations" ruling at him*.

(* Yeah, that was a little bitter. I need to get better at letting things go. Dausman was a senior in 2000, and he really wasn't even that great. Shipley is exactly who the sixth-year exception is made for, and just ignore me because I'm a bitter person.)

Anyway, there has been a bit of a revolving door at WR for Texas, with plenty of people getting an opportunity at the "McCoy's #2 guy" role and nobody completely accepting it. For this game, it appears that the main shots will go to speedy Marquise Goodwin and huge Malcolm Williams. Goodwin scored UT's only touchdown against OU, and Williams has the single highest fear-induced-to-actual-production ratio in the country. Opposing fans are petrified of this guy, and justifiably so (I mean, did you see the catches he made against Missouri and Texas Tech last year??)...but in his first season and a half on the depth chart, Williams has caught a total of 25 passes, or six fewer than Missouri's Jared Perry has caught this year alone. But somehow, he really is terrifying, and you just hope he waits until next week to wake up.

Offensive Line

So here's something interesting: while Texas is known for signing as many four-star recruits as they can stomach, of the four returning starters on the offensive line, three--Hall, Ulatoski, Tanner--were 3-star recruits. Now, Missouri has proven that there's nothing wrong with loading up on 3-stars, but there isn't quite as much high-end talent here as in most units for the Longhorns, and it possibly showed last year. While Colt McCoy was one of the nation's best QBs, and the UT receiving corps was Top 15, the line struggled, both in run-blocking (64th in Line Yards+) and pass protection (59th in Adjusted Sack Rate). For those who follow recruiting rankings, there is a silver lining for the 'Horns, as Michael Huey, Tray Allen, David Snow, and Mark Buchanan were all given at least four stars by Rivals (Allen was a 5-star), so there is decent depth of talent here, and if this unit can do its job a little better, maybe McCoy won't have to come through on nearly as many Passing Down situations.

Compared to last year, Texas' sack rates have improved quite a bit...and their run-blocking has gotten worse. With the line yardage figures, a line is punished if backs dance too much or are not aggressive enough hitting holes, so as I do when talking about Missouri's own line yardage figures, I wanted to make sure that disclaimer was mentioned. That said, this does appear to be one area where Missouri matches up well. We can talk about how disappointed we are that the athletic end trio of Aldon Smith, Jacquies Smith, and Brian Coulter haven't gotten to the quarterback more, but they have been stout in run support, and Missouri's front seven might be able to stand up pretty well to the Texas running game, especially if Will Ebner is anywhere near 100%. Love that guy.

Overall, the key to stopping McCoy will be doing whatever you can to force mistakes out of him. Missouri has not been great at forcing turnovers, but that will need to change, and if you can leverage a team into enough Passing Downs, the turnovers seem to flow out a lot easier. That means stopping the run, that means batting passes down, and that means tackling well after short passes (and if the receivers' per-catch totals mean anything, they will absolutely throw short).

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Defense

Texas: 2009 Beyond the Box Score Preseason Defensive Preview

Texas Defense vs Missouri Offense
Category	UT Defense	MU Offense
Close S&P+ (Rk)	138.9 (11)	98.1 (75)
Close Success Rate+	128.6 (9)	98.2 (78)
Close PPP+	154.6 (12)	98.9 (78)

Rushing S&P+	187.1 (1)	87.0 (101)
Passing S&P+	122.6 (26)	106.9 (64)

Standard Downs S&P+	139.4 (6)	102.3 (68)
Passing Downs S&P+	157.8 (6)	97.5 (75)

Red Zone S&P+	164.6 (7)	61.9 (119)

Q1 S&P+	144.9 (13)	102.6 (71)
Q2 S&P+	171.5 (3)	93.9 (84)
Q3 S&P+	123.5 (24)	114.9 (42)
Q4 S&P+	158.0 (5)	101.7 (72)

1st Down S&P+	132.4 (17)	101.9 (68)
2nd Down S&P+	147.1 (11)	107.2 (59)
3rd Down S&P+	199.4 (1)	92.5 (88)

Line Yards+	252.4 (1)	91.9 (94)
Close Sack Rate+	100.2 (60)	170.1 (17)
Standard Downs / Passing Downs Sack Rate+	88.9 (75) / 133.3 (30)	171.3 (24) / 138.5 (37)

Let's once again start by looking at where Missouri holds the statistical advantage:

Close Sack Rate+
Standard Downs Sack Rate+

Aaaaaaaaand that's about it. So in the name of maintaining the advantages they have, Missouri must make sure that Blaine Gabbert does not face much pressure. Sergio Kindle becomes an extremely scary presence on Passing Downs (just ask Taylor Potts), but before Missouri can worry about that, they have to protect and make sure that Gabbert sees as little pressure as possible on the downs in which running and passing are of equal likelihood.

Other thoughts:

If Missouri can get ANYTHING WHATSOEVER out of the running game, I will be thrilled. That is the single biggest difference in rankings between the two teams (that, and the heavily-related Line Yards+). If Missouri is going to win this game, Derrick Washington absolutely has to find the fifth gear he misplaced sometime early last year. We know what D-Wash can do, but he hasn't done it in quite a while.
Texas gets better with each progressive down, from 17th on 1st downs, to 11th on 2nd, to 1st on 3rd. That puts significant pressure on Missouri to get yards on first down. If it doesn't come from the running game, it has to come with short passing. Andrew Jones needs to pretty quickly find a cure for invisibility because he could be very useful here.
As I've mentioned before, the truest signal of a young team is lack of success on third downs and Passing Downs. Missouri has predictably struggled here, and it will be quite a task to suddenly improve against the best defense they will face this year. Here's where Missouri's play-calling and effort will need to be at their A+ level. The coaches will need to deftly put players in the position to succeed, and the players will have to take advantage of it. Rocket science, I know.

Defensive Line

The main man in making sure UT's QB pressure doesn't drop in 2009 isn't even on the list above. That, of course, would be hybrid LB/DE Sergio Kindle (14 TFL, 10 sacks), listed below in the LBs list. He will be the main rush end, I think, in passing situations. Along with Kindle, it's probably time for former 5-star recruit Eddie Jones to make his move. In 13 games last year, he managed only eight tackles in backup time, though five went for loss (he also added 5 QBH, but I'm starting to think that Texas statisticians were VERY liberal in their interpretation of what constitutes a "hurry"). If he can become a reliable force alongside Kindle and Sam Acho, Texas should be just fine. If he doesn't, defensive coordinator Will Muschamp will be looking toward Dravannti Johnson and maybe stud true freshman Alex Okafor to provide the lacking pressure.

DE(ish) Sergio Kindle: 20.0 tackles, 7.0 TFL/sacks, 2 FF, 1 PBR
DE Sam Acho: 19.5 tackles, 7.0 TFL/sacks, 4 FR, 8 QBH, 2 PBR
DT Lamarr Houston: 17.0 tackles, 6.0 TFL/sacks, 2 FR, 17 QBH, 2 PBR
DT Ben Alexander: 13.5 tackles, 4.0 TFL/sacks, 1 QBH

If this team had nobody named Kindle or Acho, it would be much less intimidating. Kindle (DE/LB), Sam Acho (DE), and Emmanuel Acho (DE) have combined for 22 TFL/sacks, five forced fumbles and six fumble recoveries. They are the disruptive force in Will Muschamp's defense. Meanwhile, Lamarr Houston and Ben Alexander have both made a strong number of plays for DTs--not the Ndamukong Suh level of plays, but a lot. Man for man, this is probably a better line than what Missouri faced against Nebraska, which is a scary thought...though the field should be dry, which can't hurt.

Linebackers

Whereas the D-line had headliners and great stats, the Texas linebackers (sans Kindle) were probably a bit overshadowed in 2008. But when a defense is equally great at stopping the run and the pass, some of that is going to be because of a good LB corps, and that reflected well in my LB rankings. Kindle and fellow 2009 seniors Roddrick Muckelroy and Jared Norton were extremely steady in 2008, and there's no reason to expect otherwise in 2009. Muckelroy only had four TFLs and didn't really play a role in forcing many turnovers, but he was UT's main tackler, racking up 112 (71 solo). There is little experience behind this trio of seniors, but Keenan Robinson and Tariq Allen were both 4-star recruits--they'll probably be alright in 2010...or at least 2011.

Roddrick Muckelroy: 30.5 tackles, 6.0 TFL/sacks, 7 QBH, 5 PBR
Keenan Robinson: 20.0 tackles, 1.0 TFL/sacks, 3 PBR
Emmanuel Acho: 20.0 tackles, 8.0 TFL/sacks, 3 FF, 2 FR, 3 QBH
Dustin Earnest: 9.5 tackles, 1.0 TFL/sacks, 1 QBH

Aside from Kindle and the Achos, this front seven is steady and fast...and that's all they need to be. It seems like Roddrick Muckelroy has been playing for the Longhorns for nine years now, and he brings a nice, steadying force to the UT defense, allowing others to take more chances.

Secondary

If there's an area of aimed-for improvement in this unit, it comes in the form of interceptions--they only snagged six in 2008. In landing the #3 ranking, they benefited from the fact that my rankings don't place heavy emphasis on turnovers. They covered and tackled well, but one thing that can help out the Texas offense--one that I'm still saying might struggle more than expected thanks to their disproportionate success on Passing Downs--is by setting up some short fields and easy points. These are mostly 3- and 4-star recruits with a growing amount of experience, so it wouldn't be shocking to see a secondary that was a liability just a couple of years ago, suddenly forcing quiet a few turnovers and turning into the single best unit on the team.

S Earl Thomas: 22.5 tackles, 2.0 TFL/sacks, 5 INT, 1 FF, 9 PBR
CB Curtis Brown: 21.5 tackles, 1 FF, 10 PBR
CB Aaron Williams: 19.5 tackles, 4.0 TFL/sacks, 1 INT, 2 FF, 2 QBH, 2 PBR
S Blake Gideon: 19.5 tackles, 2 INT, 2 PBR
CB Chykie Brown: 15.0 tackles, 1.0 TFL/sacks, 1 FF, 1 QBH, 7 PBR

When you've got such a good defensive line and scary front-seven athletes, your secondary is almost guaranteed to look good as well--QBs will be making more hurried throws, RBs won't be breaking wide open into the secondary, etc. That said, it really is starting to appear that the Longhorns secondary that was a liability a couple of years ago has rounded into a helluva unit, at least in terms of playmaking ability. They rank only 26th against the pass, compared to Missouri's 15th-ranked pass defense, but they have also intercepted ten passes, eight more than Missouri. In a game which Missouri cannot win without winning the turnover battle, it does appear that Texas has the edge here.

Special Teams

Hunter Lawrence wasn't asked to do a ton last year--less than one FG attempt per game--but he did well in the limited opportunities, missing just two kicks all year. He and John Gold form a pretty damn solid kicking unit, even if neither was needed much in 2008. Jordan Shipley had a clutch kickoff return touchdown against Oklahoma, just as it looked like OU was about seize control of the game (UT had just gone down 14-3 when he broke loose), but the rest of the year he was only solid at KR's, not spectacular. Same with punt returns, where he ripped off a 45-yard touchdown in one return and managed only 19 yards in five others. It wouldn't surprise me to see Malcolm Williams become a force in kickoff returns, but overall this is a solid unit either way. Not as good as OSU's, but definitely in the upper half of the Big 12.

Punt Returns Rank: 15th (Jordan Shipley: 16 returns, 16.4 average, 2 TD)
Net Punting Rank: 74th (Justin Tucker: 21 returns, 39.5 average)
Kickoff Returns Rank: 2nd (D.J. Monroe: 9 returns, 42.7 average, 2 TD)
Opponents' Kickoff Returns Rank: 77th (22.1 yards/return)

Field Goals: 12-for-14 (Hunter Lawrence)
PATs: 30-for-31

Hunter Lawrence is a strong kicker, and Justin Tucker is a decent enough punter, but they don't really matter. For Missouri to win, they will also have to win the special teams battle, and that is a tall task thanks to UT's return game, which has produced four return touchdowns in six games. Jordan Shipley's punt return TD against Texas Tech gave the Longhorns some breathing room while their offense struggled, and Texas only led Colorado by ten when another Shipley return iced the game away. Knowing Missouri's past strategies against strong kick returners, expect a lot of short, pop-up kicks. Hopefully Tanner Mills is pretty good at them...assuming Missouri has quite a few opportunities to kick off, ahem. And after a down week in Stillwater, Jake Harry IV will need to go back to being Missouri's secret weapon. His rugby kicks and epic rolls have been key to Missouri winning field position battles this year, and while there's no way Missouri intentionally kicks directly to Shipley, the rolls still have to go in our favor...they had all year until the OSU game.

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Three Keys to the Game

The Bomb

Missouri has enough to worry about already--they simply must prevent big plays on defense. Texas hasn't generated too many of them this year, and they are still leading the country in scoring offense (granted, a lot of that has come against bad defenses, and a lot of points have been scored via the return game, but still). If Malcolm Williams catches a bomb, or if Fozzy Whittaker suddenly lives up to the hype and love Burnt Orange Nation has showered upon him for a while now, Missouri is dead meat. Despite all I said above about how the front seven must perform, really the safeties--Jasper Simmons, Kenji Jackson, Jarrell Harrison, Hardy Ricks--could be the most important players on the field for Mizzou on Saturday.

First-and-10

I cannot emphasize enough how important it is for the Missouri offense to generate yardage on first downs, and for the Missouri defense to prevent them. That's it. Chart the first downs on Saturday night--whoever does better will win the game.

The Turnover

Again, not rocket science. Missouri outgained Oklahoma State last week, in terms of both yards and EqPts. And yet they lost by a comfortable margin because of the -4 turnover differential and -19.4 turnover points margin. Colt McCoy has proven willing to throw at least a pick or two, and while I love how well this defense has reacted to the play at hand and prevented big plays, you do figure they might have to both take some risks to force some turnovers. Overall, despite McCoy's seven picks, Texas is still +5 on the year in turnover margin. Missouri is -2. They will need to flip that around to have a chance. Sean Weatherspoon was Missouri's "Go force a turnover" guy last year, and now would be a pretty good time to make his presence felt, no?

Prediction

As I've mentioned multiple times this week, the monsoon game seems to have skewed both Missouri's and Nebraska's numbers, and due to that, the numbers project a nailbiter, Texas by 0.3. Being that I always go with the numbers, we'll say that means Texas 24, Missouri 23. That said, I'm pretty queasy about that. There is absolutely a path toward Mizzou winning this game--protect the ball and pick off a couple of passes, move the ball on first down (via air or ground, don't care which), punt well, tackle well, don't get burned deep. It's the recipe for winning any game, really, but with Blaine Gabbert's ankle not at 100%, and with Missouri's most-defined weakness (offensive line) meshing perfectly with Texas' biggest strength (defensive line), there's plenty of reason for pessimism here.

Texas is far from unbeatable--in my opinion, they're pretty far from the team they were just last year. But in a graduation- and injury-depleted Big 12, the road ahead of them is still quite maneuverable, and if Missouri or Oklahoma State doesn't knock them off, I don't know who will. I've been pretty down about Missouri's chances in this game--like I've said before, my main goals here are to not get anybody else hurt and make sure all the moving pieces start to come together for a five-game winning streak after this game--but this is college football, and anything can happen. Missouri is a fast, strong, super-young team, and teams like that experience pretty disparate highs and lows. Hit a high-note on Saturday night, and they can claim Gary Pinkel's first win over OU or Texas. If not, make sure not to lose your spot on the bandwagon. It will start filling up again when the team gets hot later on.

Morning Coffee Loves Beating OU

GhostofBigRoy — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:31:57 -0000

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Flavor of the Week at running back: Cody Johnson. Yes, one might be inclined to suggest that Fozzy Whittaker deserves this honor after what was undoubtedly his best performance in a Longhorn uniform and to further suggest that the only reason Cody Johnson is receiving this coveted honor is because the Flavor of the Week must change, avoid repeats as long as possible. Both valid arguments.

However, there are several reasons for Johnson winning the award this week -- the first reason is the hard work that he put in this fall to lose nearly 20 pounds and maximize his quickness. Yes, he should have been in better shape coming into fall practice, but the point is that right now he is where he needs to be physically. The second reason is that the coaching staff seems to finally have settled on the proper role for Johnson -- a fourth-quarter battering ram to bludgeon tired defenses. Mack Brown spent a lot of time during the spring and beginning of fall practice talking about wanting to run a better four-minute drill at the end of games to kill the clock and maintain possession of the football. For that role, Johnson is the perfect weapon.

Johnson also wins this award because against Oklahoma he looked as quick as he ever have, but more importantly, he ran angry, with a purpose, instead of the tentative Johnson from earlier in the season. The end result -- five carries for 31 yards, helping him finish with the highest per-carry average on the team for the game, while also catching a pass out of the backfield for a six-yard gain. He won't ever be a big-play threat in the passing game, but if he can make himself available for McCoy to pick up positive yardage on otherwise well-defended plays it can provide a big lift to an offense struggling to find an identity.

The bottom line is that Johnson provides the Longhorns with a serious weapon in games that are close into the fourth quarter and in situations where Texas needs to kill the clock. Nice to see him finally deployed in a way that strategically makes sense other than his specialty, short-yardage situations.

Musical chairs at the receiver position. John Chiles took a beating in PB's Postgame React due to his inability to separate from defenders. Well deserved after catching two passes for one yard on the day, one of them on a slip screen that Oklahoma clealry saw coming, as they did not even bother to line up a defensvie back over him. Had he just run straight down the field he probably would have been open. James Kirkendoll picked up a personal foul penalty for head-butting Quinton Carter, who apparently took acting lessons this off season from former punter Mike Knall and would have made Vlade Divac or your average Argentinian basketball player proud with his subsequent flop. Kirkendoll caught three passes for 11 yards and may be the biggest disappointment in the receiving corps after so much off season talk about how consistently he runs routes. Besides the Wyoming game, Kirkendoll has provided little in the way of help this season on offense and has been giving questionable effort.

So, exit Kirkendoll and Chiles, enter Malcolm Williams and Marquise Goodwin. During his Monday press conference, Brown spoke about wanting to run the ball better to open up more play-action possibilities downfield, which is where Williams enters the equation. The bottom line is that the other receivers haven't produced, so it's time to finally, belatedly, see what Williams can do with his first shot at extended playing time. As for Goodwin, the touchdown catch and the diving play near the sideline illustrate just how good he can be with more opportunities. It's cliche now given that he's proven all season that he's a football player willing to put as much of a hit on defenders as he can, but it's true. He's a football player who also happens to be an all-world track star and the future at Texas is incredibly bright for that young man. It's also worth noting that Jordan Shipley will return to the flanker position that he occupied most of the last season after failing to create separation against Oklahoma's Brian Jackson, who surely raised his NFL stock with his strong performance on Saturday.

Tracking: playmaking defense. What a change a year can make. After forcing five turnovers against Oklahoma, with two coming on special teams, the Longhorns now have three more turnovers than they forced all of last season. Individually, Earl Thomas now has five interceptions, only one fewer than the team had as a whole in 2008 and good enough to tie for the national lead in that category. Apparently not content to allow his brother to recover all the fumbles, Emmanuel Acho joined the party with two fumble recoveries and would have had a chance at the fumble Thomas forced near the goalline had he broken down a little better instead of overrunning the football. Hey, at this point, if an Acho is around a loose football and doesn't recover it, it's a remarkable occurrence.

Curtis Brown and Deon Beasley, once regarded as the two least physical members of the entire defense, put hard hits on Oklahoma players to knock the ball out, with Beasley's play probably ranking as his best at Texas, though there really isn't much competition. Like Michael Huff and Aaron Ross before them, it's now time to say that Duane Akina has finally molded them into football players. At points last season, I wasn't sure that I would ever be able to say that about them.

Consider for a second the stats put up by Earl Thomas -- seven tackles, two for loss, three pass break ups, one forced fumble, and one interception. Thomas had huge expectations for growth entering the season and it's safe to say that he has fulfilled those expectations and perhaps even gone beyond them. His play on the interception was just beautiful -- he faked the blitz towards the line of scrimmage, then dropped back into coverage and showed off his excellent speed doing so. Kid is fun to watch and it will be a travesty if he doesn't win a Thorpe Award at Texas.

Speaking of which, he might end up with some serious competition from Aaron Williams, who recovered from the biggest mistake of his career, the missed tackle on the long touchdown by Ryan Broyles, by using his sick vertical leap to catch a pass that Landry Jones was trying to throw out of bounds. You can watch football for a long time and never see a more athletic pick than that. Oh yeah, and he also knocked the reigning Heisman winner out of the game. If Will Muschamp could engineer a nickel back, he would have a hard time making a more perfect player than Aaron Williams. Simply incredible.

It's easy to forget now how much the Longhorns had to replace on the defensive line losing four players who were essentially starters or major members of the rotation in Roy Miller, Brian Orakpo, Aaron Lewis, and Henry Melton. This group inside is playing about as well as you could ask -- even though Sergio Kindle doesn't have the gaudy sack numbers, every team slides their protection to his side of the field and he still makes plays, pressuring the quarterback and playing the running game so quickly and aggressively that he's able to consistently make plays up and down the line of scrimmage. The player that he has become in the last season and a half makes his usage through his first two seasons at Texas all the more criminal. Shame on you, Gene Chizik, Larry Mac Duff, and Duane Akina.

Sam Acho's play on the other side deserves plaudits as well -- he has made the jump predicted in his first season lagging heavy snaps. Then there's the interior of the line, supposedly a major weakness. Remember that? Seems so long ago, doesn't it, since we were all wringing our hands about the defensive tackle position? Lamarr Houston has been unbelievable and Ben Alexander continues to play extremely well in his last season on the 40 Acres. Kheeston Randall has held his own, but now has at least three roughing the passer penalties on the season and that needs to stop. Like, yesterday. Oscar Giles and Mike Tolleson both deserve a raise after the job they have done with this group. Phenomenal.

Tracking: special teams. The special teams may not have scored a touchdown on Saturday, but they sure worked hard at it. Deon Beasley's forced fumble along the sideline nearly led to a scoop and score by Malcolm Williams, but I still have no idea how the officials ended up determining that it was Texas ball at the OU 18. As mentioned below, the field goal kicking was perfect from Hunter Lawrence and the rubgy punt was much more effective this week from Justin Tucker, who did not kick the ball left-footed during the game.

Of his eight punts on the day, Tucker put three inside the Oklahoma 20 yardline and averaged 45 yards per attempt, including one 60-yarder. The concern is that he's having trouble consistently getting the ball to fall in front of opponents to get that good roll he consistently got last season, which creates another problem -- with the low, line-drive nature of the punts, it's easy to out-kick the coverage, especially if the punt travels 40 or more yards in the air. That precise scenario allowed Dominique Franks to return a punt 30 yards to midfield. After a week of evaluating whether to stick with the rugby punting or return to using John Gold, Brown clearly made the philosophical decision to stick with Tucker and that simply may be the way that Texas continues to punt in the future.

The return game was not as effective as it has been, with Shipley picking up negative yardage on his two punt returns and DJ Monroe failing to break off any long plays on his three returns. On the positive side, Antwan Cobb returned a sky kick 18 yards and Monroe was effective, averaging 25 yards a return, certainly enough to give the Longhorns the good field position they enjoyed for most of the day.

The Sooners made the smart decision to block Marquise Goodwin when punting, but Aaron Williams came free on the edge and nearly blocked the first attempt of the day. Good to see him return to action in that capacity. On the other side, the Longhorns covered kicks as well as they have this season, holding Mossis Madu to only 21 yards per return on the day.

Overall, it's clear that the Sooners have worked hard in the last year to shore up their kick coverage and did a passable job by not allowing any long returns by Jordan Shipley or DJ Monroe. However, it's equally clear that Texas will continue to win the special teams phase of the game if the Longhorns can continue to cover kicks and get good production of Justin Tucker rugby punting. And it should be a major relief to Texas fans that Hunter Lawrence proved himself so capable on such a pick stage. Way to go, kicker.

Randomness. Let's do this bullet-style.

The game plan running the football was excellent against Oklahoma with some actual misdirection and using DJ Monroe in motion on the jet sweep. Kudos to the coaching staff. The plan in the passing game? Not so much.
Recently, PB asked me about where I would rank this Texas defense and after that performance against Oklahoma, it has to rank right up there with 2005, but this team even seems to have a few more playmakers on it. Another performance like that against Missouri and I might be inclined to put them in front of that excellent 2005 unit.
Fozzy Whittaker won the Hard Hat award this week after crashing into Thomas following a personal foul committed by Oklahoma. Mack Brown said that the team had a good laugh about that at the meeting.
How clutch was Hunter Lawrence? Anyone who has watched teams like South Florida over the years knows that field goals of over 40 yards are far from gimmes in the college game and Lawrence nailed identical 42-yarders. You can bet that Bobby Petrino would have sacrificed one of his children to have someone that consistent against Florida this weekend.
Blake Gideon missed six tackles by himself against Oklahoma. Christian Scott let his team down terribly by failing to remain eligible and I wonder how his teammates will accept him back next season, assuming that he makes progress academically -- will it be hard for them to trust someone who left them hanging with his own selfishness?
Why has the offensive line been such a disaster in the first half of so many games, only to respond with sometimes-dominant performances in the second half? I love the ability to finish, but why the consistently poor play early?
You may have heard rumors about OU still sucking. Absolutely true.

Morning Coffee Is Still Irritated and OU Still Sucks

GhostofBigRoy — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:44:50 -0000

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Flavor of the Week at running back: Fozzy Whittaker. Given the performance of the Texas running backs on Saturday, it might make sense to put this feature to rest for the week. Although, as Scipio Tex would remind us all, the running backs aren't the problem with the Texas running game.

Part of the problem is that the two running backs who received most of the carries against Colorado have little in the way of tools to make something out of nothing. There is at least one running back on the team, however, who does have the ability to make the most out of broken plays and has the vision and quickness to find the cutback lanes -- the Mythical Fozzy creature his own self. Last week, I wasn't really drinking the Kool-Aid along with PB about Fozzy, but I'm starting to re-assess a little bit after the cutback run for a touchdown on Saturday on his only carry. At 12 yards, it was more than twice as long as the longest runs by Cody Johnson and Vondrell McGee of five yards.

The question is, why did it take so long for him to get his first carry after McGee and Johnson were so clearly ineffective? It's not that he wasn't on the field prior to receiving that first opportunity running the football -- he played at least 10 plays on offense prior to that, several times lined up at wide receiver. He's been healthy for two weeks, but he could take a helmet to a knee in practice and then could find himself out again extremely easily. It's happened three times already in barely more than a year. Davis would be well served by using him more when he's available.

It's not clear how much McCoy trusts him in the passing game, but he is known as one of the better receivers at the position on the Longhorn team, so it's not like he's a liability in that aspect of the game. Picking up blitzes has supposedly been a problem for him at his size, but he definitely looks jacked this year and as able to handle it physically as he ever has. It's something the coaches see in practice, so it's hard to speculate on.

Since McGee and Newton may be out for the Oklahoma game this weekend, could this be the time for the Mythical Fozzy creature to break out and take on legendary status? Coul he earn repeat status as the Flavor of the Week, an unheard of honor?

Bipolar special teams return. Much like the Wyoming game, the special teams were both good and bad on Saturday. First, the bad. The kickoff coverage is increasingly becoming worrisome and Justin Tucker isn't helping much by failing to get the ball into the end zone when given the opportunity, but the major issue is the coverage, which allowed kick returns of 34 and 48 yards against Colorado, the latter of which by Darrell Scott was way too easy, as he just ran up the sideline unobstructed until he was tackled without ever having to change direction. For the game, Colorado averaged 24 yards per return, a number brought down by returns on sky kicks by a linebacker and the fullback. Texas now ranks 75th in the country, behind Ball State, Central Michigan, and Florida Atlantic. As much as Mack Brown wants to talk about how difficult it is to cover kicks, there are still 74 teams in the country that do it better than Texas, which is inexcusable given that Brown allows Duane Akina to select any player on the roster besides Colt McCoy to use on special teams.

One of the other bad aspects of special teams was the work by Justin Tucker with his rugby punt. His attempt with the right foot was fine, as it went for 40 yards, but the second kick, from the Texas 32 no less, was a bit of a shank and only traveled 25 yards before going out of bounds. It was difficult to tell exactly what happened on the play, but there was a bit of pressure and he may simply have been trying to be too fine with it and put it right down the sideline. His second left-footed attempt went for 45 yards, with the only potential issue with it being that he may have kicked it too far, as the Colorado return man was able to field it on the fly. The third attempt presented the biggest issue, however, as Tucker really shanked it out of bounds only five yards past the line of scrimmage.

The bottom line is that it's great that he can kick with both feet, but if it happens again, then the coaching staff needs to seriously re-evaluating using the left-footed punts, which means they should really evaluate the use of the rugby punt at all, since teams can now hit the punters outside the tackle box and can also use two return men to make it less effective if Tucker only kicks right footed.

It appears that the coaching staff did re-evaluate this weekend, as John Gold is now listed first with an 'or' on the new depth chart. The coaching staff shouldn't forget that Gold is an excellent punter in his own right and it probably makes more sense to use him when Texas is in their own territory because he has the ability to kick it 50 or more yards.

The final bad aspect was the blocked field goal, clearly the fault of Ahmard Howard, as described here. It's likely his first year on the unit, so he may not have realized how important it was with the ball on the left hash to block the edge rusher, but it should be an easy fix in practice this week and shouldn't happen again.

With the bad out of the way, there were some excellent aspects to the special teams play once again this week. The Longhorns brought pressure on three punts by Colorado, with Marquise Goodwin finally getting his hands on the third punt early in the third quarter and after Ben Wells scooped it up and took it three yards for the touchdown, Texas took a 17-14 lead that it would not relinquish. Give credit to Duane Akina for using Goodwin on the unit -- the remarkable thing about it was that Goodwin came unblocked on two prior punts and nearly blocked them, but Colorado never adjusted and tried to block the guy who was clearly the fastest player on the field. Expect OU to make that adjustment next week.

Of course, the punt block can't be on all the time, especially with a returner like Jordan Shipley back there. Impressively, Goodwin did just as well blocking, according to Brown:

For him [Akina] to be able to take a guy like Marquise Goodwin, who is a freshman, who has not played defense, who was not around in the spring, not around in the summer, and to have him be part of two great plays Saturday, one, blocking the punt, but number two, he had the best block on Jordan's punt return because he took his guy, he knocked him to the ground, and as the guy got up, he stays on him. If you go back and review that, it is one of the great plays of the year, and I am really really happy for Marquise because he is getting involved in the kicking game in a lot of ways.

Blake Gideon also threw a nice block on the play to help Jordan Shipley return the punt for a touchdown, taking it back 74 yards, by far the longest of his three career punt returns for touchdowns. It also made four out of five games that Texas has scored a touchdown on special teams.

It did not appear likely last week, but Shipley is now back with Monroe on kick returns and will will get some chances against Oklahoma, particularly since Colorado kicked away from Monroe with the exception of a ball kicked into the end zone and most teams will probably follow that formula for the rest of the season. Two returns for 38 yards is far from exceptional, but it's unlikely that anyone needs to be reminded about what happened last year in the Cotton Bowl with Shipley. Brown mentioned that there was a little bit of confusion on Saturday, with Monroe trailing Shipley on one of the returns, so they should continue to get a better feel for each other as they work in practice this week and have more opportunities in the game against Oklahoma.

Tracking: playmaking defense. For the third game in a row, the Longhorns brought their playmaking ability on defense, as Earl Thomas finally got the pick six that seems to have been coming with him ever since he jumped a route in the spring game and took it to the house. Midway through the third quarter, Shipley had failed to haul in a pass from McCoy and it turned into an interception deep in Texas territory. Reading Cody Hawkins all the way, Thomas jumped in front of the pass and went 92 yards untouched to stretch the Texas lead to 24-14.

For the second game in a row, Blake Gideon got in on the action, intercepting the second pass of his career deep down the middle with an extremely athletic catch, battling the receiver for the football, then managing to secure it after it hit his stomach as he fell. His limitations are still painfully apparent, especially on the first CU touchdown when he was too late to react to the throw and failed to make a play on the ball when he got there, as well as taking three bad angles and completely whiffing on two tackles. Gideon probably simply is who he is at this point, but he's going to need to consistently force turnovers to help the team because he's a liability tackling in the open field, a huge problem for a free safety -- and that's a massive understatement.

On the negative side, Roddrick Muckelroy missed a sure interception, as Cody Hawkins pretty much threw him the ball and all he had to do was jump a little bit and bring it in, about the easiest interception a linebacker will ever get. After the play, it occurred to me that Muckelroy hasn't forced many turnovers at Texas and looking back through his stats, that has been the case. Only in 2007 did Muckelroy make an interception or force any fumbles, hauling in one of the former and causing two of the latter. As excellent as he has been at Texas, it's clear that he's just not going to cause many turnovers and Brown specifically mentioned the lack of a forced fumble on Saturday as distressing.

All of the defense deserves a great deal of credit for another dominating performance, but several players deserve individual recognition. Despite a shaky start to the season, Chykie Brown has settled down and played excellently with the exception of several plays against Texas Tech, allowing only one completed pass against Colorado before immediately tackling the offensive player. Opposite Brown, Curtis Brown only allowed two completed passes on the night, both of which were for minimal gains.

On the defensive line, Ben Alexander also had an exceptional game, registering five tackles, including splitting a double team on one play before making the tackle at the line of scrimmage. Simply calling him a space eater at this point may be selling him short. The two starting defensive ends also had strong performances, as Sergio Kindle made seven tackles, including two behind the line of scrimmage. So much more than just a speed rusher, Kindle almost never takes himself upfield out of plays and continues to read and react to plays with incredible speed and accuracy. After doing so, he gets to the football with alacrity and evil intentions and finishes plays.

On the other end of the line of scrimmage, Sam Acho had another strong effort, with three of his five tackles going for loss and a sack as well. One of the tackles for loss came as Rodney Stewart escaped from a group of Longhorn tacklers and reversed field, nearly breaking free for a big gain, except that Acho used his speed to get a hand on Stewart's foot, just enough to get him down for an 11-yard loss.

Time for replacements. James Kirkendoll had a poor game Saturday. He was terrible in the blocking game, picking up a penalty for holding that shouldn't have been called, but resulted from him whiffing on a block, dropped a pass, and cost the Longhorns a touchdown because he went the wrong direction on an option route. At the flanker position, John Chiles has not shown an ability to make plays besides in the screen game. Over at Barking Carnival ~~Trips Right~~ EyesofTX was even more critical in his recap:

I have never witnessed so much pouting, loafing and general cluelessness from a set of WRs than I saw last night. I'm not going call anyone out by name, but a couple of guys whose numbers correspond to the name of a popular chain of convenience stores need to pull their heads out of their asses pretty quick, of their lack of effort is going to cost this team down the road. And seriously, a physical freak like Malcolm Williams can't get on the field for more than a handful of plays when the guys ahead of him are pulling this kind of nonsense? What are the criteria for determining who plays and who doesn't on this team? They're obviously not performance based.

Even after re-watching the game looking for specific instances to support his claim, I'm not sure that I saw the same thing. The bottom line, however, is that the performance between the whistles was not good enough. Whatever problems he may have catching the football, Malcolm Williams can block and would help the running game in the WildHorn or on any other outside running plays.

Marquise Goodwin may also receive more playing time in an attempt to feature his incredible speed more prominently -- he's listed as the co-starter at the sub-B position this week, although he probably won't have much more success blocking there than Kirkendoll. Something to watch though is that Chiles is now listed as the co-starter at that position, while Kirkendoll has moved out to flanker. It could be for blocking purposes, but it might be that the Longhorns are trying to get Kirkendoll more time at the position that he played for most of last season and at which he might feel more comfortable. Beyond those thoughts, it's hard to see how the changes will impact what happens at the Cotton Bowl this weekend, but it is safe to say the coaches weren't happy with what they saw on Saturday from the two receiver positions other than Shipley.

Tracking: the WildHorn. After spending an inordinate amount of time last week hyper-analyzing the formation, it's only fitting that I talk about it some more this week. Most fans are frustrated with the formation and probably about ready to ditch it after two weeks of poor results with it and ~~Trips Right~~ Eyes surely fits into that category:

The Wild Horn, or as we will refer to it from here on out in the GBU for no apparent reason, the Crazy Ivan. We continue to just throw away downs on this thing, and the only apparent reason for doing this is to placate #7. Isn't it kind of time to quit worrying about placating #7, given that his insistence upon keeping the ball each and every time this play is run robs it of any smidgen of hope of distracting or fooling the opposing defense? This play is worthless, it is a waste of downs and energy. It destroys whatever continuity this offense has managed to accumulate, and every time #7 keeps the ball and fails to produce any yardage, he goes into a sulk for several plays afterwards. Stop the damn insanity, please.

Yes, the performance has been disappointing, but ~~Trips~~ Eyes misses several key points in his "hard-hitting" and "in-depth" analysis. The main point above is that the WildHorn is an attempt to "placate" Chiles and that he always keeps the ball. While I can't speak to what happens behind the schemes, I personally can't see him sulking and he has made the correct read on each counter read play -- the problem is that defenses are intentionally taking away the outside to keep Chies inside where they have more defenders to deal with him.

On the only counter read play run against Colorado, the defensive end went hard upfield and another defender scraped behind him to make it an easy read for Chiles. No selfishness on that play and it didn't work because Adam Ulatoski failed to come up into the hole to block the linebacker who eventually made the play while Charlie Tanner did his falling-down act on the play. It may have been an attempt to block someone -- the BON investigative team is now looking into it. So far, the two pulling linemen have not been successful getting blocks after pulling, so the power play makes so much more sense.

Besides the obvious lack of success, the most disappointing aspect of the WildHorn is that the only new wrinkle this week was the WildHorn version of the aforementioned power play. Yes, it's a play that they need to run, but there are several problems with it, One, there's no compliment to the play -- the outside run Dan Lee calls the stealer. Two, if the Longhorns want a lead blocker, take out McCoy, whose chief concern is running out of bounds as quickly as possible on the WildHorn plays and put in another blocker like Antwan Cobb or my personal choice, Barrett Matthews, a kid who has a big-time nasty streak in the blocking game. Two, the play needs motion to make it is as effective as it can be. With that being said, the benefit of the power play is that the pulling player actually heads into the hole to ostensibly block a defender, rather than falling down on the perimeter and generally being of little use.

The other problem is the complete lack of commitment to the play. Greg Davis told color guy Todd Blackledge that the Longhorns want to use the formation 6-7 times a day. Seriously? Was he just lying or does he really intend to do that? Actually doing it has been a complete failure. Through three games, the Longhorns have only used the formation nine times, far short of Davis' supposed desires. In the Wildcat series, some plays won't work at times, but there is always an easy solution -- take what the defense is giving you. Having already missed the window of opportunity for installing the Wildcat series, its extremely unlikely that it will happen and after two failed plays against Oklahoma, the coaches will probably abandon it without every really committing to it. Probably without ever having Chiles throw a pass. And the running game will continue to struggle. And people will wonder about solutions. And it will end up being a wasted opportunity by the coaching staff.

After the Q package, is it any surprise that the WildHorn has been approached in a completely clueless manner with no understanding of what makes the Wildcat work? The answer to that would be a resounding no.

Now let me go bang my head against the wall for 10 straight minutes so I can feel better.

It's 8:45 in Austin and the good news is that at least OU still sucks.

Words From Mack...

GhostofBigRoy — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:20:32 -0000

More photos » by Harry Cabluck - AP

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...And, Rashad Bobino is the Most Successful Ball Carrier in Texas History?

No, I haven't gone crazy. You just really have to click and read after the jump on this one...It's a real leap.

Talkin' special teams: kickoff returns. The two kickoff returns for touchdowns by DJ Monroe and Jordan Shipley's punt return against Texas Tech have brought a lot of attention to Texas special teams, prompting a nearly-weekl spot in my Tuesday Morning Coffee post. That attention, in turn, has brought up concerns about the punt protection against Wyoming and kickoff coverage the last several weeks. On Wednesday, Mack Brown addressed the special teams units:

We are also trying to figure out how we keep speed on the field for the kicking teams. We are proud of our punt return team. We are proud of what D.J. [Monroe] has been able to accomplish with our kickoff return team, but we need to get Marquise [Goodwin] in there and do a better job of getting him more looks because there was a poor decision between he and Eddie Jones where we had a ball hit the ground the other day, which could have cost us in a much tighter ball game.

To play to which Brown referred occurred coming out of halftime for UTEP's second kick off and first after Monroe's touchdown return -- to keep the ball away from Monroe, UTEP kicked high and short to Goodwin's side of the field and Eddie Jones took a good long look at it before finally letting it go over his head, but Goodwin, watching Jones, hadn't gotten in position to catch the football and had to retreat to inside the five yardline to retrieve the live ball, picking it up and advancing it only three yards before being tackled viciously around the neck. Yeah, not so good there and the Longhorns no doubt spent a lot of time working with Goodwin fielding that play this week and deciding if they want to put Malcolm Williams back with Monroe again -- Williams is averaging 30 yards on his three kickoff returns and has more collegiate game experience fielding kicks.

However, Brown wants to get as much speed on the field as possible but knows not every speedster can return kicks, meaning that Goodwin will indeed get a long look before the Colorado game:

You don't know [who is good at it], it's like who can block kicks. You have to try them. Some fast guys don't get it, they'll run into piles, they're not patient, but D.J. [Monroe] has a great knack for doing it and we hope Marquise [Goodwin] does the same. We don't know that yet. He hasn't done it long enough for us to find out for sure and that's something that we really have to find out in the next 10 days.

After relating the story of a sky kick gone wrong against Ted Ginn and Ohio State, Brown returned to the busted return with Goodwin and Jones:

The other day I thought we had the perfect situation for Marquise because if Eddie [Jones] goes up (to block) and Marquise catches it, that's at the 30-yard line and we've got room, so we are working so hard right now.

Brown also noted that the poor return on that play significantly brought down the team average on kickoff returns and it would increase the average by about four yards per kick, but still keep the Longhorns second in the country behind Stanford, the only team in the country with three kickoff returns for touchdowns this season.

The Shipley conundrum. Or, the Cosby conundrum, no redux. As for seeing Jordan Shipley back returning kicks and reprising his starring role from the Cotton Bowl last season, Brown said, "Not so fast, my friends:"

We know Jordan can do it, so that's easy. The thing that we have to do, we felt like we lost Quan (Cosby) for the Texas Tech game last year and we felt like it was because we had him doing too many things. Jordan is playing the position that Quan played last year, and he's touching the ball 10, 11 times a game outside of the kicking game...But we do feel like that we've got to be smart with Jordan because he's playing so well and if we can get somebody else to help D.J. on kickoff returns, we'd rather not have Jordan in there.

Were Monroe not having such unqualified success at the position, there might be more talk about needing Shipley's explosiveness at the position, but those two touchdown returns have silenced any talk in that direction. As Brown said, there's no reason to risk injury to Shipley and not learn from a prior mistake. Shipley will take more than enough hits as it is, even on punt returns, as evidenced Saturday by an illegal hit before the ball arrived by Max Stephenson II, who then promptly picked off McCoy's subsequent pass and took it to the house.

Talkin' special teams: kickoff coverage. On Tuesday I wondered about the squib kicks Texas employed for much of the game and Brown provided an explanation:

We experimented a lot the other day in kickoff coverage because kickoff coverage with the rule change is one of the more difficult things right now for college football. We are trying to look at squibs. We are looking at sky kicks. We are trying not to kick the ball to the same place two times in a row because if you do and the kickoff return team gets a beat on your coverage, then that is a very, very dangerous thing to have happen during a ballgame.

It makes sense to work on covering different styles of kicks in a game situation given the historical struggles by the Longhorns in that department and practicing those different kicks helps the Texas kickoff return team work against sky kicks and squibs after the miscommunication by Goodwin and Jones. In terms of facing dangerous return teams, however, Brown may be looking ahead to Florida, ranked fourth nationally in that department. The teams the Longhorns will face during the tough three-game stretch? Missouri is the highest ranked at no. 60, while Oklahoma and Oklahoma State bring up the pack at numbers 87 and 112, not so respectively. The highest-ranked team Texas will face during the regular season is already in the rear-view mirror -- the good Pirates of the Red Raider at 29th in the country.

As much as everyone would like to see Justin Tucker kick the ball out of bounds every time, even against UTEP, that's just not a reality:

When the game got out of control, we really just wanted to try stuff. I know fans get frustrated sometimes with things that come up in a ballgame that's a blow out, but it's really a learning experience for us. We can experiment, kick it around, and we find out that a squib kick that's kicked properly is really hard to pick up and it was hard for them to pick it up. They averaged only 19 yards per return, but we still had a couple that were out to the 40 and that's what we're trying to keep from happening. If you could kick it out every time, you would.

The nature of the squib kicks makes the raw field position numbers look bad for the coverage teams against UTEP, but it may be a strategy that the Longhorns need to employ this season, most likely against Florida if both teams make it through the season unscathed.

Talkin' special teams: punts and fakes. Punt coverage hasn't been a problem, but the Longhorns could be looking at developing their ability to run fakes out of their punt formation:

We are look at punting with our left foot, with our right foot, we are looking at what fakes are available because this is a relatively new thing for us and for college football. Those are all things that we are trying to look at and figure out.

After Tucker's disastrous decision, the odds might seem small that Tucker would try another fake this season, but I think Texas has to look at it and against put some hope in Tucker's decision-making abilities in the regard. The other aspect to fakes in the punting game involves Antwan Cobb's position as the personal protector on the punt protection unit, the position Rashad Bobino occupied throughout his entire career at Texas and the position at which he may in fact have provided his most significant contributions to the team.

Gratuitous Bobino digression. It was Bobino who carried the ball on fakes six times for 28 yards in his career, each time for a first down:

Two yards on 4th and 2 against Ohio State to keep a touchdown-scoring drive alive out of halftime last season.
Seven yards for a first down in the third quarter of a close 10-7 game against Baylor in 2007. The Longhorns scored a touchdown and helped stave off the incredible ignominy of losing to friggin' Baylor in football -- the type of thing that earns walking papers for Texas head football coaches.
Three yards for a first down on 4th and 1 early in the game against Arizona State in the Holiday Bowl. Colt McCoy ran for a touchdown on that drive to put the Longhorns up three touchdowns in the second quarter.
Six yards for a first down in the second quarter against North Texas in Colt McCoy's first game. Texas scored a touchdown on that drive.
Five yards for a first down against Oklahoma State up 3-0 in the second quarter in Stillwater. The Longhorns scored a touchdown on that drive and never looked back in the only lopsided and relatively boring game recently in that series.
Six yards for a first down against Texas A&M his freshman season to help the Longhorns score a critical touchdown to take a 28-22 lead in the closest game of the national championship season.

So not only did Bobino pick up a first down each time he carried the football, but the Longhorns scored a touchdown on every single one of the drives that he kept alive, several times providing a turning point in close games. Let me amend my previous statement by saying that Rashad Bobino's most significant contributions by far came in picking up first downs in big situations to help win football games. Yes, Rashad Bobino actually helped win some football games at Texas. I know I now find myself glad that I spent 25 minutes researching each of those runs. Big ups, Rashad -- my feelings of appreciation for you may be newfound, but they are heartfelt. In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb here and call him the most successful ball carrier in the history of Texas football -- what other back can claim a first down on each carry and that each drive in which he participated ended in a touchdown? None, I suspect.

Back to special teams. In other words, Cobb has big shoes to fill at that position and didn't get off to a great start by allowing one blocked kick and nearly another. If the Longhorns did to pick up a big first down this season and want to do so with a fake punt, will Cobb be able to execute the play with Bobino's consistency and results?

Running back situation still fluid. When Vondrell McGee rushed for over 100 yards against UTEP, he not only earned the coveted honor of Flavor of the Week at running back, he also threw a wrench into Mack Brown's plan of narrowing the running back rotation, especially with the Mythical Fozzy Creature making the most of a rare appearance on the field. Of course, the offensive line also didn't help out Tre' Newton much and neither did a sore neck, as Nate's son picked up only 25 yards on nine carries.

So what's new with Fozzy and the guys, Mack?

[Fozzy]'s only had the one game, but he's doing well. He came back and he has confidence now, so we feel like he's right back in the mix. Cody Johnson looked really good on the one carry he had Saturday for a touchdown and he's at 242 pounds and 13 percent body fat, so he's really gotten in great shape and we're back to having a good mix of four guys there to compete. What we think we will do is we'll put the guys in the game and if a guy gets a hot hand like Vondrell [McGee] did Saturday, we'll leave him in.

In other words, back to square one, especially the comment about Johnson, who appeared to have been relegated to short-yardage duties after the Wyoming game. What, you expected resolution here?

Defensive tackles playing well. Neurotic Texas fans have moved their attention away from the defensive tackle situation only four games into the season, which is good news all around. Brown weighed in on their performance:

Right now, it's really strong. We still need to continue to develop depth at defensive tackle, but we're really proud of Ben Alexander, Kheeston Randall and Lamarr Houston. Lamarr is playing at such a higher level than ever before, Kheeston is so much improved from last year, and Ben's a five-year senior and it's time for him to play. He's excited about playing every down. So, those three guys have given us a good base to start from. We've been able to work Sam Acho in there some and Sam's improved so much and Eddie Jones now. He was concerned a little bit about his shoulder the first couple of weeks, but the last two weeks, he's played lights out. Then you continue to try and get the young guys like Calvin Howell to come on, but we're in better shape right now than we thought we'd be at this time.

The extra practice will undoubtedly benefit the young players, as did the game against UTEP. The idea, no doubt, is for players like Howell, Acho, and Jones to get some more time against Colorado, with the two defensive ends perhaps even getter a look inside on running downs to see if they can do more than just rush the passer from that position.

Morning Coffee Enjoys This Week's New Flavor

GhostofBigRoy — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:00:21 -0000

More photos » by Eric Gay - AP

Congratulations, Vondrell McGee. You are the new Flavor of the Week. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

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Flavor of the Week at running back: Vondrell McGee. Four weeks, four different flavors at running back. Can it continue? Will the Mythical Fozzy Creature build on his strong second-half performance and first collegiate touchdown against UTEP to win the hearts of Longhorn fans for a whole week? Unfortunately, it will be almost two weeks before there is a definitive answer, but for the moment, Vondrell McGee holds a special place in the heart of all fickle Longhorn fans. There's also the bad news that the award will almost certainly have a repeat winner at some point this season. Boo.

After tweaking his ankle and losing his starting job to a more productive Tre' Newton, McGee responded against a UTEP defense that had basically given up with the first 100-yard rushing game of his career, a number McGee reached only carrying the ball eight times. The highlight was a 51-yard run during the first Texas possession after halftime and it was really a perfect example of how little the individual running back matters in the scheme, as the two guards, Huey and Tanner, opened up a gaping hole in the UTEP defense, while David Snow got to the second level to block a linebacker and all McGee had to do was run through it and then try to wring whatever speed he could get out of his still-injured ankle. He undoubtedly took a great deal of grief from his teammate for being caught from behind, but then breakaway speed has never been on of his attributes.

Perhaps more heartening was his 23-yard run for a touchdown in the second quarter on a speed option, as he used his strength to break a tackle near the end zone. It might be an effective play for McGee if he can take the corner consistently, as he doesn't have to read a hole on the play.

While a specific running back may not win the job, it never hurts to have depth at the position and McGee made a strong case that he can still help the team this season and intends to do so. He'll have another week to get his ankle healthy and using him in the second half of games against tired defenses may be the perfect strategy to help him return to his high school roots of running over and through opponents.

Garrett Gilbert watch. One of the storylines going into the game surrounded getting some snaps for Garrett Gilbert after he only played one series each against Wyoming and Louisiana-Monroe. The Longhorns scored early and often to put the game out of reach essentially by the end of the first quarter, allowing Gilbert three series in the second half, two of which resulted in rushing touchdowns.

Just like both previous appearances, Gilbert looked poised in the pocket and delivered the ball with accuracy, completing five of six passes for 49 yards, leaving him at 11 of 14 on the season -- a completion percentage of nearly 80%. Gilbert mostly owes the high completion percentage to the playcalling, as Greg Davis has kept the throws pretty easy for him, but the important thing is that Gilbert is executing in game situations.

It's increasingly apparent that Gilbert and Marquise Goodwin, despite their limited time together, really have something going on. In fact, I think that they should live together next year, just because it would provide such a unique, heartwarming story for Texas fans to listen to during every single broadcast for years on end. Doesn't that sound fun? On his first drive of the day, Gilbert threw to Goodwin four times, completing every pass for 38 yards. Given Goodwin's speed and Gilbert's predilection for looking in his direction, it's probably just a matter of time until the true freshman breaks a long play for a touchdown late in a game.

The connection with DeSean Hales? Not looking quite as strong, as two of Gilbert's three incompletions have come on passes targeting Hales, who is still looking for his first collegiate reception.

Tracking: special teams. As indicated in Sunday's By The Numbers post, DJ Monroe is now the first Texas player to ever return two kicks for touchdowns, not only in a season, but in a career. A career that for Monroe is only four games old. Yeah, he's that good, that fast, that historically remarkable and judging by the first four games, that number isn't likely to remain at two for very long. If teams decide to start kicking away from Monroe, the coaching staff already has a solution -- on Saturday Marquise Goodwin was back with Monroe to return kicks, putting the team's two fastest players on the field at the same time.

Jordan Shipley looks like he intends on returning punts for the rest of the season with several strong efforts against UTEP a week after his game-changing return against Tech. On the day, he gained 73 yards on his three returns, with a 52-yard return that gave the Longhorns a short field and another 20 yarder for good measure -- his current average of just more than 16 yards per return is good for 14th in the country. A natural punt returner, Shipley has excellent vision, as well as an understanding of where his blockers will be, and, of course, the quickness to blow up some angles.

Hunter Lawrence did miss an extra point off the upright on Saturday and nearly knocked through a 54-yard goal that hit the crossbar before falling harmlessly into the end zone. So a bit of a mixed bag for him and the missed extra point may heat up the competition for placekicking duties with Ryan Bailey, a competition that was extremely close throughout fall practice. The punting game was fine, as Justin Tucker just barely got a rugby kick inside the 20 yardline, but kicked it out of bounds and probably should have gotten it inside the 10. John Gold punted for the first time since the coverage problems against Wyoming and had a 39-yard punt that went out of bounds, so not the best effort from him, so apparently Antwan Cobb fixed his protection problem.

The real area of concern though is kickoff coverage. It's not to the point where the Longhorns look like they're about to have one taken to the house, but they do rank 64th in the country, behind such stalwarts as Western Kentucky, Marshall, and Tulane. Justin Tucker sent the first two kicks into the end zone for touchbacks and kicked another to the goalline, but after that the coaches starting calling for squib kicks that mostly resulted in decent field position for UTEP. It's hard to say why exactly the coaches changed philosophy in the middle of the game -- perhaps they saw a coverage problem or just plain didn't want to allow for any big plays, but it's something to watch moving forward.

Oh yeah, and Malcolm Williams absolutely waxed the UTEP punter after the long snapper sent the ball over his head and into the end zone. The definition of de-cleated, actually. Good stuff.

Tracking: playmaking defense. For the second week in a row, Texas excelled at creating turnovers, forcing three fumbles and hauling in four interceptoins. Through four games, the Longhorns have forced 12 turnovers after forcing only 16 all of last season, while the six interceptions ties the six through all of last season. Texas also sacked UTEP quarterbacks four times on Saturday, including the sack and forced fumble on the game's third play from scrimmage. In other words, this defense is much, much improved as forcing turnovers.

Earl Thomas had two interceptions on Saturday, tying his total from all of last season, and almost took the second one back for a touchdown, but stepped out of bounds while trying to run down the sideline. The pick six is probably going to happen for him sooner rather than later. Blake Gideon set off the most biggest and most sincere celebration along the sidelines in some time with his first career interception and said after the game that it took a huge weight off of his shoulders. Ben Wells also joined the party, recording his first career interception as well, and, as Scipio Tex noted, helping create a much better memory for Texas fans:

Ben Wells! Thank you for giving me a mental image beyond a Baylor WR streaking by you.

Indeed.

The biggest negative? Somehow Sam Acho didn't manage to recover a fumble in the game for the first time this season. The guy really let all his fans and teammates down and the BON crack investigative team will start trying to figure out what in the heck is wrong with him during the off week. The leg whip sack, though? That was pretty sweet. When you're Sam Acho, apparently it's not illegal. Was that a Mountain West officiating crew on Saturday? Naw, they didn't miss nearly enough calls to be from that conference.

Randomness, bullet style. I like bullets. Do you like bullets? Bullets are good.

The Longhorns lined up in a bunch formation several times, which was highly unusual, and threw screens both times. It's a good way to get Marquise Goodwin the ball, but Greg Davis is going to have to break tendency for those plays to work against better teams.
Speaking of Goodwin, the Longhorns need to throw him one of those flanker screens they've been running for John Chiles. I think good things would result.
Eddie Jones is playing like a man possessed. Or like someone who has almost had their career ended by injuries. Really nice to see him healthy and playing well -- hopefully he can sustain it for the rest of the year.
Apparently Trevor Walker is the fourth-string quarterback. But where was John Paul Floyd? It's gotta be rough to be the only quarterback on the roster not to get into the game on Saturday. He needs to get some game reps in case the four quarterbacks go down in front of him. I'm starting to panic here.
Did Jeremy Hills give way to Jamison Berryhill because of the fumble or was Mack Brown just worried that Hills would break another long run on the next drive and reach the dreaded number of 70 on the scoreboad? And watch out for that ball when you're around Brock Fitzhenry, Jeremy -- he's not-so-secretly a saboteur.
It was really hot in the stadium on Saturday. Like really, really hot.
Besides the interception, McCoy did a much better job of not staring down Jordan Shipley in the game.
McCoy also looked like he fixed whatever was causing him to sail his passes, looking extremely accurate on the day -- he completed 80% of his passes on the day and that number would have been over 90% had his receivers not dropped four passes. That's the McCoy we know and love.
Malcolm Williams dropped another pass. That's the bad news. The good news is that McCoy came back to Williams two plays later on fourth down and Williams hauled in the pass and turned upfield for a 12-yard gain.
Chykie Brown played his most consistent game of the season and seems to have dropped the "You Can't See Me" routine after the penalty in Laramie -- he's just wagging his finger now, Mutombo-style. (By the way, I just checked the spelling of "Mutombo" -- I was right, of course -- but found out that his full name is Dikembe Mutombo Mpolondo Mukamba Jean-Jacques Wamutombo. Which one isn't quite like the others?)
Nice to see Fozzy Whittaker show a little burst around the corner -- of the three running backs competing for serious carries, Whittaker is the fastest and ranks ahead of McGee in terms of versatility. I'd also like to note that I'm going to retire the Fragile Fozzy moniker until further notice. Like until he gets hurt again. Dammit, I was trying to be positive...

Morning Coffee Thinks the WildHorn Is No Q Package

GhostofBigRoy — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 12:00:45 -0000

More photos » by Harry Cabluck - AP

2 months ago: Texas wide receiver John Chiles, left, playing as quarterback, rushes for 34 yards on a quarterback-draw during the first quarter of their NCAA college football game against Texas Tech, Saturday, Sept. 19, 2009, in Austin, Texas. Tech defensive back LaRon Moore, right, pursues. (AP Photo/Harry Cabluck)

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Flavor of the Week at running back: John Chiles. After carrying the ball 20 times and finding the end zone for the second time in two weeks and landing himself atop the depth chart for the first time, Tre' Newton was a serious candidate to take this honor for the second week in a row. However, that's not how this things works. Fickle, remember?

That's why John Chiles lands in this spot for his cameo leading the WildHorn, the Texas answer to the Wildcat made famous at Arkansas by Darren McFadden and last season by the Miami Dolphins. It's the fad all across football at pretty much every level and the Longhorns are jumping aboard the bandwagon. On the incipient play of the formation, Chiles took a quarterback counter 33 yards and almost broke it the entire distance had he not taken a poor angle into a chasing defender. Trust your speed, Johnny C. The formation also produced a five-yard gain by DJ Monroe on a counter, a fumble on a poor snap by Chris Hall that Chiles should have handled anyway, and a completed reversempass to James Kirkendoll by Colt McCoy.

Mack Brown said on Monday that the formation is here to stay:

We want the ball in John's hands as much as we can get it. Every time he touches it in the running game in the past, he has made plays usually. Saturday night, I thought, he really jump started us offensively. He ran the quarterback counter and that was a read play and you have a 10.0 100-meter guy out there and you have John Chiles, who runs real fast at 200 pounds. It just gives you some extra weapons on the field. I thought the reverse pass was a good thought off of it, too. We'll continue to let part of the package grow and that's part of who we are because we will let Colt run it some, but it also takes the ball out of Colt's hands as a runner and lets John run, and we'll have some passes for John, too. We feel like that's better than the other package we had, so aptly named that it was dropped because John is doing more things that he is used to doing. Last year, we were trying to do things he was not used to.

Beergut questioned the difference between the WildHorn and the Q package and the last sentence provides Brown's thoughts on the matter. In the same post, I mentioned that I would like to see the Longhorns incorporate a jet sweep for DJ Monroe into the formation, a staple of the formation in Miami. Other options include Chiles throwing a pass to keep the defense honest, the zone read, and the speed option.

For a team still struggling at times in the running game, the WildHorn is the perfect formation to pick up yards on the ground, get the ball into the hands of playmakers, and put some serious pressure on the defense. Besides Kodi Burns at Auburn, there probably isn't another player in the country triggering the formation who is as much of a threat to pass the ball out of the Wildcat as John Chiles. Kudos to Greg Davis for using the formation and giving the offense a spark.

A "work in progress?" Coming into the season, there were questions about the running game, the tight ends, and the defensive tackles, but few people found themselves spending time worrying about whether the offense was going to be able to move the football. Overall yardage isn't a a particularly strong measure of success, but the 340 yards of total offense gained against Tech represented the lowest output in total yards since 2007 KSU game, one of the low water marks of the last several years.

Mack Brown called the offense a "work in progress" after the game on Saturdya, a surprise considering the expectations surrounding the unit coming into the season. Last week, the major story was the conversation Mack Brown had with McCoy about having more fun, hoping that would help alleviate the slow starts by the offense over the first two starts. Unfortunately, McCoy got hit by the flu this week, according to Brown:

Practice is important and he didn't practice Tuesday. He was out there but didn't practice. He got very little done Wednesday. I thought at halftime, he had the shakes just a little bit because he hadn't eaten. He didn't feel good, and he was weak. They gave him stuff, some energy to help him, and I thought he settled down and played better the second half. I don't know.

The health problems explain the first half against Texas Tech, but not the first half of the other two games. Part of the solution may be speeding up the tempo earlier in the game:

We changed the tempo in the second half the other night. We probably should have started with a faster tempo and that would have helped. The first drive was good, but then we just kept getting stopped because you look and you have one guy here, one guy there, so you just challenge everybody to do better and be more consistent.

A faster tempo earlier in the game might help, but McCoy is also part of the problem. He often focuses in on Jordan Shipley and misses other open receivers. At other times, his mechanics break down and the ball sails on him, the case with both of the interceptions on tipped balls against Texas Tech. Sure, Malcolm Williams could and probably should have caught the second interception, but there's a reason quarterbacks are taught to keep the ball low when throwing over the middle of the field. It's hard to tell what the problem is mechanically, but McCoy needs to work hard on staying on top of the football this week. Another problem is his footwork, as he failed to step into a pass in the first half last week.

If defenses are going to keep two safeties deep and only six men in the box, the Longhorns must run the football more often and more consistently. In football it's hard to get betters numbers than that. Another adjustment is to run more intermediate routes and routes up the middle of the field, especially if a linebacker isn't retreating to cover the seam. That's a role for Buckner to exploit, but the Longhorns haven't used him down the field consistently, often keeping him underneath as a screen threat or check down option.

Until McCoy rediscovers his accuracy and the offensive line blocks well enough to force another linebacker onto the field or a safety up closer to the line of scrimmage, the Longhorns will probably continue to struggle against two deep safeties and seven or eight players dropped into coverage. Can Greg Davis make the proper adjustments?

Playmaking defense makes an appearance. Through the first two games, it appeared that Texas hadn't made progress in their off season goal of forcing more turnovers. Earl Thomas and Blake Gideon dropped interceptions and Aaron Williams looked like the only player really trying to knock the ball out on defense. That all changed on Saturday. Well, mostly. Earl Thomas could have intercepted one or two more passes and Aaron Williams had one hit his hands.

However, there were positive signs. The Longhorns sacked Potts three times, pressured him 10 times and got 23 hits on the Tech quarterback. More importantly, Texas forced five fumbles, recovering two. Emmanuel Acho forced two of them, with Aaron Williams forcing another and Eddie Jones and Sergio Kindle both stripping the ball on sacks. The Longhorns should have recovered the fumble forced Jones had Alex Okafor simply fallen on the ball instead of scooping it up and trying to run in for the touchdown. Sam Acho would have. Earl Thomas intercepted a pass that he nearly returned for a touchdown, but replays showed that his knee hit the ground as he caught the football.

Interceptions may continue to be hard to come by as land as the defensive backs show a general inability to catch the football, but there is potential for growth there with the secondary still being remarkably young. More heartening is the playmaking of Aaron Williams and Emmanuel Acho -- those two players seem to have a real knack for knocking the ball loose and if there has been one truth revealed by the first three games, it's that Sam Acho will be around the football once it ends up on the ground.

Tracking: first half third down conversions. A major reason why the Longhorns struggled to move the ball in the first half was the inability to convert third downs for a second straight week. After going five for 17 against Wyoming, Texas only converted three of eight third downs in the first half against Texas Tech. The first failed third down came on the first possession after Adam Ulatoski got beat on a speed rush by a defensive tackle playing defensive end out of necessity. Think about that for a second. Not good. On the second failed third down, McCoy rolled to his left and airmailed a pass over the head of an open John Chiles on a 3rd and 3 -- it should have been an easy pitch and catch.

The third failed third down found McCoy's footwork breaking down on 3rd and 11 and missing Kirkendoll on his check down, but the play wouldn't have gotten close a first down anyway -- the real problem came on the play before on an ugly play that might have been a zone read as Bront Bird took down McCoy in the backfield for a six-yard loss after a gain of four yards on first down. If the play was a zone read, McCoy should have handed off the ball because Bird crashed hard into the backfield. Whatever the case, the play was a complete disaster and put the Longhorns in a tough situation on third down.

The fourth failed third down came mostly as a result of the Chiles fumble on first down in the WildHorn that put the Longhorns behind the chains. Chiles made up for it on second down with a screen pass that he turned into a 10-yard gain with a couple of nice cuts and a spin, but McCoy tried to find Shipley on third down even though he wasn't open and had the pass knocked down at the line of scrimmage.

On the last Texas drive of the first half, the Longhorns failed to convert a third down for the fifth time in the half. On 3rd and 5, the Extra Blocking Surface stayed in the game and caught a pass for three yards in the flat. He never had a chance to make the first down. An Extra Blocking Surface might help the running game (I'm not overly convinced of that, either), but on obvious passing plays like 3rd and 5, if EBS is going to stay in the game the Longhorns might as well just punt on third down and save themselves the trouble. And that's not a knock on Greg Smith as much as it's a knock on Greg Davis.

In analyzing all the failed third downs in the first half, it's really a smorgasbord of the failures of the offense at the current time. There's a missed block on the offensive line, courtesy of the left tackle, an overthrown pass by McCoy, bad footwork by McCoy, McCoy staring down Shipley, and the fan favorite, EBS. Just a little bit of everything there. A resumption of McCoy's normal accuracy would greatly help the offense on third down, as would McCoy going through his reads properly.

The bad news is that this team, without Quan Cosby, Chris Ogbonnaya, and Brandon Collins, just might not be as good on third down as last year and that means the running game in particular needs to step up and avoid plays that result in zero or negative yardage because McCoy completing 80% of his passes doesn't look like it's going to happen this season.

Tracking: special teams play. For the second year in a row, Jordan Shipley scored a touchdown on a punt return against Texas Tech. Fortunately for Texas fans, this punt return helped the Longhorns win the game instead of just get back into the game and counted for the only touchdown of the first half. Had Shipley not found the end zone on that play, which included great blocks by Ben Wells, Nolan Brewster, and Curtis Brown, the first half would have been an unmitigated disaster for the Texas offense, and, instead of playing comfortably with a two score lead for most of the second half, the Longhorns would have found themselves in a dog fight with the Red Raiders.

Last season, field position wasn't a big deal for the Longhorns, as it just meant the Longhorns would take more time off the clock and wear down the defense even more with a longer drive for a touchdown. This year, with the offense struggling at times, field position appears to be a much bigger factor, at least in the last two games. The Longhorns failed to score on all four drives that started inside their 30 yardline and scored only once in six such drives against Wyoming. To give proper credit to the Texas offense, three drives went for more than 70 yards and touchdowns against ULM, though the WarHawks are by far the worst team Texas has faced yet this season.

The point in all this is that DJ Monroe and Malcolm Williams become even more important returning kicks, along with Jordan Shipley returning punts, because field position may play a larger factor this year in determining whether the Longhorns score or not. Monroe averaged 33 yards per return against Tech and Williams averaged 29, so both players are putting the Longhorns in good position to start drives. Shipley averaged 22 yards per punt return against Tech, numbers aided greatly by his return for a touchdown.

The problems in the kicking game did not return this week, perhaps aided by the unconventional rugby-style punting Texas went with against Texas Tech, as John Gold did not attempt a punt in the game and Justin Tucker continued to be effective kicking with either foot, leading to three punts down inside the Tech 15 yardline. On kickoffs, Tucker hasn't been as impressive during the two games at home as Mack Brown seemed to indicate he was in fall practice, but the coverage has generally been solid, keeping Tech at their 27 yardline on kick offs. More touchbacks would nice, however, and save yards in the field position, but the Longhorns shouldn't be losing any phases of the kicking game very often.

Morning Coffee

GhostofBigRoy — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:00:26 -0000

More photos » by David Zalubowski - AP

Tre' Newton, Texas running back flavor of the week. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

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Wyoming defensive strategy helps slow Longhorns. Last week, Mack Brown talked in a press conference about how surprised the coaching staff was last season when teams kept on blitzing Colt McCoy and blitzing McCoy some more. Brown said that teams revealed concern over allowing McCoy to stand in the pocket and pick apart a zone defense. Wyoming might have seen that comment and decided to try a different game plan at times, rushing only three and dropping eight into coverage. Early in the game, McCoy and the Texas offense looked confused by the look as the Heisman contender often locked in on Jordan Shipley and couldn't find his roommate and long-time friend. Then, at other times, Wyoming did blitz McCoy and often left the Texas offensive line confused and struggling with their pass protection, leading to many occasions in the first half where McCoy had to scramble to try to make a play.

Greg Davis responded in the first half by putting in Greg Smith and going max protection at times. Wyoming responded by dropping eight into coverage once again and leaving McCoy with few options in the passing game. Part of that falls on Davis for becoming conservative when he needs to keep Dan Buckner on the field. At the same time, does Colt McCoy miss Brandon Collins a little bit as his hot receiver? It's certainly possible, especially considering how well Collins played late in the season.

In the second half, the Longhorns took advantage of a tired Cowboy defense that just didn't have the depth to play with Texas for more than 25-30 minutes. The concern moving forward is with the offensive line in pass protection, especially against blitzes. Opponents now have some footage of how to get to McCoy, just like BYU exposed weaknesses in Oklahoma's pass protection with delayed blitzes. Texas struggled against delayed blitzes last season as well and Davis and the offensive staff need to spend a lot of time this week working on correcting the problems or McCoy is going to take some big hits this season. Expect more teams to drop eight into coverage early in the game to try to keep McCoy from getting into a rhythm.

Running back flavor of the week: Tre' Newton. Before the start of the season, it was Vondrell McGee, supposedly more comfortable with the scheme. Last week, it was DJ Monroe after his strong performance running the football against the WarHawks. This week, it's Tre' Newton, the improbably small son of the former Cowboy offensive lineman.

Perhaps more so than DJ Monroe, who will remain a spot player for the conceivable future, Newton has a chance to not only earn the role as third-down back extraordinaire, but also earn 10 or more carries a game as the feature back. The reason is his versatility, which isn't exactly news, but hadn't truly been demonstrated on the field until Saturday. Even though Newton dropped one pass, he caught another that nearly converted a third-and-long situation and carried eight times for 62 yards and his first touchdown at Texas. Most impressively, he displayed excellent vision in hitting his creases quickly and at speed -- he looked supremely comfortable in the scheme. Furthermore, he blocked well, opening up a hole for Colt McCoy on a quarterback draw and throwing block downfield on Dan Buckner's third-down touchdown catch and run, while holding up well in pass protection.

Is he the answer to all of the problems in the running game? No, but he is a faster, seemingly more talented version of Chris Ogbonnaya and if he can continue to do the same things that OG did last year, hitting the hole hard, catching the ball out of the backfield, and blocking well, both in pass protection and on any draws Texas wants to run with McCoy, then it should be enough for the Longhorns to get to Pasadena and have an opportunity to win a national championship.

Bipolar special teams. After a blocked punt, another nearly blocked punt, a failed fake field goal, and a failed fake punt, it would be easy to conclude that the special teams were terrible against Wyoming. While there were undoubtedly bad, bad, bad moments, the special teams play ended up simply being bipolar.

Justin Tucker, when he wasn't making the unilateral decision to try to pick up a first down deep in Texas territory, was kicking balls out of the end zone in the thin air of Laramie, with only one returnable kick the whole game. He also debuted his left-footed rugby punt and delivered a 34-yarder inside the Wyoming ten yardline. DJ Monroe helped consolidate momentum at the start of the second half with a 41-yard return into Wyoming territory to give the offense a short field. Malcolm Williams had a 25-yard return and a 35-yard return, providing a nice element of physicality to the return game, as well as providing his steady, but underrated, work blocking on special teams and as a gunner on the punt team. Returning punts, Jordan Shipley averaged 10 yards a return, with another nice return called back because of penalty.

Of course, it will be the bad plays that draw the majority of attention, and they were certainly bad. Brown apparently told Tucker last season that he could go for the first down if he sees an opening in the defense and can make it without being touched. After being chewed out during hafltime, he probably won't be doing that again. Dave Christensen commented after the game that his coaching staff had seen something on film that they could exploit to get pressure on John Gold and almost blocked two punts as a result. Antwan Cobb has to do a better job as the personal protector -- replacing Rashad Bobino -- not commiting to a double team before he knows if there is someone else comingup the middle. The coaches should be able to get that fixed this week -- it's not too complicated. As for the fake field goal, several things stand out. One, the Longhorns should be able to pick up one yard in the jumbo package if they really want it. Secondly, the situation seemed ripe for a fake and it seemed even more likely when the long snapper walked back to Shipley before the play to ask him something or make a clarification -- even more indication. Mack Brown also said on Monday that the call got messed up and the play wasn't executed properly. It certainly looked like it.

The good news is that Texas is no longer as leaky as a sieve on kickoffs and Duane Akina is back coaching the special teams. The mistakes should be fixed this week and the special teams should go right back to providing the Longhorns with an advantage for the rest of the season with the embarassment of riches that Texas possesses in terms of options in the return games, a fantastic gunner in Macolm Williams, two accurate place kickers, and options in the punting game, including a kicker with the ability to rugby punt with either foot. Despite the problems in Laramie, you can bet that Frank Beamer gets jealous watching Texas on special teams.

Tracking: defensive tackles. Remember when the defensive tackle position was such a cause for concern, way back before the season started? After two games, those concerns are now squarely in the background as the play of the offensive line, the lack of gaudy stats by Sergio Kindle, and the three currently ineligible players draw the majority of the attention. And there's a reason for that -- the Longhorns have been excellent in the middle of the field, albeit against two teams that aren't exactly world-beaters.

Lamarr Houston has led the way, particularly against Wyoming, undoubtedly his best performance at defensive tackle. On one play, he sliced through a gap on the hip of Ben Alexander and brought down the quarterback in the backfield, looking positively Roy Miller-esque. Is he as good as Roy Miller? Probably not, but that's not exactly a criticism of Houston's play. Against Wyoming, he finished with four tackles, including two behind the line of scrimmage, one sack, and two quarterback hurries. The only blemish? Two false starts.

Next to Houston in the middle, Kheeston Randle probably had his best game as a Longhorn and looks like he will be a reliable contributor this season who can make some plays. Early in the game, he fought off a block nicely to stop a running play, then almost managed to push the guard blocking him back into the quarterback on another play, forcing a poor throw. There will be some inconsistent moments and he needs to work on using his hands better when being cut block, but there is an immense amount of potential just waiting to be tapped. He's going to be a good one and it's going to happen sooner rather than later.

Ben Alexander also had maybe his best day in a Texas uniform, making five tackles, including one for a loss. As mentioned last week, he's not going to be the best pass rusher from the position, but he's not going to be moved much on running plays and he looks as quick as he ever has in his four years. Interestingly, Calvin Howell played some at defensive end in the 3-4, most likely to allow him to use his quickness on the edge, which he did on one play that he just ended up over pursuing, and to keep him out of the middle where things happen so quickly. Besides registering his first career sack, Howell also made two tackles, one for a loss. Derek Johnson and Tevin Mims both saw their first aciton at Texas, with Mims recording two tackles.

Tracking: third down. After another excellent performance on third down last week against Louisiana-Monroe, the Longhorns struggled to convert against Wyoming, finishing 5 of 17 (29%), numbers hurt significantly by two first downs called back because of holding. Was the performance an anomaly, or does it portend a return to Earth by the Texas offense after otherwordly results last season on third down? Hard to say after one game, but it is something worth monitoring moveing forward.

The problem early on was mostly that Colt McCoy was out of rhythm and having his passes float on him in the altitude and, as mentioned above, the Wyoming defense deserves a lot of credit for playing extremely tough early in the game and coming in with a solid game plan to stop the Texas offense. In particularly the Cowboys did a good job of defending the drag route across the field that Texas likes to use for Jordan Shipley and James Kirkendoll, a play that Quan Cobsy and Brandon Collins converted in key situations last season.

Several other problems stand out. In the second quarter, the Longhorns went three-and-out after Vondrell McGee only picked up one yard on 3rd and 2. The play directly preceeding the unsuccessful fake field goal as a 15-yard gain by Tre' Newton on 3rd and 16. A false start by Chris Hall in the fourth quarter turned a 3rd and 6 into 3rd and 11 and an incomplete pass from McCoy. On the last possession of the game by the Longhorns, Garrett Gilbert didn't get the play off quickly enough and turned a 3rd and 6 into 3rd and 11.

Overall, the slow start by McCoy was a big part of the problem, but penalties on third down are perhaps the major culprit. Two first downs were called back and two more third downs were made longer by penalties. If the Longhorns can avoid major penalties on third dow and do a better job of protecting McCoy, the numbers should increase again next week, but if the Longhorns struggle as much against Tech as they did against, then it might be cause for some concern. Remember also that the Longhorns struggled on third down against UTEP last year in a similar type of atmosphere and only converted 1 of 6 third downs.