You never get much sympathy as a casual Patriots fan living in Texas, especially in Dallas where the Rovers have made our base camp. There may not be a more hated club in America than Foxboro's Finest. Other than the Eagles, the Patriots seem to be the most hated team in the nation's most popular sport.

From Belichik's sneer and suspicious strategies to Tom Brady's pretty boy looks and "league favoritism" in the rule book the Patriots cover several of Hollywood's token villain characteristics. After paying the hefty price of Spygate, the Patriots dished out an 18-1 beatdown against the rest of the league. Most fans would happily take that record.

Rivals such as the Manning Colts, McNabb Eagles, and "greatest show on turf" Rams were all TV friendly champions who went down before the sinister might of Brady-Belichik.

I don't really need to go on, most of you probably despise the Patriots and were delighted by the helmet-catch that descended Hoodie & co. into playoff football purgatory where they've languished until now. However, I've got a sales pitch that just might win you over. When I watch the New York Giants I'm reminded of an even more unlikable front-running team known for drawing favoritism.

The Oklahoma Sooners.

They run very similar schemes and operate them in very similar manners, they are both run by totally likable QB's, and they both had success down the stretch of their famous seasons that provide them with undue rewards such as championship opportunities over teams that defeated them in the regular season.

I don't care if you buy it or not but I'm going to break down this match up for you and will refer to the New York Giants as the Oklahoma Sooners until I've successfully brainwashed you into rooting for my Patriots.

When the Land Thieves have the ball:

See how I used a derisive nickname for the Sooners and applied it to the Giants? You hate them now. Accept it.

The Sooners operate best when they can run the ball and help Eli buy time to fling deep bombs to Hakeem Nicks. However, even with their inconsistent health at RB and subsequently inconsistent running game they were moving the ball well this season. Manning managed this with his eerie calm in rapidly collapsing pockets, upper-tier accuracy, and excellent cast of receivers.

The real key to the Sooner attack, besides the excellence of the QB, is Ryan Broyles Victor Cruz. Utilizing some classic run n' shoot passing concepts that get a lot of mileage out of having a waterbug in the middle of the field, The NFC champs have had an effective passing game all year. In the NFC Title game, San Fran gave up 100 receiving yards to Cruz in the first half, shut him down in the 2nd half and were then two unlucky punt-return fumbles away from victory.

How do you think Belichik will attempt to slow them down?

Can the Patriots take away Victor Cruz? Belichik uses a lot of the same fronts and run-defense tricks as Saban which I covered in my national championship preview. Indeed, he taught Saban half of what he knows. Heavy use of nickel and dime packages are another Belichik staple he passed on, as well as press coverage. The Patriots were the first to recognize the tremendous threat that a slot receiver can present to the structures of typical defensive coverages after the devastation they were able to wreck with Troy Brown, and so they adapted with the now commonplace solution of moving your best cover corner inside.

Of course with the Sooners, if you move your best inside to handle the slot receiver how do you handle Reynolds Nicks and Stills Manningham on the edge? The Patriots Cover-5 (2 deep safeties, man coverage on all receivers) presents them with their best means of making things difficult for the Crimson offense. When they blitz or mix things up with other coverages it's essential that they still blanket Cruz and hope that Eli's tight space footwork and Nicks' explosive downfield abilities don't burn them.

Even while playing a lot of 2-deep coverages, the Pats still have solid enough personnel to not be gashed in the running game. Wilfork, Spikes, and Mayo provide them with a strong interior while the renewed health of Patrick Chung at safety helps erase anything they don't cover up. Virtually every season you may notice Mel Kiper Jr. projecting the Patriots to select a DE/OLB who can aid their pass rush and then you'll watch them not do so in search of man coverage corners or other pieces.

In reality, the Patriots have lagged behind in replacing defensive stars all over the squad. They've abandoned attempting to find enough 2-gapping DE/DT's to play their base 3-4 and now employ more gap control paired with attacking schemes. This year they relied on Andre Carter and Mark Anderson for their pass rush, employing them as weakside ends, and they are now down to only Anderson which could be problematic in trying to exploit the Sooners' weaknesses in pass-protection.

Overall the Pats have to keep things in front of them and keep Manning from finding Victor Cruz on 3rd down. If they eliminate Cruz from the game then Manning's tendency to force plays under pressure while looking for the kill shot could help them end drives with some timely sacks.

Flacco had a great day against the Pats defense between the 20's but when things tightened up around the goal line and the Pats still overplayed Ray Rice, he couldn't get it done. Expect a similar approach against Manning.

When OU is on defense:

Coughlin's crew run a base Cover-2 defense that is very similar to what we see in Norman every year. They often play 3 safeties so that their underneath coverage is fast enough to cover slot receivers in the middle of the field and they prefer to play soft-zone and then jump routes and tendencies that they spot from film study. They'll play their corners and linebackers off the line of scrimmage operating under the same philosophy as Stoops, that defenders play faster coming downhill than they do backpedaling.

Coverage of this sort, despite it's conservative positioning and alignment, can be very susceptible to QB's who pump fake, look off safeties, or buy time. Such as we saw from RGIII in his glorious dismantling of the Sooner D this year.

Towards the latter part of this season, Osi Umenyiora, Justin Tuck, and Jason Pierre-Paul all became healthy in time for the playoffs. Now no one has time to pump fake or look off safeties, even against the 4-man rush. The fact that these guys are all 6-5, 265 means that the potential for zone-blitzes is a serious threat as well. In 3rd and long they add Kiwanuka to get 4 pass-rushers on their line. It's deadly.

In the back 7, their linebackers are fast and their corners are pretty big, making for an imposing underneath 5 in their Cover 2. Amongst those is our own Thorpe Award winning Aaron Ross. I'm going to need you to ignore his presence in blue though for my analogy to work.

Vernon Davis gave them a lot of trouble and he did it against safeties and corners who regularly seemed shocked by his speed. Gronkowski isn't as fast as Davis but he and Hernandez both present similar match up problems for teams who are already trying to account for Welker and Branch.

Since the Patriots have added Hernandez, Gronk, and Welker to the fold it's not really feasible to attempt to take away a single receiver and expect to control the Patriot attack.

The Ravens and Steelers were able to control the Pats by flooding the field with DB's and 2-deep safety coverages, and made the Pats earn their way down the field. This is all fine and well until they get in the red zone, where Gronkowski becomes an unstoppable menace. Another factor that enabled the Ravens and Steelers to avoid getting lit up was their pass rush, which of course the Sooners have in spades.

It's possible that Gronkowski's high ankle sprain may keep him at far less than 100%, if he can even play at all. When fully healthy, he's an easy fix to beating a "bend don't break" scheme with his red zone proficiency, but also a great way to punish such a team for using smaller personnel. The Pats 2 tight end sets with Hernandez and Gronchise bring down the double whammy by necessitating nickel personnel and then plowing over it in the running game.

If there was ever a game in which the Patriots could have finally used a feature back, this would be it.

They'll need to protect Brady from the Land Thieves just pinning their ears back every play and coming after him with a steady diet of runs, draws, and screens. But ultimately, New England needs have their patented pass protection in full gear to buy time for Brady to orchestrate his patented clock-draining drives.

In conclusion, we essentially have a game in which the Oklahoma Sooners have every matchup advantage in their favor.

Their greatest weakness? Pass protection. The New England defense's biggest deficiency? Pass rush. The Sooner defense is perfectly designed to handle spread offenses, while the Patriots have feasted on teams' who lack the personnel to handle their receiving threats.

In the one regard in which the Patriots' hold advantages over virtually all opponents -- the inability of anyone to account for Gronkowski -- they have had calamity strike them with a high ankle sprain.

Do you want to root for an underdog and against the Sooners at the same time? I present the 2012 New England Patriots. If they win, it'll be because they earned it.

I think most of us are well aware that the BCS is a farce and an insult to college football in virtually every regard of its existence. It gives us meaningless games that divert College Football's profits into the hands of an elite class and then pretends that our system for choosing teams to play in these games is remotely informed or conclusive.

That said, I still enjoy college football and I didn't hate LSU v Bama round one as much as many others. The lack of scoring was not unlike a good soccer game -- . points didn't come cheaply, they had to be earned.

Round II is likely to be different as each team adapts to the mistakes and successes of the previous game. I think the team that has the greater remaining resources to throw at their opponent has the greatest chance at victory. Let's examine who that might be.

Alabama O vs. LSU D

The Alabama offense, like the LSU crew, is designed around sustainability. Unlike most Big 12 offenses, which project championship hopes around the development of a QB while hoping the supporting cast is strong his junior & senior year, Alabama's system is designed to emphasize the running game and whichever skill positions are strongest that year.

Saban only needs a caretaker to run this system. If the QB can avoid turnovers the running game will limit possessions for each squad and Alabama vs. your defense will generally prove to be more efficient than your offense vs. the Alabama D.

The real heroes of the offense are on the OL, where you see the strength of the Tide's evaluations and player development. Alabama excels here at finding big kids with nasty dispositions and keeping the program stocked with talent at various levels of schematic proficiency and physical development. They load up on 300+ pound monsters who can move piles on inside zone and power schemes.

Bama runs balanced pro-style schemes that can attack multiple parts of the field. They utilize some misdirection, play-action, and a screen game like you would see on Sundays. Of course, having a guy like Trent Richardson toting the rock makes all of these things easier.

Richardson is a true feature back. He's not limited to specific runs or packages and can read blocks in all the schemes. He's also receiving threat out of the backfield and can handle 30+ touches in a game. Strength, speed, hands, smarts - he's the total package and will prove it at the next level.

Marquise Maze is the target for their constraint/downfield passing attack and he's basically Ryan Broyles-lite. His speed demands space and then Maze exploits it.

The challenge of facing Alabama is that it's hard to totally shut down an offense with so much talent and balance. They generally don't pull away from you on the scoreboard but their defense and the way their rush offense shortens the game makes a 10 point lead nearly insurmountable.

LSU's defense is approaching legendary status with all their victories and successes over pro-style power teams like Bama mixed with dominant performances against Oregon, West Virginia, and Arkansas. Their secret isn't schematic but merely in their exceptional talent at the most important positions: DL and DB.

Disguising coverage and blitzes is easy when you have five future NFL defensive backs in the secondary (ask 2005 Texas) that can cover tremendous ground and hit like linebackers. Their safeties can align in a 2-deep shell and then play Cover-1 with one in deep centerfield and the other up on the line filling the alley. LSU is a classic press-coverage team, so they'll challenge every part of the route tree at times and mix that with softer zone where they close and tackle with force. You never know which it will be.

It makes things extremely difficult for caretaker QBs looking for easy reads. LSU also has that exceptional DL which is similarly loaded with pro prospects and doesn't allow a ton of time to find and hit throws accurate enough to beat Claiborne, Mathieu, etc.

Alabama would seem to be more well-designed to handle this team than most by running big formations that keep the 5th DB off the field and pit Richardson against smaller defenders in the alley, or the LSU linebackers which are good but not great. Richardson was a playmaker at times in the first matchup but Alabama curiously only gave him 23 carries and 5 passes. Given Saban's new understanding of the nature of this matchup I would expect to see a steep decline in their 29 pass attempts in favor of an attempt to pound the LSU front into submission with 45-50 run calls.

I'm sure they are also hoping for better health from Maze, who found his open field juke-box ran low on hits after he rolled his ankle and lost his suddenness in changing directions.

It would be exceedingly difficult for LSU to hold down Alabama as well as they did last time as Saban is likely to have more misdirection, no abandon in running Richardson, and a healthier Maze. However, they may not need to.

LSU O vs. Alabama D

The LSU offense is designed similarly to the Bama unit save with more use of option-concepts, and a massive fullback who helps them pound teams into submission. Jefferson adds a ton to their offense and his increased snaps in round one was critical in delivering LSU's victory.

Reuben Randle and Russell Shepard give them some big weapons on the outside and I like Ford & co. at tailback as well. Like Alabama, the run-centric nature of this offense means that it is well-equipped to adapt and feature whatever talent is available. Jefferson does offer playmaking at QB in his ability to scramble when things break down as well as opening up the wide world of zone-read and option football in deploying LSU's skill athletes.

The Alabama defense is a fairly unique animal, although some of it's concepts are not foreign to us after watching Muschamp's unit for 3 years.

His pattern-matching MOFC coverages get a lot of attention, and his situational defense has been pretty influential as well and seems to have been one of the main principles Muschamp brought to Austin.

However, much of his system is built around what he does with his fronts and his 3 DL. On the depth chart the defense reads like a 3-4 with a nose tackle, 2 defensive ends, and 4 linebacker positions. 3-4 defense with a true nose tackle, that means 2-gap read and react defense right? Well, that 4th linebacker is basically a defensive end-pass rusher, so it must actually be a 1-gap attacking defense? Not quite.

The middle linebacker in this scheme sets Saban's Over/Under fronts some of which involve both 1-gap and 2-gap techniques. In different fronts, any of the DL might be 2-gapping, although generally that falls to their nose-tackle and strongside end. That frees the other end, usually in a 3-tech, to attack his gap and also frees the linebackers either to attack gaps or just escape blocks.

It also lends itself well to nickel and dime packages because the linebackers you are taking off the field often don't have run responsibilities that a safety or corner couldn't handle against spread personnel.That's partly how they managed our running game so easily with 5 men in the box and 6 defensive backs in the game, that and our own ineptitude. Then there are the blitzes and disguises available to a team that only has 3 guys playing with their hands in the dirt.

Alabama's defense is well trained and theoretically perfect for leveraging their players to absolutely shut down any kind of offense. The only limitations come from finding personnel. Where do you get these 2-gapping monsters inside? How do you find the biggest and fastest linebackers? Where are all the corners who are being asked to lock-down the sidelines coming from?

Their nose guard, Josh Chapman, comes from the JUCO ranks. Many of their other stars can be found easily enough in Alabama but they also come from Florida, Georgia, and the other talent-rich southern states. Over-signing also generates a larger pool of players to find help find these personnel.

As it happens, despite their abundance of talent, cure-all defensive schemes, and supreme training and development from Saban's staff, they actually have a few weaknesses.

Playing in the SEC against other run-centric offenses means that their personnel is large and conditioned to play down hill. Jordan Shipley demonstrated that they can be vulnerable to double moves and speedy personnel and Tebow's Gator offense had similar success spacing out their back 7 and making them change direction.

With Jefferson running the show, the Tiger offense can also challenge the pattern-matching Tide coverages with his scrambling abilities. One downside of matchup-zone is that it can lead to a defense becoming susceptible to a scrambling QB. Normally an offense wouldn't draw enough benefit from that to overcome the Tree Poisoners but in a contest this close it can be the difference.

In fact, the zone-read, scrambling, and other dynamics offered to LSU by Jefferson are the clincher in this game. While the LSU defense draws its strength from having the athleticism to recover and defend the entire field, the Alabama defense will be stretched in their efforts to defend the entire field by the unpredictable options afforded by a mobile QB.

Call it LSU 20-17. Thoughts? Or are we all boycotting?

Since I've primarily focused on Diaz and the defense this year I thought I would review the year, what we accomplished, and how. I've broken down the review into pieces: the stats of our play, our strategy, and individual performances.

The Results

We finished first in conference in yards per play allowed at 4.8, the Oklahoma's tied for 2nd with 5.3 yards per play. This was largely on the back of our defense allowing only 6 yards per pass (it was much lower before RGIII) and we also only gave up 3.3 per play on the ground.

Huckleberry's adjusted stats tell a similar story of a Texas defense that finished 8th in the nation in adjusted yards per play. We only managed to finish 70th in sacks per play and 52nd in turnovers per play.

In summary, we were immensely difficult to move the ball against but we didn't take it away very often. I have two explanations for this result that I'll explain in strategy.

There wasn't much good on the Baylor game tape but we performed better than most against the Oklahoma offenses and were absolutely dominant against the rest of the league. This was definitely a defense that would have carried us to a BCS game had we been the proud owners of an offense that could take care of the ball and score touchdowns in the red zone.

Strategy:

Our base defense was 3-under. Many teams in the league are defined by what their safeties do, or their alignments and fronts. We didn't have a consistent front or even deep coverage that defined who we were. What defined us was 3 underneath defenders with the other 8 men deployed either in pressure or in deep coverage.

Cover 3 is obviously the base defense of Diaz's choice and it's the one that most closely resembles the Fire Zone coverage that we used so often this year of 3 under, 3 deep. However, our dearth of lateral range or hip-turning abilities in the Middle Of Field Safety position combined with our weaknesses in leveraging receivers underneath with team execution meant that when we wanted to play coverage we were often in Quarters, 4 deep defenders, 3 underneath, 4 rushers, or Cover 5 with man underneath and 2 deep defenders, and kept receivers in front of us.

Most teams in the league play Cover 2. It's not hard (unless you are Mack Brown) to find spread QB's who can learn the West-coast/spread quick game and execute short passes all day long and pile up yardage and points. Cover 2 floods the short zones with 5 pass-defenders and it's weak spots involve throwing passes like the deep out or deep post and playing good pass protection. That's where the average college QB and OL break down.

The only difficulty with Cover 2 is in coordinating the pattern reads and leveraging underneath as well as the deep safeties' ability to defend lots of grass, two areas where we clearly don't excel. So we went the other direction and told teams to execute their quick games against only 3 underneath defenders or man coverage assisted by deep support and frequent blitzes.

Diaz also teaches the 3 underneath defenders in Fire Zones to jump the common or more likely short routes and force the QB to hold onto the ball against our blitz, or attempt to throw deep where our corners and safeties are. Until we mastered this process it wasn't as difficult for offenses to find receivers open short which prevented interceptions and sacks from piling up.

We move guys into all kinds of assignments but for the most part these three heroes were Kenny Vaccaro, Emmanuel Acho, and Keenan Robinson.

Everyone who is longing to improve our adjusted 2.9 rushing yards allowed per game with a starting lineup that features Steve Edmond would would be wise to consider that we were able to give up only 6 yards per pass by putting a lot of responsibility in the hands of three guys who won't be here next season.

How we adjust next year is for another post but what I'd like to note here is that our schemes required a ton out of the linebackers/nickel and they held up in that role brilliantly until RGIII came and destroyed our pressure, deep coverage, and our linebackers' ability to defend the short field.

Diaz was able to employ his philosophy of getting pressure while not giving up big plays AND successfully protected our weaknesses in the secondary by giving them numbers and leverage.

Individual performances

Corners: These guys played very well very quickly. We were able to challenge receivers outside with press coverage from Byndom, Diggs, and Phillips despite the fact that they had deep sideline responsibilities in most of our coverages (cover-5,4,3,1).

OU caught our guys a few times and after that they pretty much locked down the sideline from the fade or go routes that will bring down a defense fast.

Safeties: Adrian Phillips was a playmaker who picked off 2 passes and forced 2 fumbles while splitting time between corner and safety. He was kept off the field at times by virtue of being the 3rd best cover corner and the 4th youngest safety, as well as injuries.

Gideon gave us intelligence, leadership, and consistency. You can see in his play an understanding of where and how to make plays but he just doesn't get there in time. He played well against UCLA and OSU, poorly against OU and Baylor. It is what it is. Scott played some nickel and safety in our "platinum" dime defense. Physically he's a minor upgrade over Gideon, mentally he's definitely a downgrade.

We were average here at both positions unless Vaccaro or Phillips were back there and even AP didn't put it all together consistently. By next season he should be an All-Conference performer.

Linebacker: I've talked a lot about what Vaccaro did for us this year. Robinson and Acho mastered the run defense by the end of the year, both were effective blitzers, and were great in coverage. Hicks lagged behind in schematic understanding and the need for nickel kept him off the field except as an alternate or in some of our platinum personnel looks. He has the potential to be better than either Robinson or Acho but mentally he's not there yet.

Defensive End: The early schedule was fantastic for training our ends in a variety of roles. They got to play against spread-to-run teams, the pistol, power and by the end of the year were great against everything. We need more depth but Okafor managed an All-American season and Jeffcoat might join him next year. Our sack numbers increased over the course of the year as our coverage tightened up and these guys' sack totals increased.

Defensive Tackle: Randall didn't quite catch hold of the Diaz defense early in the year and didn't really take to the attacking and stunting like he did to Muschamp's gap-control schemes. He finished pretty well but his inability to get to the QB or make as many tackles behind the line might have cost him a round or two in where he gets drafted.

Our recruitment of Brandon Moore is interesting as he's basically another Randall who's been coached to control interior gaps. I'm assuming we want him for short-yardage situations and situational play.

The rest of our tackles combined to be one pretty great player and they match Diaz's plan for the position. We got pass rush and eventually good run defense when these young guys learned the run fits. Diaz needs kids here that can use speed to fill gaps and cross up the blocking assignments of the OL. The intensity of effort to accomplish that necessitates that we rotate players and we're loaded with ideal prospects to accomplish this. Losing Randall will sting but we may be looking at a LSU-level interior DL next season with everyone else back and acclimated to the scheme.

All in all we took advantage of our excellence at linebacker/nickel to protect everyone else in the defense as they gradually caught on to the scheme and system. Next year we'll get a massive upgrade in athleticism at safety, return both corners, and feature a loaded DL with 2 defensive ends playing for NFL contracts. Bowl practice, game and another year (hopefully), and then we'll see what adjustments Diaz has up his sleeve next.

The Nickel position has become one of the most important in football. When you see the Jets move Darrelle Revis to the slot against the Patriots you are seeing confirmation of a definite shift in defensive strategy (started by Belichik) as teams feel the pressing need to deny these little slot receivers from wreaking havoc in the open field. That guy who used to be your 12-15th best defender is now one of your best.

On the occasions in which LSU is facing spread formations this season they are moving Tyrann "the Tyrannosaurus" Mathieu into the slot and closer to the line of scrimmage where his Velociraptor instincts are best served.

Although this spoils some of my All-Big 12 picks I'm about to reveal, I think Mathieu should be considered for the Heisman trophy behind RGIII. Check out his stat line from the season:

70 tackles, 6.5 tackles for loss, 1.5 sacks, 2 INT, 7 PBU, 3 QB Hits, 5 fumble recoveries, and 6 forced fumbles. That last stat is pretty astounding. He's tearing balls loose like a miniaturized Derrick Johnson and he's doing it at 175 pounds. Then you have his 420 punt return yards and 4 overall scores.

He's the best player on the best team, an NFL Pro-Bowler waiting to happen, and my Nickel Rover of the Year.

All-Big 12 Teams

These are going to be groups that you could actually put on the field in a coherent formations and schemes. Specifically, we're going to use formations and positions that are actually used commonly in the Big 12. There are several corners this year who might classify amongst the 11 best defenders in the conference but they're just going to have to endure the ignominy of being left off my list in favor of inferior players who play defensive tackle or safety (pretty weak this year).

On offense we are using 11/20 personnel. A quarterback, running back, LT, LG, C, RG, RT, X receiver, Z receiver, slot receiver, and the TE/HB/FB utility guy that I thought was most deserving of recognition.

Offense

QB: Robert Griffin III

I was considering Landry Jones until Broyles injury brought out all his worst traits (locking on to receivers, forcing the ball downfield, not reading the field) and I watched more of RGIII. Weeden is probably a close 2nd to Landry in accuracy and arm-strength with perhaps a better read of coverages. Klein played like a Viking berserker and James Franklin was really good as well. Even Tannehill had some impressive moments and has a first-day arm. But a QB who makes your downfield passing game, running game, and quick game all deadly while throwing only 6 interceptions should be a Heisman lock every year.

RB: Cyrus Gray

Kind of a down year here. With so many QB's graduating or departing next year I bet we see more of a focus on running games next year. I'm picking Cyrus because he's consistent, an excellent zone-runner, and a good receiver/blocker to boot. Michael and Josey couldn't stay as healthy and I'm not a believer in Ganaway playing in a scheme that doesn't allow him to run through arm tackles.

TE/HB/FB: Trey Millard

He doesn't have real sexy numbers but he's a primary reason for all of OU's big runs and Belldozer success this season. He can line up all over the place, is a solid runner and receiver, and a devastating lead-blocker. I think he's partially responsible for OU's absurdly low number of sacks allowed, as well. Without him, there is zero power in OU's running game.

X receiver: Justin Blackmon

Duh. He can run any route and has the scalps of several future NFL corners on his war belt. It sould have been nice to see him against a large corner in LSU's Claiborne but oh well, the BCS doesn't exist to make fans happy.

Z receiver: Kenny Stills/Ryan Broyles

Fuller's disappearance this season is in my Top 5 reasons A&M underperformed this year. He could have been a game changer and instead he was an option. Stills is extremely dangerous downfield, fearless in his route running, a contortionist in the air, and explosive after the catch.

Slot Receiver: Kendall Wright/Ryan Broyles

I'm mentioning Broyles as a substitute in these categories because he was having a dominant season before blowing out his knee. Wright is possibly better and had a 1572 yard year. I'm not sure which one I would prefer to see catch the ball on the run against my teams' secondary, either are horrifying.

Left Tackle: Luke Joeckel

He kept Tannehill's shirt pretty clean this year and was highly effective on the outside zone runs that sprung Gray for 1k yards this year. I didn't put a ton of thought or focus on watching OL play this year so I'm willing to concede half of these to someone who thinks they know better.

Left Guard: David Snow

Because we were pummeling people when healthy and Snow was our best and most consistent lineman.

Center: Ben Habern

He doesn't get a ton of push and OU did fine without him against our front but I hated how OU avoided sacks and negative plays this year and I believe he's the one making the calls and combo-blocks that enabled that crime.

Right Guard: Lane Taylor

I'm keeping the OSU right side together. There are likely better players here but I like what little I noticed from him.

Right Tackle: Levy Adcock

Big, powerful, and very competent in pass-protection. I've left off Usemelecheheh from Iowa St. but I like Joeckel and it's hard to beat a Wickline-taught 320 pound tackle.

Defense

I have 2 defenses here. One is the one I would assemble if I needed to put together a rockstar squad to win the Big 12 this year and win the championship bowl game, the other is based on the performance of the players over the actual season.

The latter is a 4-2-5, which is what almost everyone is basically running now. The former is a 3-3-5/2-4-5 hybrid that I would unleash with a fury on all who opposed me.

Power end: Frank Alexander

This is your defensive end that could play a 9, 7, or 5 tech (depending on the front) and provide run defense and pass rush doing any of them. Alex Okafor is a very close 2nd but Alexander was slightly more productive this year.

Buck End: Alex Okafor/Corey Nelson

For my All Big 12 defense based on year's performance, I'm going with Okafor. Combining him with Alexander gives you a pretty nasty pass-rush and makes your run defense really stout on the perimeter. Ten more pounds and another pass-rush move and Okafor is playing for a first round pick next year.

I didn't take much stock of Stoops' claim that Nelson was their best defensive player in the spring game and noted with humor that he was listed behind Travis Lewis on the depth chart, where his supposed talent would be wasted anyways. Then I watched a bunch of Oklahoma games.

Nelson isn't at all like Lewis or really anyone else we've seen in the Big 12. He's kinda like a mini-Von Miller or Clay Matthews. OU played him some as an outside linebacker in their 3-4 fronts and he was devastating with 8 tackles for loss and 5.5 sacks. In a play against OSU I saw him line up as a 9-tech OLB, come upfield, diagnose an inside zone, and make it all the way back to the B-gap where he just missed a tackle on Joseph Randle that would have been a 3 yard gain. He didn't make the play, but the athleticism and aggressiveness was amazing.

On another play, he faked the outside pass rush and then darted out to jam an inside receiver and play underneath zone coverage (he had 4 PBUs on the year). The versatility he provides a defense is spectacular and I'm really curious to see if they plug him in where Lewis was last year or if they continue to move him around. His performance on the year doesn't match Okafor's, but he's an intriguing and horrifying weapon in this league.

Nose-tackle: Dominique Howard

Nose-tackle play was solid in the league this year. Randall played well, Howard played better, and many teams fielded competent-to-good players here (Baptiste, Ruempolhamer, Casey Walker, Kibble to name a few). I like Howard because of his ability to penetrate into the backfield.

Defensive tackle: Kheeston Randall

I'm picking Randall for both teams because the 3-techs in the league this year were nearly useless. He's not much of a penetrator but either team would be fine with the ends and linebackers on the squad and my 3-4/2-4 team would really benefit from having 2 stout guys on the inside to protect Nelson and my nickel.

Randall cost himself a first round grade by not improving his pass rush beyond a bull rush that varies in effectiveness based on his initial jump. The switch from Muschamp's gap control, read and react fronts to Diaz's slanting and stunting probably hindered the pace of his development but Randall's play improved over the course of the year as he caught on.

Sheldon Richardson and Nigel Nicholas were considered here. Given their decent play, and the quality of young DL OU and UT are bringing up I expect this position to be much better across the league next year.

Inside linebacker (Mike): AJ Klein

Teams designate their linebackers differently based on their role in coverage or in the front. If your Sam linebacker is the guy who drifts out to the Slot receiver then if the next guy over is the mike you may be asking your Will linebacker to take on lead blocks on the strong side to free up your Mike, when normally it's the opposite. Teams that that place their Mike on the strongside of the formation to free up the Will may then be having him cover curls/flats in coverage, instead of the middle.

Mine is lining up according to the running strength of the OL and I chose Klein narrowly over Keenan Robinson and Arthur Brown, mostly for his prolific tackling success. He's quite capable in underneath-zone coverage, has the mentality to play inside and take on guards, and excels in wrapping guys up. He doesn't have the blitzing acumen you might like but he's the best all-around Mike in the league, imo.

Inside linebacker (Will): Emmanuel Acho

Acho should be an All-American and he had a brilliant season. His underneath coverage is very good, he's an exceptional blitzer, his tackling is reliable (120 on the year), he's the complete package. Even if Travis Lewis had been healthy this year I don't think he would have matched Acho's all-around production.

Nickel/Sam: Kenny Vaccaro

Lots of good players here. Many teams (OU, Texas, Baylor) used their best safety in this role and were thus unable to field difference makers on the back-end. OSU and KSU played faster linebackers in this position who could hold up in underneath coverage and they also had some success. Defensive coordinators have decided that this is where they are deploying their best athletes.

Vaccaro stands out because of his performance in manning up on Broyles, Swope, and other slot receivers while also being a demon in the run game and a solid blitzer. Tony Jefferson is a stud but I don't know if he could have played man coverage on those guys while I know that Vaccaro can handle the zone assignments where Jefferson excelled. Also, I would be more afraid to play against Vaccaro. The Machete delivered this year and we'd be lucky to have him back for another.

Strong Safety: Markelle Martin

My strong safety lines up to field-side. Martin was a jewel in a pile of crap that was safety play in the Big 12 this season. Most Big 12 teams are just playing tons of nickel and dime and keeping their safeties back where they can't be isolated and embarrassed. Sometimes they still are, there just aren't enough good athletes to field difference makers on your offense and then have enough to play all 5 defensive back positions.

OSU perhaps came the closest and Martin is one of the few safeties in the league with the range to be more than just a last line of defense. Additionally, he was an excellent last line of defense and part of the reason OSU was so good in preventing explosive plays this year.

Free Safety: Trent Hunter/Adrian Phillips

Hunter had a good season while the rest of the Aggy secondary crumbled around him. Frederick and Judie were good corners but when Judie went down I think A&M's Cover-1/3 schemes were seriously jeopardized and they had tons of guys out there who couldn't cover the expanse of field that Deyruter's blitzes demanded of them.

I think Phillips is one of the most talented defensive backs in the league and I want him for my own team. Like Martin, he can break on the ball and has great deep range and he also arrives pretty fast in support from a deep alignment. He forced 4 turnovers this year as a back-up corner and part-time safety and will probably be the Longhorn who plays the demanding nickel position next season depending on what Cobb offers us and our coverage philosophies (Zone or Man?).

Corners: Brodrick Brown, Carrington Byndom

Nigel Malone had 7 interceptions this year and really picked on QB's who tried to throw comeback routes without enough zip. I really liked what sophompre EJ Gaines did for Missouri, the ISU corners were both quality, and Fleming of OU may be the worst omission because he was a complete player who was excellent when healthy.

I'm picking Brown because he was healthy all year and he's lightning quick in underneath coverage (5 INT, 15 PBU). Carrington Byndom gets the nod to cover the other team's best because he faced Stills, Blackmon, Fuller, and others this year in man coverage and acquitted himself with 2 interceptions and 15 PBU. I'm not sure if there is a more complete corner in the league than Byndom who was also physical and effective in run defense.

I can play a lot of different coverages with my personal group, bring a lot of different blitzes and be pretty solid up the middle with Hamilton and Randall clogging things up.

Offensive Player of the Year: RGIII.

Defensive Player of the Year: Kenny Vaccaro.

Best player on the best defense. I'm not sure anyone else in the league had as much of an impact as Kenny V on schematic possibilities, gameplanning, and the psyche of offensive players.

OC of the Year: Dana Dimel

The KSU guy. Briles designed a great offense but, it's pretty easy with RGIII running the system. I really hate what Heupel has done at OU but they struggled to build a running game and survive the loss of Broyles. What's most impressive to me is how KSU scored 35 points per game through schematics and sheer force of will. The QB Power run is taking over football and KSU expanded it into an entire offense that attacked the whole field.

On another note, I'm real curious to see Briles vs. Patterson again.

DC of the Year: Bill Young

OSU led the league in turnovers and had the perfect plan to complement that offense. They denied big plays in the run or pass game (which would have been so tempting in trying to catch up to Weeden & Co) and led the nation in turnovers. You have to wonder if he was a bigger part of the reason for Mangino's Kansas success than has been guessed.

HC of the Year: Bill Snyder

Statistically, KSU was not nearly as strong as their record would suggest but they got there through turnovers and efficiency in the Red Zone. Talent-wise, this isn't one of the league's best teams and wasn't projected to finish this well. But that's what Dark Wizards do...

Thoughts?

BCS Standings

I'm intrigued by the possibility of LSU losing a game (SEC championship game, Georgia, or Arkansas) and then losing their chance at a title to Alabama or Oregon. One common argument you hear for the strength of the BCS is that it "makes the regular season matter."

How in the world can you maintain that argument if Alabama and Oregon get in ahead of LSU despite having weaker resumes AND both losing direct contests to LSU that weren't even in Baton Rouge?

In reality, the problem with college football isn't the postseason, it's the regular season. Playoff systems are generally a poor substitute for the regular season in determining the best team. It's too difficult for a team to maintain the effort and execution they are capable of in every single contest. We use playoffs not for their ability to determine the best all-around team, but to generate entertainment for the fans.

College football doesn't have a very good playoff system because it's based on a subjective ranking of teams, and our available data for those subjective rankings is mostly useless, because college football has a lousy regular season. Half the games on Texas' schedule will tell us very little about how they would stack up against the contenders in other major conferences.

Super conferences in which the major teams have to play multiple games against programs with comparable resources would be a far greater improvement of the college football product than a new playoff system.

If LSU is penalized for losing a single game despite posting a more impressive resume than any other NCAA team than I don't know how we can have even the slightest confidence in the eventual champion.

I also have a slight fear of OU sneaking back into the title game but this is mostly negated by the fact that Landry-to-Broyles was one of the most dominant pairings in league history. I don't think OU can hang against a Top-5 Pokes squad without Broyles in the lineup.

Kansas State

Dominance over Texas:

I'd like to begin with a brief examination of the fact that Mack Brown is 2-7 against the Wildcats in his time here and attempt to understand why this has happened.

In our 9 contests, KSU has outscored us 242-142 and won each game by an average score of 27-16. An 11 point margin of victory. You can't explain that away with one factor and so I offer a few:

1). Kansas State has generally caught us at opportune times on the schedule.

They beat us in 1998 when we were good and they were excellent, in 1999 when we were average, in 2006 when Colt was knocked out of the game, in 2007 when we were subpar, and in 2010 after our team had already thrown in the towel.

The Wildcats haven't played any of Mack's better teams save for 1998 when KSU was at their own peak. We beat them in 2002 and 2003 behind excellent defense and the water-into-wine miracle that initiated Vince Young's 3-year ministry.

2). They are perfectly designed to beat us up

Physical option football and tendency-attacking zone defense with older JUCO guys, transfers, and blue collar kids offers quite the dichotomy to entitled Mack Brown kids living it up in Austin and playing in a finesse offense.

Their identity is a good foil to our own: Older, unheralded, mentally tough, more physical, disciplined, etc. Doesn't matter against our better, more experienced teams but against the weaker Brown units...

3). Gameplanning

Mack's basic strategy at Texas has been to overwhem the opponent with a talent advantage, hopefully deployed with some competency but that hasn't always been necessary or a viable option thanks to prior limitations at the coordinato level. Stoops beats him more often than not because he has a consistent system and because he deploys his pieces with far greater calculation. His defenses are schematically designed to attack tendency and the players are taught to do so.

He learned all that from Snyder.

So if you combine the good luck, stronger team identity, and gameplanning superiority and then consider that these forces were thrown against the teams that represent the worst of what Mack's method has produced here you have a recipe for the kind of subjugation we have witnessed.

This year, of course, they've caught us at the most opportune time again. I don't know what our health at running back will be but I'm guessing one of them plays through some pain and we decide to go ahead and shove all-in by using Ash in the option game.

The K. State Offense:

This particular KSU team is a much-improved version of the group that annihilated us last year in Manhattan.

On offense, the best comparison for what Kansas St. is doing is actually the Tim Tebow Florida offense and Manny Diaz has said as much. Just imagine the 2008 Gators without Percy Harvin and you're getting pretty close.

We like to compare KSU to Texas because they are the other team in the conference that's built around the run and play-action but schematically how they get there is very different. When they run Power it's QB Power with the RB as just another blocker for the real basis of the offense, which is Collin Klein. They also run zone-read and everything else that is afforded as an option to a team that doesn't mind allowing the QB to get hit.

Colin Hubert is on pace for around 1,000 yards on the season but he's really just a dude who benefits from the numbers advantages of having a running QB. If they get another feature back like Daniel Thomas or an explosive WR that is a homerun threat on a screen, quick pass, or sweep next season and pair them with Klein, this could be a league championship contender.

Klein is the real talent here and he's a fairly unique one. He's deceptively fast, but not in the same sense as other white players who can actually run fine but are overlooked. His speed is deceptive in that he's a long strider, similar to Matt Jones at Arkansas. He's extremely patient in setting up his blocks and consequently doesn't look that explosive. However, he has tremendous power in his lower body, accelerates well, and can shoot through a seam with power.

He's on pace for just under 300 carries on the season but he's durable enough to still be a threat in the passing game where he throws a strong, catchable deep ball, and delivers the intermediate and short passes where only his guy can get it. He has a slow delivery and imperfect mechanics but he gets the job done and only has 5 picks on the season.

You would think that the answer to Klein, like other running QB's, is to punish him and make him beat you in the passing game. However, much in the same way that you wouldn't encourage Texas to run Ricky Williams over and over for the opportunity to hurt him, you don't want to play the option in a way that encourages Klein carries -- you want the ball out of his hands.

Unfortunately, the ball is placed into his hands at the beginning of every snap, so there isn't an easy answer. This is the dilemma for modern defensive coordinators as more teams are combining Power-O, option-football, the spread, and enormous athletes at QB who can take a pounding. Power runs featuring the QB are nearly unstoppable in the red zone and they can be used in 4 or 5 receiver sets that spread the defense across the goal line.

As far as solutions go, OU and A&M did their best to knock Klein silly and it paid few dividends for them but we shouldn't necessarily count on it paying an dividends for us. OU held him to 159 yards and they did so by wrapping him up and shutting down the KSU downfield passing attack that often does some of the most serious damage. Hapless Aggy surrendered the downfield passes in order to limit him to 2.9 yards per carry (and shut down Hubert) which didn't limit KSU's scoring and still failed to stop him from dominating in the red zone.

We have the personnel to lock down their receivers with our corners on islands so we could attempt the A&M strategy but our front 7 is strong enough to be trusted to limit damage from the KSU running game and allow us to show them some deeper safety coverages as well. We should do both.

A steady mix of press-man with aggressive safeties, Cover-3, and Fire Zones is probably the best bet because our offensive health suggests that our defense may need to hold KSU under 20 points while also generating some gamechanging turnovers by mixing looks and creating confusion.

The K. State Defense:

The Wildcat D is a dumbed down version of what OU does: 2-deep zone coverages in front of Over/Under fronts. They don't do the Odd front stuff that OU has been adding to their repertoire, and they don't have different personnel to plug into different roles or blitz in exotic fashions. They just play base defense, anchored by excellent corners.

There are 2 major schools of defensive strategy in college football that attempt to attack whatever the base concepts of an offense are and force them to beat you with constraints or left-handed.

One is the Belichek-Saban school, in which you deny the offense their preference with press-coverage or man defense, 2-gap nose tackles, and big blitzes on 3rd down.

The other is the Snyder-Stoops school where you drop guys back into zone, keep the offense in front of you, but aggressively attack every tendency, and zone-blitz on 3rd down. It's deceiving in that it appears as though the defense is playing it safe until they attack from that position of strength.

They are still rebuilding personnel at Manhattan and are far more simple than OU in that they play almost entirely Cover-2 or Cover-4 and dare you to work them down the field. Should you attempt to force the ball against the zone than DBs Nigel Malone (7 interceptions on the year) and David Garrett will make you pay.

Usually they prefer to play Cover-4, drop their outside linebackers (both of whom play against spread formations) deep and wide to the flats. This makes them fairly susceptible to a steady pounding of Power or Inside Zone but their safeties come up in support and Arthur Brown is probably the class of the league at Middle Linebacker. Their DL works hard and gets solid pressure with 4-man rushes but none of them are particularly special.

Had we a healthy backfield playing at home it's likely that we could have pounded our way to 20-30 points but since it seems unlikely that Bergeron, Brown, or Shipley are at full strength that makes things very tricky.

We aren't going to win throwing 40 times against this back 7 and Snyder would delight in making us attempt it if we can't get the running game going enough to punish honest fronts.

Our best bet is to protect Brown and Bergeron by using the original Ash package, splitting carries between him, Monroe, Goodwin, and the feature backs, and hoping for an explosive play or turnover opportunity en route to winning a 16-13 style slugfest.

I think it's likely that their defense is worn down from battling OU and then A&M in triple OT but I'm not betting against Klein folding until I see him flinch. Vaccaro, you've been challenged.

Safety play in the Big 12

I've been wondering recently whether the production we've gotten from Blake Gideon is comparable to what we might see if we plugged in another Big 12 safety and asked him to do what we ask Gideon to do. Now, I don't think anyone else in the conference has a job quite as easy as Gideon's, or one that offers the same opportunities. However, I worked with what I had.

I compiled the stats for all the starting safeties in the Big 12 and looked at what they had done so far in the following statistical categories:

Tackles, Forced Fumbles & Interceptions, and Pass break-ups.

In most every defense, playing safety generally means being free to come up in support against the pass or run and these are the categories in which their impact in doing so is most likely to be captured.

As of the Missouri game, Gideon has recorded 53 tackles, 1 FF/INT, and 4 pass break-ups.

The average Big 12 safety has 55.35 tackles, 1.85 TO, and 3.4 pass break-ups.

So in doing what we ask him to do, that compares to what the league's other safeties are asked to do, and he's having an almost exactly average impact.

For a 2 star recruit to perform like that consistently over 4 years as a starter is extremely impressive and we should all consider that when we think of Blake Gideon.

Additionally, it's foolish to say "Gideon sucks." He doesn't suck, he's just not great. We can and will do better at this position though once Mykelle Thompson gets in the mix next year.

You can get away with being average at one safety spot but I hope that in the future we'll see more game-changing production from both spots.

Thoughts?

The offenses Diaz faced in the SEC were generally running-oriented and one of our biggest questions for him heading into the season is how he would handle the way Big 12 coordinators fling the ball around. What does a Diaz defense look like vs. the Air Raid? Or the Holgorsen adaptation? While the spread has made a stake in SEC country, it's usually been in the Meyer/Malzahn spread-option/spread-to-run vein.

Diaz's Fire Zone defenses are a simplified college version of what Dick Lebeau and Rex Ryan have been doing in the NFL to it's pro-style, running/play-action offenses. It's excellent for blowing up running games with 8 man fronts and TFLs while being safe against the play action pass. But the question was whether he could mimic something like what Rob Ryan did against the Patriots on Sunday and disrupt the modern passing game.

Well, Oklahoma State came out in a 4 Wide receiver set and we met them with this:

Press man-coverage on the outside receivers with Christian Scott and Kenny Vaccaro on the inside receivers. We played our normal DL, Okafor and Jeffcoat in 9-tech stances with Randall shaded over the center, minus a second tackle. Acho and Robinson played linebacker but in reality Acho was a standup 3-tech defensive tackle who blitzed almost every play. On this play OSU motioned out their tailback and Robinson followed him, leaving us with 4 defenders in the box and in an obvious man coverage.

I'm guessing that Diaz watched some tape of the Big 12 teams, the Aggy-OSU game and our own RRS in particular, then looked up at his "Stop the run, hit the quarterback!" bumper sticker plastered over a frame of Chris White tackling Cam Newton, sighed, invited Akina into his office and started drawing up some plays.

The bubble screen is basically a running play in this conference and OSU has demonstrated that it's more than a constraint in their offense, but most coaches don't treat it that way. Diaz did, so he schemed to take it away. Our game plan went like this:

- Match OSU's offensive strength with our own personnel. Diaz identified the passing game, particularly the quick game and screens, as their main strength. We played a ton of dime defense in this game and lined up predominantly as we did in the frame above. Diaz gave a huge middle finger to the OSU Zone running game with our alignments and gameplan and we nearly got away with it.

- Man Defense. We played a lot more of the Cover 5 that we showed some against OU with a few key differences. For one, Weeden and the OSU receivers could not beat us downfield like the Landry Jones and the Sooners could and we assumed that from the beginning. Blackmon is their one true deep threat and we handled that with Carrington Byndom. Our safeties, while playing as Cover 2 safeties, were clearly instructed to be very aggressive against the OSU short game, even at the risk of leaving Diggs or Byndom on an island against a fade route.

On the first play (from the frame above) they motioned their RB out and Robinson tailed him before immediately setting up a tunnel screen.

As the inside receiver heads out to block the corner, Phillips immediately diagnoses the play as the tunnel screen and responds before Weeden is even ready to deliver the ball.

Here we see him screaming downhill on the play and likely to reach the receiver not much later than the pass does.

This proves to be the case and OSU gets zero gain on the play. On second down they attempted a quick out to Cooper against the other side of the formation.

There are a few interesting factors at play here. One is that we have Gideon and Scott to the same side of our formation while Phillips and Vaccaro are teamed on the other. Against a spread offense that will pick apart your weaknesses relentlessly, I'm not sure why you would concentrate your slowest defenders like that. Another issue is that we have them on the same side as Cooper, who is probably the Cowboys' best underneath receiver besides Blackmon. Finally, I'm not sure if we get that much more out of Scott than we would from Hicks playing the same role. Scott's positive attributes, his physicality and experience, aren't as stark when compared to Hicks as opposed to a freshman corner in that position. On the other hand, it was a good way to employ Scott.

On the quick out in the play, Cooper gets separation from Scott fairly easily and would continue to do so the entire game.

As it turns out here, the pass is dropped and Cooper did minimal damage against this coverage catching 6 balls for 57 yards (37 on one play) for the day. Only five yards off the line, and after already bobbling the pass, Gideon arrives to land a shot.

Gideon played a solid game on the whole, making 6 hard-hitting tackles and playing with physicality and aggressiveness against the running game and underneath routes. Neither of the 2 long running touchdowns were really his fault, but we'll address that soon.

I suspect that OSU was completely unused to a team treating their screens and underneath game as the primary threat. Last year they ruined teams with their vertical passing game and zone runs with Kendall Hunter and mastered the 3-step drops and screens as constraints. I'm sure Deruyter was bewildered when taking away their running game and bracketing Blackmon failed to prevent their explosive output in the 2nd half of their game.

In the following series, the Cowboys tried to punish our aggressive safety play with a few fades to Blackmon and found that what used to be their strength couldn't get the job done.

They had just completed an out to Blackmon against tight coverage followed by a post to Anyiam that was punished by a hit from Gideon and then wanted to pick on our sophomore corner with their 1st round pick.

Because of our pass rush (on this play anyway), Weeden is locked in on Blackmon early.

In frame 2 we can see that we're in a Fire Zone and Byndom is a deep 1/3 defender. All our "hot" defenders are keeping the OSU receivers in front of them before breaking on the ball, which isn't always the case, but our deep 1/3 defenders will always play over the top. Weeden decides that he trusts Blackmon to go up and make a play, or he has no idea what's going on around him. Whatever the case...

he throws a pick to Byndom that is robbed by official review. To me it looked like Byndom's legs bounced and moved in such a way that you would have to determine that his right foot did in fact touch down on the turf before he fell on his stomach and he clearly had the ball controlled when the foot hit the ground.

My lead image is taken from Weeden's expression after this play, complete befuddlement, but they decide to attempt the same play again, perhaps confident that they won't get another Cover-3 Fire Zone.

Gideon drops into the box before the snap and initiates another blitz. While this isn't alarming in and of itself, it might have clued the Cowboys in that another fade to Blackmon would be running into deep defenders.

We can see here that it's too late and Weeden is keyed in on Blackmon with zero time to pursue other options with Okafor in his face.

It turns out that we were in Man Coverage, Cover 1 to be exact, and Byndom was responsible for defending the middle of the field against Blackmon in addition to the sideline routes. Blackmon made a double move to get outside but Byndom recovered and got his hands on the ball again before Blackmon knocked it loose.

Yet another Cover 1 blitz followed and Weeden misfired trying to find Blackmon on a post. While they managed to score 21 going into halftime, Weeden was having tremendous difficulty attacking our coverages with Byndom blanketing Blackmon and basically 4 safeties playing against their underneath game.

The final component of our game plan was to get pressure primarily with 4 pass rushers and then situationally with big blitzes or Fire Zones. It turned out that our only effective edge blitzers in the game were Phillips and Vaccaro as Gideon or Scott blitzes were generally stonewalled. Acho had 2 QB pressures and another 2 TFL playing a LB/DT hybrid-position that I think Diaz may have invented for him.

Superficial fans look at the lack of sacks and fail to recognize that we had Weeden throwing out of 3 day drops all day and only completing 56% of his passes. He's hitting 76% on the year and hit 78% vs. A&M, so he's demonstrated that he can shred teams doing this. They've been getting 8.6 yards per pass attempt on the year and we held them to 5.3 yards per attempt.

Superficial fans have also looked at our run defense at times this year and called for "more Edmond!" while ignoring what Acho and Robinson have done this season. We've just seen what Acho was asked to do in this game and his success, Robinson's assignment often required him to either defend 2 gaps in the running game or to play man coverage against the OSU running backs. In other words, "Robinson, try to make sure their running backs don't beat us in any phase of the game."

I believe that in OU's scheme Keenan Robinson could play Travis Lewis' role possibly better than Lewis himself. Against the Cowboys: he held their backs to 21 yards on 3 receptions, had 9 tackles all over the field, and led the Longhorn defense in giving up 212 rushing yards.

That last stat is the reason Edmond gets calls for playing time. However, this overlooks the impact a LB crew of Hicks and Edmond could accomplish next season compared to what Acho-Robinson offers us this year. Can either stunt and blitz like Acho? Can either play coverage like Robinson?

Maybe Edmond can be a LB/DT in dime and Hicks can handle Robinson's role or Hicks can stunt and Edmond can try and be run-game eraser/RB defender but I will be pleasantly surprised if our coverage isn't downgraded somewhat at linebacker next season.

Back to the gameplan. Ultimately OSU stayed ahead of us due to 3 mistakes on our part and then won the game on a play in which they finally figured out how to make us pay for attacking the short game with our safeties.

The obvious mistake was the kickoff return TD. Handing an offense like that 7 points was possibly our most egregious error.

The other two occurred near the goal line. In our first example, we line up in a 3-4 look and Acho and Robinson dance around and stunt at the line for an eternity before Weeden has decided how he will take advantage of their obvious blitz.

The blitz comes and we have soft coverage on their receivers hoping to force a useless short throw, get to Weeden, or get a turnover.

However, as a result of bringing so much pressure we've left Byndom on an island against Blackmon that spans half the field. They complete the post route and Blackmon uses his man-strength to drag Byndom into the end zone.

Next we get a short yardage situation nearing the red zone. They try and power in with Inside Zone but Gideon filled and prevented a first down, but they bet against us making that play a second time and make the call again.

They line up in a heavy set and we load up the box to meet them as safely as we feel we can without leaving Byndom entirely alone against Blackmon again.

Much like we saw in my Rice game stills, Hicks drifts outside to gaps that are already filled by stunting DL and leaves a large gap up the middle.

Gideon is the only one with a chance in pursuit and he's obstructed by Robinson's blocked body. Immediately on the sideline Diaz meets Hicks and makes clear who was in error on this play.

After all that we still had a chance at victory, until they found a way to finally punish our aggressive safety play and unleashed this play call:

Hicks is in for Acho as the stunting linebacker/3-tech with Vaccaro and Scott in their usual places over the slot receivers. OSU is in the pistol formation.

It's an inside zone call with Randall getting doubled and the left guard and left tackle sealing off Hicks and Jeffcoat in their normal pass-pursuits, which will not be productive to stopping the zone run. The successful doubling of Randall guaranteed a positive run but it's likely that he was anticipating a pass. Robinson is the only one with a chance to blow up the hole in the left A gap unless someone comes off a block.

All of that is really mostly irrelevant though. By using the 3-2-6 dime front we surrendered some gains in the running game and OSU had declined to take them because they knew that we could prevent scores from the running game by getting TFL with our blitzes. What made this play so important was the play of the wide receivers. The outside receivers to either side are looking for the tunnel screen pass while the inside receivers are running outside as though to block the corners.

In order to have an impact against the OSU screens and short game our Safeties have been attacking based on reads of the wide receivers, Robinson is now the primary obstacle to a big gashing run up the middle and rather than aggressively filling the gap he's allowed the center to reach him and tries to fend off the OL.

Some of our defensive backs are still unaware that the play will not actually be a wide receiver screen and Robinson has effectively been sealed off from the running lane. Unless he can get around the block or Jeffcoat can make a diving play there will be an enormous hole in the middle of the defense.

Neither of those dreams materialize and Gideon is only now turning his hips to attempt to run down the back. Check out the following angle of the enormous hole opened up:

From here you can see the enormous gap in the run defense AND how hard our safeties bit on the WR screen action. There is no one on the field with a reasonable chance at catching the running back. You can attempt to blame Gideon's athleticism if you like but neither Vaccaro nor Phillips came any closer and I doubt Earl Thomas could have made the tackle from that angle.

The reality is that OSU found a way to punish us for playing that scheme on them all day and they possess an offense that can stress a defense a several different ways. Bob Stoops is probably cursing us for forcing them to find answers for that attack plan in the misdirection game but the answers were there.

It's interesting that both Muschamp and Diaz came to Austin and ended up employing more man-coverage schemes than they had at previous stops. I suspect this is in part due to Akina's prowess in teaching man-coverage and also in the difficulty in teaching zone and employing it effectively enough to handle Big 12 offenses with young defensive backs. Ultimately schemes like Cover 5 or Muschamp's Cover- man are brutal for Big 12 passing games but they require turnovers and big plays from the safeties and excellent DL play to get the same kind of turnovers that a zone can offer.

Diaz has now demonstrated that he knows how to take advantage of the man-coverage Corner factory here, that he understands the importance of taking away the quick game and the screen game, and that he can create pressures in nickel and dime defenses.

Those are really the most important tests for a Texas defensive coordinator facing today's Big 12. The fact that he also has an great resume for blowing up downhill and spread running games doesn't hurt either.

Other quick notes:

-Todd McShay tweeted that he was "underwhelmed" by Kheeston Randall's game tape while reviewing defensive tackles in the draft class. Given that Todd McShay thought Gerald McCoy was a better DT prospect than Ndamukong Suh I'm inclined to dismiss this.

Randall does need to demonstrate some pass-rush acumen since most teams would be looking at him as a 3-4 end or 3-tech defensive tackle and he hasn't wowed as a pass-rusher. Pass-rush is what garners the big bucks in the NFL today. However, his ability to fight double teams shouldn't be overlooked. I think he could even play nose-tackle in a 1-gap pressure scheme.

- Getting 2 more years from Byndom is starting to look more and more unlikely. He's been beaten on a deep route by Kenny Stills, in which he bit on a pump fake, and he was beaten once by Blackmon while on a lonely island and only gave up 74 yards on 7 receptions from the best receiver in the league.

If we weren't cranking out NFL corners so regularly this might be a major concern since 2013 is looking pretty good for us. I'm pretty confident that Diggs, Phillips, Turner and whomever else will be premier shape by then though so we should be okay.

- David Ash undoubtedly learned some valuable lessons saturday. He handled a dumbed-down version of the Colt McCoy offense at times and proved he has the necessary athleticism to keep himself upright and dangerous in the spread sets despite our weak pass-protection.

I'm not sure what his ceiling is as far as accuracy and reading defenses but I suspect that by 2013 Ash to Shipley and Davis might be comparable to what OU or OSU is doing right now in their passing games, which is championship level offense. Except, we'll also have a power running game and possibly both Jonathan Gray and Malcolm Brown.

Texas has won the battle in the trenches against the Sooners for the last several years. Generally, the defensive line on each side tends to have the advantage and I'm suspicious that both schools are/were prioritizing pass protection both in recruiting and in player development. This year OU dominated the line of scrimmage in all aspects of the game, but primarily pass protection and run defense.

The current Sooner OL cannot run the ball against a defense with BCS athletes and we handled them with 6 in the box with relative ease save for that one boundary Outside-Zone run that they seem to land at least once against everyone. The Diaz attack plan was to play Vaccaro in the nickel all game against Broyles and confuse Landry with a combination of Fire Zones and various 7 and 8 man coverages. Our base defense is a traditional Cover-3 Zone with mostly classic Under/Over defensive fronts and it saw heavy work. We also played Okafor some in a wide-9 technique that generated some of our only effective 4 man pass rush when he bulldozed their tight end. I don't think we've done that much this season and usually play him further inside to take advantage of his run defense.

I have no idea what Muschamp would have done against this Sooner offense because no one on our DL should scare opponents in a 1 on 1 matchup. Okafor or Jeffcoat playing a wide-9 more might help but that's not really enough. They've all been very good in run defense but we aren't collapsing the pocket for our young secondary anywhere near like we were in 2008.

After an injured Demarco Cobbs, Acho is probably our best pass rusher and Robinson might be 2nd on the list. Priority for the offseason and year two in the scheme is developing pass rush moves for all of our DL. The swim move should be useful since we stunt so much and Diaz's "run to daylight" and various pass-rush concepts definitely could benefit from another year in the crockpot. But some of it is also schematic as his DL at MIss St didn't get many sacks either.

Our Fire Zones still offer the best formation to bring pressure but they were actually some of our safer defensive calls against OU for two reasons.

1) The inability of our 4 man pass rush to consistently trouble Jones, and 2) Breakdowns in our secondary that occurred in 7 man coverages where we were plagued either by lack of discipline, execution errors, or execution failures.

In today's Big 12 there might be no better mark of a league champion than having an experienced pass offense and experienced secondary to handle everyone else's passing game. I've got some screen shot examples of coverage breakdowns that will demonstrate this.

So again, the plan is to play nickel and bewilder Landry by mixing Fire Zones with thick coverages. One of our main max-coverage calls was Cover-5. It's a 2 deep safety coverage with the linebackers and corners locked up in man coverage on the receivers and backs. Ideally you force the QB to hit extremely tight windows downfield and encourage short passes to the running backs that can't do much damage. On 2nd and 8, down 6-3 and after an offensive score with the chance to gain momentum we made the Cover-5 call against the following look:

OU is in the pistol with 2 WR, Millard and one of their RB's in the backfield, and a tight end to the boundary. We have Byndom on Stills, Vaccaro on Broyles and Gideon over the top. We can't play a much safer look than that.

Well OU had a plan to make it work. They send Broyles and Stills deep and the RB flares out. Robinson runs out to the flat with the RB, revealing us to be in man coverage which could be threatened by the RB-LB matchup. For that reason, Byndom unfortunately decides to peek back into the backfield, as though he were in a zone coverage with no deep responsibilities. Since OU has two of the league's best receivers going deep a wiser defensive back leaves the RB to Robinson until the ball has been thrown. Also, they ran this play to take the lead against Florida St. in the 4th quarter which we should have noticed on film. It gets much worse though.

Acho blitzes once he realizes his assignment, the FB, is not going out on a pass route. Diggs and Scott are pretty much wasted in double coverage on a tight end who is also pass protecting because OU wants to insure that Landry has time to execute the pump fake. The key point to note here is that Gideon is breaking towards Broyles who has created separation from Vaccaro by making a double move outside.

However, Byndom is still over Broyles and no one is behind Stills. His priority has to be protecting the endzone. I'm not really sure what happened here with Gideon. If he was reacting to the pump fake than his reaction time is incredibly slow, if he was trying to help on Broyles than he wasn't paying attention to Stills who had gained separation and was almost in the end zone. If he was reading Landry's eyes he was doing so poorly because #12 was looking to Stills after he pump faked. Whatever the case was, he was not honoring his deep safety responsibilities.

Here you see Gideon's head whipped around as he realizes the ball is going over his head to Stills. "Oh yeah that guy, the deepest receiver who was uncovered and headed towards the end zone..."

We were in a good coverage to deal with that play and had we played it correctly at either the corner position or at safety we could have been looking at a first down to the RB at worst and an interception or sack at best.

This OU offense should call to our minds our own 2008 Texas offense. An offensive line that is experienced in pass protection and nearly useless in run blocking, a QB who knows where to exploit coverages and delivers passes accurately to small windows, and 2 elite-level receivers who can stress a defense even in a coverage-heavy scheme. We see here that presenting a defense with both Stills and Broyles to the same side was more pressure than our crew could handle.

On the next OU drive we dial up Cover-5 again. First Byndom draws a pass interference call on Stills. That previous play where Byndom peeked into the backfield was really the only instance in which Stills bested him one on one. Byndom is already playing at roughly a 3rd team All-conference level with potentially 2 years left on scholarship. He's Curtis Brown with a mean streak. Or Cedric Griffin with no qualifiers. Let's hope we get those two years.

The Sooners find themselves in 1st & 25 and a Fire Zone causes an incompletion. 2nd & 25, same result. 3rd & 25, Diaz decides to play Cover-5 again and catch Landry trying to force something -- either an incompletion or turnover.

We show a massive blitz to disguise and encourage Landry to revert to freshman Uncle Rico mode and throw into heavy coverage.

Notice that our linebackers have managed to drop back in time to lock on to the inside receivers. We have Robinson deep down the middle, Byndom has totally out-leveraged Stills on the outside and the safeties are in deep drops. There are a few problems though. First, notice that Landry is looking to Reynolds vs. Diggs. Whether he believes we are blitzing or not he knows the best chance at a first down is to attack our 3rd corner with a much taller receiver. Decision made, Uncle Rico is going to throw it up and and at worst we get the ball deep in our own territory.

In Cover-2, Zone or man, the corner wants to jam the receiver outside along the sideline, or force them into a shallow cross. Once the receiver has to run along the sideline the deep safety can reach them and the QB has to make the farthest possible throw, deep to the far sideline, against the safety coming at a favorable angle.

We've seen this from UT corners before. Diggs lets the WR pursue his chosen route to the outside because that's where we wanted him to go anyways. But you should still jam the receiver and hold up their progress so that the QB has to hold the ball longer and the safety has more time to react to the route developments. If you blow the jam and get beat you still have the deep support and we are no worse off than we are here where Reynolds has tremendous separation.

It turns out that OU was running 4 verticals and Landry just picked his best matchup and delivered a strike. Phillips split the difference between vertical threats and doesn't respond in time to either play the ball or knock Reynolds unconscious for extending to catch it. First and goal for the Sooners. They convert on a hitch to Broyles where Diggs again failed to jam the receiver. In my opinion you should always jam receivers and play them tight on the goal line and force them to break free in a small endzone where help comes quickly, or beat you on a fade, either of which are much more difficult than what OU did here.

We have to give credit to Reynolds for getting that break off the line and a lot more credit to Landry Jones for delivering a perfect ball. But that's a pretty sizable window that he hit against a coverage designed to make that window as small as possible.

Simple execution errors by a young secondary exploited by a veteran QB and his receivers. On both plays we lost the point of attack in the passing game, despite superior numbers, against the strength of the OU offense. If you are Diaz, what do you do? We can whine that he didn't train these guys adequately in the coverage but that would be silly in light of how well we played them overall in this game and how well our young guys have played this season. Diggs is a true freshman and Phillips is a part-time safety and first year starter.

I could outline a few plays where Gideon's inability to run and play match-zone or man coverage hurt us but I don't see much value in that. This was one of his worst games at Texas when we needed steady, disciplined play. We could have possibly survived his physical limitations but if he is giving up TD's over the top there isn't a ton of value that he brings.

Instead of focusing on that issue, let's look at an earlier Texas drive that reveals how OU attacked us and gained the turnovers that turned a defeat into a route.

On first down we try and run Power-O against an honest front. They have 7 in the box with Jefferson either playing safety or riding the bench. They like to play Corey Nelson (#7) on the edge to take advantage of his natural talent there before eventually replacing Lewis. The Safeties are lined up in deep Cover-2 mode but that changes when they blitz the corner. It's an under front with the DL strength shifted to the weakside and the linebackers shifted to the strong side. In the Power-O our key matchup is against the strongside 5-tech defensive end, number 92.

Number 92, their defensive tackle Stacy McGee who weighs 300 pounds, is not getting budged at all. OU played a lot of big bodies on the line and brought linebacker blitzes with man-coverage when they wanted to get pressure in a hurry. Since we can't clear him out of the way, Mason Walters can't reach Travis Lewis.

The result here is just a pile-up at the line of scrimmage. Somehow Malcolm Brown wiggles his way to a 2 yard gain.

The next play is one I'd rather just not revisit again. Ash took a slanted drop and ran into Fozzy Whittaker, then had to fire the ball out of bounds. It's awful, let's move on.

We have 2 backs for dump-off or max protection possibilities since they have been blitzing 6 in this instance and will continue to do so throughout the game. Not here though. The Sooners have Jefferson on Shipley and are presenting a Quarters or Cover-3 look in the secondary. We'll find out which.

Turns out it's quarters, but you would have trouble guessing if you were the QB. It took me a while to figure it out while playing process of elimination in slow motion. In quarters coverage the safeties stay over the top of the inside receivers, the corners stay over the top of the outside receivers and the linebackers cover the flats leaving the Mike with the middle of the field to himself. They're pattern reading though, and Jefferson knows that one of Ash's comfort throws is the slant down the middle to Shipley.

Jefferson ignores his typical responsibility to pick up Fozzy in the flat and trails Shipley while the Mike leverages Shipley further upfield so he doesn't get behind him. Meanwhile, the deep safety is closing in as well. Three defenders converging on one tendency.

Either the leverage move by the Mike linebacker or the threat of the impending death blow by the safety trips up Shipley. Since he's played with a lot of courage we'll assume the former but I would forgive him for avoiding a shot like that and staying healthy. Jefferson is able to jump over his body and collect his 4th interception in 2 games.

OU generally played our running game with an honest front and only dropped an 8th man in the box when we went big with only 1 WR on the field, yet they got us in 3rd and long pretty regularly and then used their man-blitzes and tendency attacking coverage to beat us into submission.

We don't have much of a passing game installed yet and we definitely don't possess an OL that has mastered protections, or a QB that can make the pre-snap reads that Landry Jones can make to set himself up for easy throws. This is what happens when a competent defensive game planner goes up against an incomplete offense with inexperienced quarterback play.

We'll get better and rip them to pieces when they insert inexperienced Drew Allen next year without Broyles or half the current OL. If they don't rebuild their running game they are looking at some long seasons ahead. I'm sure those bastards will find a way. Defensively, they are in great shape and have made several adjustments to help them continue to destroy the spread out Big 12.

Other notes:

-Drew Allen has a cannon arm. He has prototypical size and on his one deep throw seemed to possess solid accuracy as well. Once they can rep him in their system I'm sure he could be the next great OU QB, but who knows how steep the learning curve will be? Evidently 3* QB's with cannon arms that can be fashioned by OU into day 1 draft picks are growing on trees these days. We need to find those trees and cut them down.

-Kansas St. They've beaten 3 quality opponents. On offense it's the same thing they always do and Snyder is finding some of the spread/single-wing formations of today offer even more options for his, uh, option attack. On defense they are playing 3 athletic linebackers instead of a nickel and rotated between Cover-2 and Cover-4 to shut down the Missouri passing attack while their DL shredded the Tiger OL. It's a scary team and possibly one of OU's most likely losses since they play in Manhattan. I'm cautiously looking forward to my trip to DKR to see us play them.

-The team that beats OU is going to be either the one with the resources in the secondary to lock them down or the one that can play stuff like Cover-5 with discipline while they get pressure with 4. I don't know if anyone in the league is up to it because it's hard to account for 2 receivers that good but I remain convinced that Alabama or LSU will take them apart.

-Baylor has to outscore Aggy to win and probably also needs Sherman to wet the bed again because they are even worse equipped than OSU or Tech to stop that rushing attack. On the other hand, Robert Griffin and that passing game are going to make the Aggy pass defense prove that they have improved.

-As terrible as Ash's mistakes were in that game I'll take him over Case, who self-sacks himself, has no accuracy downfield, and fails to step into throws in order to avoid hits. We can correct the mistakes Ash made but I'm not sure about Case's. He strikes me as being Todd Reesing with less acumen and arm strength. I don't want that.

The Sooners under Bob Stoops have made their hay with an aggressive, quick strike offense and physical defense that exploits known tendencies -- a combo that has led to some humiliating final scores. The offense has gone further in this direction since Kevin Wilson and Josh Heupel installed the no-huddle but they've always been about play-action bombs and systems that protect the QB from making critical analysis after the snap.

A Scipio already typed, their defense is a tendency-attacking monster that specifically thrives when the back 7 is loaded with playmakers and ball hawks. Their 2000 defense, an absolutely dominant unit, was not especially overwhelming in the trenches but the way guys like Strait, Roy Williams, and Rocky Calmus attacked you led to timely defense and turnovers.

They are designed to build a quick lead and then converge on your route tendencies and your QB with blitzes and smart, aggressive play from pattern-read coverages. If they can play you with their nickel Cover-2 and bring zone-blitzes on 3rd and long they can really punish you. Their current crop of back 7 defenders isn't big - they all weight in under 240 - but they're rarely out of position and tackle well. The Sooner D has already knocked five offensive players out of a game this season. The one liability Harsin will no doubt attack is the questional coverage ability of OU's LBs and safeties. Similarly, if you can get a good seal block at the second level on these guys, the Texas RBs can have some success.

Stoops made his name at Kansas St. with Snyder running a particular variation of your 3-deep, 8 man front that revolved around attacking you inside with aggressive safety help and fast-flowing linebacker play. That's translated to the spread game with their Roy-backer/Sam linebacker Cover-2 which aggressively assaults your perimeter passing game and looks for turnovers and QB hits. They've kept moving in that direction by fielding a fast, undersized back 7 that clean up plays quickly.

Their offense isn't particularly physical, though they have some very solid talent at TE and FB, and when their running game looks good it's usually because the front 7 isn't lined up correctly, not because they are trucking positioned defenders. In the passing game, Landry generally knows where he wants to go with the ball and his eyes don't lie. The trouble is that covering Broyles and Stills is immensely difficult and he can beat good coverage all over the field.

That's as unflattering a picture as I can paint of this team. I think that Alabama or LSU would take them apart in the National Championship if it comes to it, but as satisfying as that might be the real question is whether Texas can do it.

Since Stoops/Venables specialize in attacking your base concepts and relying on their speed to apply constraints, the best way to attack them is with concepts that can reliably attack them at multiple points. Go watch tape of the 2008 game and you'll see that even with Shipley flexed out as a mini-TE and 4/5 WR formations that their back 7 still knew where Colt was going with the ball and were within inches of pick sixes on multiple occasions. Colt made plays, Quan worked magic, and they couldn't really cover Shipley. Fast forward to 2009, they take Shipley away with such impudent schemes and techniques that we are able to run the ball for over 100 yards with one of the worst running games in the school's history. OU didn't care, they knew we didn't know how to win that way and it was only by a defensive miracle that we won.

Harsin, however, isn't looking to create the best matchups and then execute them against your best effort. His base concepts do apply pressure at multiple parts of the field. The inside-zone/sweep play is designed to punish a fast, aggressive defense with a tendency to overplay. Flow quickly to the zone and you have to try and change direction and beat Monroe in a footrace. Hesitate in dealing with the zone and the F=MA equation begins to trend against you as you approach the tackling of Malcolm Brown.

That said, OU can still employ an 8-man front like ISU did and perhaps respect Shipley/Davis more with their corner's drops and ask us to beat them by banging our head against their 8 men and throwing hitches and short against a physical back 7. We need to test them early in the passing game and keep a clean pocket to throw the ball because a pump-fake could be worth 6 points. Other than that, we should welcome the challenge to pound the ball for 4 quarters. Who wins the LOS in the 4th quarter usually wins this game.

In the passing game, Case plays with a certain confidence that you can't help but feel is completely unfounded and his self-sack against Iowa St. probably kept Harsin awake with nightmares about Ronnel Lewis until he decided to just play the freshman. Colt got away with his footwork until he faced Ndamukong Suh without more than 1 reliable receiver. Case isn't that athletic and I think Lewis is more than athletic enough to instill that same lesson. This is why the Cigar is telling us that Ash may get his shot to take over this weekend. If he runs with it, he'll have earned his job in extreme contrast to how Gilbert begun his career here.

Now, for all the talk about the youth on this team I have the following counter-punch:

Emmanuel Acho, Keenan Robinson, Kheeston Randall, Kenny Vaccaro, and Alex Okafor are all upperclassmen who could be playing in the NFL next season. Blake Gideon is a 4 year starter. Which basket do you think we should place our eggs in?

OU's offense is considered an elite unit and our defense needs to take them on and decisively win that matchup for us to get this upset.

In Michael Holley's "Patriot Reign", which includes Belichik's line about swagger that Scipio has been quoting, we get a glimpse into how they approach a defense of "the greatest show on turf", the 2001 St. Louis Rams. After blitzing Kurt Warner in the regular season and getting smoked, Belichek determines that the way to throw a spoke in the wheel of the Ram machine was to take away Marshall Faulk rather than assaulting Warner. So they would jam him at the line with their ends before pursuing Warner, prevent a clean release to areas of the field where he could not be covered, and attempted to always make Warner check to option no. 2.

Allow me to introduce some stats from the Sooner's first 4 games: Landry threw for 9.3 yards per attempt against Missouri while Broyles caught 13 balls for 154 yards. Jones had 12.9 yards per attempt against Ball St. with Broyles pulling in 4 catches for 109 yards. Against Tulsa, Jones completed 8 yards per pass while Broyles had 14 receptions and 158 yards.

Florida St. held Broyles to 55 yards on 7 catches and Landry had only 7.4 yards per attempt and 2 interceptions.

They won that game due to defensive excellence and a few very impressive catches by Stills. And because they knocked Emanuel out of the game. They still run the ball a lot to set up their play-action but it's effectiveness is a mirage. We can't fall for it.

How would you defend the Sooner offense? Personally, I would line up Adrian Phillips against Broyles in the slot so you have someone that can get physical with him underneath and in the screen game. In the instance of Fire-Zones, play Vaccaro over the top of him and punish him quickly on any receptions over the middle of the field ... asuming you can get a clean hit. Broyles is a bitch in space. If they are willing to ask him to lay his body out 5-8 times with Kenny the Maccabee lying in wait we should welcome that strategy.

Diaz's system is possibly ideal for handling the Sooner attack in the following regards: He knows how to get his guys lined up and they can do so quickly (have been practicing it all year), their assignments are pretty simple and thus execution based, and he regards his Fire Zones as being as safe or base as anything else he runs.

The last point is crucial, because our ability to have automatic Fire Zone calls against their hurry-up without getting brutalized by their screen or passing game, is going to take away their crutch: Landry's pre-snap certainty.

Take the following play as an example:

Iowa St. is lined up in a trips formation to the field side and we come out with a Cover-2 look although we can already see Acho and Gideon creeping a little closer.

Fire Zone! The corners and boundary safety are the 3 deep defenders, Gideon's assignment is Hot 3, which is not somewhere you would expect to find him and a role that would be filled in base Cover-3 by an inside linebacker. He reads Steele's blues and voila, INT and almost a pick six.

Interception returned 43 yards like he was back at Leander running the zone-read against Cedar Park.

The rule for our 6 pass defenders in the Fire Zones against Landry should be as follows:
1). Deep defenders MUST stay on top of Stills and Broyles.
2). Hot defenders should watch Landry Jones eyes, because they don't lie.
3). Bracket Broyles whenever possible.

I expect to see a lot of looks deployed to confuse the Sooners and hide where the ball should go. 3-4 defense with Hicks, Acho, Robinson, and Cobbs all in the game is an option that provides some dangerous blitzes while presenting a lot of tacklers who wrap up, and underneath defenders who can take deeper drops than Jones is used to facing.

Some Man looks and 7 or 8 pass defender looks will come into play as we seek to confuse Landry and create opportunities where he finds a Blake Gideon or blitzer where he expected to find Broyles or a checkdown. It's more than possible that he might channel Romo while in Dallas if we encourage him with some hits and disguises. His tendency and ability to beat coverage with his arm can backfire if we make him do so repeatedly against the likes of Hicks and Robinson.

So there you go -- screw their running game, pound Broyles and Landry both mentally and physically, and make them earn their way down the field. If we can get 2-3 turnovers that kill better Sooner drives or present scoring opportunities, then our ground game and gadgets could be enough to manufacture winning offense.

That's how we win. If you aren't seeing Red Zone stops and turnovers when OU has the ball you could be looking at a long game. But if you are, we take them down like Georges St. Pierre and pound them for 5 rounds and come out with the belt.

No screen shots for you this week, instead I'd like to hit on a bunch of themes from the weekend.

This should not have have happened. 768 yards of total offense, 600 of it rushing. Such futility is inexcusable. Kansas is not building much of a case for their program in the midst of major conference realignments. KU is obviously a hoops school but football pays the bills and now is definitely the time when marginal football programs want to be padding their resumes, not making a case for systemic impotence. Considering where Mangino had exhumed the program from, the Turner Gil era has been an absolute disaster so far. No Big 12 team should be so strapped for resources that they can't field a team that allows fewer than, I don't know...500 rushing yards? I don't care who the opponent is.

I was able to catch a replay of Florida St. vs. OU and was pleased to find that this is the exact same OU team that we see every season. They have a system on offense and defense and they just plug in different pieces. This is one of the better iterations of the evolving Sooner machine but it has the same weaknesses as any other. We'll get to those weaknesses at a more timely moment but I'll give you this for now.

Landry Jones is as dependent on pre-snap reads as any OU QB not named Josh Heupel. They also don't appear to have a real playmaker at RB but more of the Chris Brown/Allen Patrick variety (where is Finch?). The OL really struggles in goal line formations and pass pro on 3rd & long. It's early but they just don't look like a very powerful unit.

But they have some of the best skill position talent in the country. Kenny Stills is a tremendous downfield threat and Broyles is the most polished WR in the country. On defense, the linebackers are all fast and mean, Nelson is a beast at safety, and the defensive ends can really get after it. FSU had a smallish Center so OU lined up in odd fronts all day and swallowed up the Seminole running game by winning the Nose-tackle vs. Center battle on most snaps.

OU is perfectly designed to overwhelm Big 12 teams who can't handle the pace while trying to keep tabs on Stills and Broyles. The defense is well designed to create turnovers with their pressure and speedy defensive backfield. However, unless they get out to a big lead on us I foresee a dog fight because they aren't really well designed to handle a running game like ours and I think Shipley and DJ Grant over the middle can cause some problems for them.

In another topic relevant to Texas, Chris Brown briefly discusses whether quarterbacks can increase their arm strength after high school. You would think that the answer would be a resounding yes, since most high schools don't have the facilities to match college strength and conditioning programs. Surprisingly, the list is small.

After my first viewing of our UCLA game I was ready to transplant Case's brain into Gilbert's body, but I was then steadied from that decision by the horrifying possibility of instead being left with Gilbert's brain in Case's body. With Garrett electing to have season ending shoulder surgery, our QB depth chart just became razor thin and frightfully young. But it's winning games...

Case showed great ability in managing a collapsing pocket and finding open receivers. The slippery nature of some of our receivers makes this kind of playmaking pretty dangerous for opposing teams, much like we saw with Colt & co. in 2008. Combined with the physical nature of our WR blocking this season and you have the potential for some off-schedule highlights over the course of the season.

While you definitely wouldn't want to rely on off-schedule plays to make your offense go, there's no doubt that it's incredibly effective when it does happen.

In a post over at Brophyfootball, a coach mentioned the rise of pattern-matching in football and discussed an unintentional consequence of the style. The upshot of the post was that if your defenders are converting to man-defense once the routes develop than you are as vulnerable to a mobile QB as a man-coverage defense. A coach is quoted in the article as suggesting that against pattern-matching, Vince Young would have had over 2,000 rushing yards with defenders having to reverse their course and attempt to deal with his speed, cuts, and power in the open field from miserable angles.

Sadly that holds no significance for Case McCoy and I'm curious how teams will handle him once they decide to let him try and find his way scrambling past the line of scrimmage rather than allowing him to draw defenders by leaving the pocket only to deliver the ball to an open receiver.

His deep shot to Mike Davis was absolutely the correct read but was badly underthrown and if we were running the Colt McCoy-no running game offense, teams would sit back in Cover-2 and make Case complete deep outs and beat zone coverage with laser beams or timing routes. Could he do it? I hope we don't have to find out. And thankfully we're not running that offense anymore.

As it happens though, we have a powerful and diverse rushing attack (look out Kansas!), and if teams can't slow down Malcolm Brown and our sweeps it will be very hard for defenses to make Case or Ash do much more than complete a few play-action tosses over the middle, hitches and screens. As Scipio pointed out in his QB preview before the season, Case is particularly adept at finding the holes that defenses leave open as they sell out to stop our running game.

I was amazed at how much we were able to improve from the BYU game on offense and I suspect much of that had to do with UCLA's complete lack of discipline. The packaging of the WR sweeps with our Power and Inside Zone game is really punishing teams who can't handle Monroe/Shipley/Goodwin's speed or Malcolm inside with honest fronts. If you have to sell out to prevent one we will murder you with the other.

For their solid level of team athleticism, UCLA could not handle all those assaults on their front and did not play with discipline, letting DJ Grant get wide open for much of the game. Maybe it's because they had no TE film to study over the past two years? UCLA also got gashed by lead draw plays with Malcolm (at last! a draw play is featured in the offense!).

This is the genius of HarsinWhite and the hope for our season is that our staff can continue to attack different parts of the field in specific situations with our cast of young playmakers despite having two QBs with hardly any experience. The development of McAsh and an expansion of the pass plays is going to result in an offense that is hard to control between the 20's.

Inside the Red Zone we have as potent a combo of options as we've seen at Texas since the VY days and do not fail to discount the impact this could have in major games this season when the difference between scoring 3 vs 7 will determine whether we win or lose. We have our normal offense with Malcolm as the featured back, the Wildcat, and the goal-line formations with Berryhill and Cody Johnson, as well as the option game with Ash.

Our defense proved that we can handle a physical AND talented running game (UCLA had 34 carries for 141 yards) and the confusion we wrecked upon Prince was a tasty appetizer for what will happen to many Big 12 QB's on 3rd and long this season. Nice to see some sticky fingers in the defensive backfield as well.

Gametape heroes who stood out on review include: E. Acho, who was extremely difficult to deal with on blitzes; Blake Gideon, who in addition to avoiding any open field misses, made some punishing hits and was involved in 2 turnovers (tipped a ball and recovered a fumble); Marquise Goodwin, who fought hard on O and brought the wood on that crushing block across the middle (I love the physicality but the NCAA is absolutely right to try and take hits like that out of the game); and Kenny Vaccaro - if he's back next year it's because scouts weren't paying attention.

Gideon in particular, who is maligned by the majority of our fanbase on a regular basis, deserves accolades for a great play against the option in which he came from the opposite side of the field (recognizing that his assignment was under no threat) and nailed the QB who had to pitch to the RB, whom was already covered by Vaccaro. I suspect that Gideon has been encouraged to provide more support in the alley as the deep safety, or he was just pissed about getting worked pretty good in last year's game. Either way, solid play in this game from the lone senior in our secondary.

You have to encouraged by the development we've seen at defensive tackle, in the secondary, and in the entire offense which is embracing its identity as a diverse, smashmouth football team. Iowa State will test our QBs to beat a more disciplined base defense and it should be a good tune-up before Stoops attempts to expose all our deficiences, limited as they currently appear to be.

It's everywhere you want to be.

At this point in the season Texas has not been tested downfield in the passing game by an opponent and consequently our only sack has come from a defensive tackle (although Okafor would have made it had Dorsey been blocked) while the rest of our front has managed only to pressure the QB without striking home.

Evidently the combination of Texas' 2010 game tape and Diaz's game film from Miss. St. and Middle Tennessee St. was all it took for both Bronco Mendenhall and David Bailiff to write off the vertical passing game as a significant part of the game plan for attacking Texas.

Since UCLA has Nelson Rosario (6-5, 220, 7 catches for 161 yards) and Joseph Fauria (6-8, 250, 7 catches for 124 yards) it's likely that they won't completely abandon the deep vertical game but you can expect it to either be on a rollout up the seam to Fauria or off play-action because I don't think Neuheisel will be any more inclined to test our DL and Fire Zones with 5 step drop plays than was Mendenhall.

In my article for Longhorn Kickoff 2011 I discussed Diaz's basic formula for preventing scores as taking away the vertical game and running game and then relying on disguise to hide the open parts in the middle of the field and superior tackling to minimize the damage inflicted if the offense found soft spots.

BYU was a fantastic test of whether Texas could actually A). stonewall a physical and effective downhill running game and B). hold up against the intermediate and short game.

To the great relief of Mack and the rest of us, we actually shredded their Power game with our defensive tackles and will undoubtedly drain the color out of several Big 12 offensive coordinators' faces when they put this tape in evaluate our run defense.

I still haven't chronicled each snap of every defensive tackle on the roster but I feel confident in asserting that Kheeston Randall, Desmond Jackson, Calvin Howell, and Ashton Dorsey would be starters on most Big 12 defenses. Muschamp's recruiting at the position has finally paid off after that seemingly indefinite period between the 2009 and 2011 seasons when our DL wasn't stocked with mismatches at every position.

If UCLA gives Texas problems in the running game I'm betting it won't be because of these guys. Rather, it will come from poor run fits by the linebackers (which was drastically improved against BYU) or losing containment on the edge. UCLA's option and inside zone attack are perfectly designed to exploit mistakes in either of those categories so discipline and confidence in the schemes will be essential for our defensive front. I expect our guys to come up big in both after seeing what they can accomplish in this defense (43 rushing yards on 23 carries) when they aggressively pursue their assignments.

BYU was able to hit the seam with their TE's and slot receiver and also did damage on roll out throws to Luigi (or whatever his name was) coming out of the backfield. However, they managed only 5.1 yards per attempt from what was certainly their only functional offensive strength in the game. The reason? Tackling.

Let's examine just a few instances of the open field tackling on display against the Cougars.

Here we see Heaps has completed a pass to the TE #80 down the seam, in between the linebacker and the safety.

However they threw it to Vaccaro's side of the field, as opposed to...the other side of the field. Consequently, it ends there.

Big gain for the offense but no yards after catch. Playing a zone defense and utilizing the fire zones are going to allow plays like this from time to time, but yards after catch are what kill a defense. At this point Texas is free to continue to attack and erase that play.

As it happens, BYU finds the other side of the field and gets an RB past Acho in the flat.

Gideon comes up with a chance to meet the mario brother at the first down marker but then the RB demonstrates the traction that is offered by choosing Luigi as your driver.

BYU gets inside the 10 yard line and set up their only TD conversion on the night.

Overall, Texas' weaknesses in open field tackling are less than what we saw in any of Muschamp's creations. We use less nickel defense and instead ask Hicks to handle the boundary #2 receiver and he's done an excellent job in that role, actually upgrading our play at the position in terms of tackling from what Aaron Williams offered. Here we see him denying the middle of the field to the receiver and forcing a throw to the outside by the Quarterback. You see even players like Landry Jones miss this throw on occasion and though Heaps completes it...

...the damage is limited.

On the next play Hicks has taken a deep drop against the #2 receiver and, needing only 2 yards, BYU slips Luigi back out to do more dirty work.

Hicks closes in like a red shell on a straightaway. Should've gone with Wario...

When we want to play nickel defense we aren't taking Hicks off the field but simply playing him inside and handling some of the boundary defense with Vaccaro or Phillips. The comparison for Adrian that I most easily buy into is that of Cedric Griffin. He doesn't have the same coverage abilities yet but he's of the same physical-tackler/corner mold.

Here we seem him racing to match his assignment on the RB like a hawk.

He closes by the time the ball arrives due to a superior angle and his natural speed. Then he wipes out the RB for a loss on a play that could have been a big gain.

Finally we have the force play from our corners. Many of you probably remember that Saban alternated between assaulting Curtis Brown, Chykie Brown, and Blake Gideon with Alabama's outside run game. Even Earl Thomas could only drag down the Crimson Tide backs in pursuit after big gains. While we don't have the same coverage as the postal service offered (yet) outside runs and throws are going to meet a different outcome against our new defensive backs.

Here BYU has RB in space on the edge from a draw play, heading into open waters. At the bottom of the screen is Diggs, who has recognized the situation and assuming his force responsibilities.

Had Diggs been blocked or shown weak against the run he would have allowed the RB to cut upfield with power and perhaps beat the angles of pursuit, or at least get positive yardage. Instead he challenges him with authority.

What we're seeing is that although Texas doesn't have the same coverage abilities as during Muschamp's 2nd and 3rd seasons, we have a more physical team that is denying yardage where possible all over the field and demanding that the offense beat their pressure again and again.

Being able to rely on his squad to clean up in the open field is going to allow Diaz to throttle what offenses love to do best with his pressure. Then, he can make the offense begin to see ghosts. Which will come in handy against Landry Jones, but we'll get to that in a few weeks.

I'd like to zoom in on our defense's execution of Diaz's mantra of "Stop the run, hit the quarterback" in game 1. At first glance, it would appear that we failed miserably but given that we allowed only 9 points, we need to evaluate the performance more carefully than "they ran the ball and we didn't sack the quarterback!".

Against smaller squads like Rice I think it's particularly valuable to take note of how they handle the talent disparity in the trenches, where it is generally most stark. Rice cannot recruit the best 300 pound kids in Texas and they definitely cannot find the athletic ones you would find playing defensive tackle at Texas. Nor do they play against such athletes on a regular basis.

So while Longhorn Scott is going to talk about our offensive line's handling of their fronts, I'm going to discuss our defensive line and assist your psychological treatments for the trauma of seeing our defense gashed for 4.3 yards per carry and 130 total yards.

Let's begin with some bad news. We should really add several yards to that total because the bubble screen is part of their run game. In the early drives Hicks tended to stayed close to the tackle box and there were free 7 yard gains to be had by flipping it out to their "slot" receiver and blocking our corners with the WR.

Beyond that, their veer option and speed option plays were indeed gashing us for easy 5-10 yard gains in the early going. The QB read was generally to avoid running at our ends (and they never even attempted to read Okafor) and instead they would bounce inside and allow their massive WR to block our pursuing linebackers at favorable angles.

Vaccaro's play was enough to prevent any of those right hooks from landing on the button and then Diaz instructed Hicks to either line up on the slot or bail out at the snap to cover the screen. While he was unable to run over a 6'5" TE in the open field to make plays in the screen game on a regular basis, Hicks did some impressive things. While I expected great range in pursuit, his ability to read in pursuit and his coverage in zone were both better that I might have expected at this point. Consider that we're going to use him in many of the same ways that OU uses Tony Jefferson or Green Bay used Woodson last year and ponder the level of athleticism (and awareness) he possesses at 228 pounds to handle those assignments...

In all of this our defensive line was fairly quiet. It's exceedingly difficult for them to affect the play if the ball is being sprinted past the tackles from the pistol/shotgun and the ends are being read. You can tell from Rice's game plan that they had no interest in facing our DL's pass rush and having McHargue throw into a pass defense with 7 zone defenders, or read a Fire-Zone.

After Diaz adjusted with Hicks to take away the perimeter game it became a matter of whether Rice could do enough damage with inside-zone and sporadic completions to keep up in the game. Their passing attack was futile but it's worth examining what they were able to do with the running game for academic purposes.

Rice had zero negative plays with inside zone and even managed a few 10+ yard runs which you all probably remember and of which 1 or 2 was within a white safety-tackle from being a touchdown. They tended to target the interior A gaps on the cutback and that's where they found most of their success.

Given Gideon's proclivity for missing open field tackles (he nearly missed a key one on saturday), the success Rice found with their zone running game is rightfully disconcerting to the fan base of a team that will face Cyrus Gray and Christine Michael before all is said and done.

Consider that Rice, a team built to run, expertly ran inside-zone with solid running backs against Desmond Jackson playing heavy snaps (including at nose tackle), an OLB playing Mike, and a deep safety known for missing open field tackles...and managed 4.3 yards per carry and 130 yards overall en route to a 3 field goal effort.

More palatable? It gets better...

Jackson played quite well throughout the game, but there were various miscues in filling creases at all levels. The major issue was a failure by the linebackers to "run to daylight" against inside zone that allowed some cutback creases.

For instance:

Rice has found some success with the inside zone and were running it ad nauseam because McHargue is entirely incapable of finding targets against our coverage within the 2 second window that he was apparently instructed to throw within. On this play we are stunting Robinson at the center and playing a "double eagle" front with Randall (bottom) and Jackson (top) playing as 3-techs.

Things start to go wrong when DJ stunts up into the B gap across the left guards face and Acho heads for the same place.

Unless it was Diaz's intention for Robinson to 2-gap (guard the A-gap on either side of the center) someone has made a mistake and left open the playside A gap.

It's the duty of the linebackers in Diaz's defense to "make the DL right" after they stunt into creases, so it's curious that Acho is headed to the exact same gap which DJ has filled while being doubled by the guard and the tackle.

I'm sure that the purpose of stunting Robinson at the center was to take away the quick hitting holes up the middle Rice was exploiting and force them to find creases outside against our pursuit and ends. If Acho can get inside to that gap there is not a single lead block to cut him off, instead he plays it like he would in the Muschamp defense and stays in his base C gap.

Now they are playing inside zone outside-in (in other words, exactly wrong) by filling the gap between the halfback's trap block and the tackle while we have no one in position to reach the A-gap.

Jordan Hicks' impressive pursuit of the ball isn't enough here and there is grass for 15 yards with no one in position until Brewster finally cleans up.

Someone taking the wrong gap is a very fixable mistake. What might concern you would be if we couldn't handle the physicality of the Owl OL or if our linebackers were incapable of reaching the creases, but Acho was totally clean to make the play.

On the next play, DJ draws another double team as a 3-tech that allows Randall to fly into the backfield and frees Acho and Robinson to demolish the play.

It was curious of Rice to double Jackson and leave Randall alone but Jackson stands his ground and the play goes for maybe a yard and a half with the RB met at the line of scrimmage immediately.

Greg Daniels, Jackson, Howell, and Chris Whaley all saw heavy snaps in this game and they saw them early and often. From what I saw, Jackson and Whaley both have the burst and the body types that will be ideal for this scheme and I didn't watch Howell or Daniels closely.

Much like how Stoops used Tommie Harris or Gerald McCoy as 1-techs, it's not important that we have space-eaters in this scheme because when our tackles draw double teams it will be by virtue of quickness and no one is going to be asked to stand them up all day.

We have the right personnel to bring storm clouds where the running back is trying to "run to daylight" and despite Robinson's lack of tenacity inside what really matters is having linebackers who can reach run gaps that they aren't aligned into as Acho failed to do above. Hicks, Robinson and Acho are all very capable of handling that assignment and the defensive tackles were more than capable, at least against Rice, of filling their assignments.

I hate to target Acho because he had a great game (10 tackles, 1 TFL) so let's end on a play that highlights the exceptional ability he is finally able to bring this season as a weakside linebacker.

He's blitzing outside in a firezone on the bottom of the screen but Rice will run inside zone in the opposite direction.

Robinson and Hicks bounce off each other and minimize the impact of either attempted tackle on the running back who continues to get upfield. But Acho is in pursuit, having bailed out of his blitz once he diagnosed the play.

Our linebackers are going to swarm in this scheme as they eventually overcome their previous programming. Muschamp wanted to align his fronts to have perfect leverage against the run or pass, whereas Diaz is going to take advantage of speed everywhere to fill the same gaps from unforeseen angles.

As a result, our DL are going to get free into the backfield because of their stunts but our linebackers will be clean to fill in the gaps they vacated by virtue of their speed, deep alignment, and the fact that the opposing team doesn't know where they will be in order to block them.

Metaphorical rain is coming to Austin from our linebackers, let's pray for some of the actual wet stuff to come as well.

I'm still curious about what else HarsinWhite 2011 has in mind for our Wildcat packages this season. The Jesus was dead on about having 2 different operators for those schemes (Shipley and Fozzy so far) and the scrimmage videos at MackBrown-texasfootball suggest that the zone-read is being utilized as a base blocking scheme for those packages.

Holgorsen's Diamond formation that OU stole at midseason and utilized while clubbing Gundy to the tune of 588 yards of offense is, a formation that reminds me of another wildly successful 3-back formation that OU borrowed in the past.

Similarly, if you watch some of the formations used by Oregon in last year's national championship you will also find a 3-back formation.

We know that Harsin likes to use the option in wildcat packages, that Texas is loaded with backs who could serve as dive-option or pitch-option backs, and several of these guys have managed option offenses in high school. Knowing that, I wouldn't be surprised if we ran a Wishboney look with Fozzy, Brown, and/or Monroe. But Bob Stoops might.

While we wait in anticipation to see what tricks are to be revealed by our coaches I thought it would be fun to relive the introduction of the Wishbone at Texas by Darrel K. Royal and Emory Bellard (who recently passed away) through the eyes of someone who was there.

Take it away OldTimeHorn:

The Advent of the Wishbone in College Ball

In the fall of ’66 I was beginning my senior year in high school. On the college front, Texas was supposed to be "all that" in football again—based on much-ballyhooed soph QB Bill Bradley, and a resurgence was expected from the disappointing seasons that had followed the ’63 national championship.

The school year started with me at buddy Joe’s house (a Razorback nut, now cocking up my Facebook Wall with crap about the LHN) watching the Bradley-led ’Horns take on the highly-ranked USC. Teams were allowed a max of one nationally televised game a year back then, and this would be it for Texas—must-see TeeVee. Great game, and Bradley was a battler—who angrily shoved an SC lineman down on his ass one-handed, but SC walked away from our field with the win. The game mattered to me because I’d visited both Rice and Texas that summer trying to settle on a college. Even though I topped the scales at 138 if weighed before leaving the DQ parking lot and was usually capable of a sub-6.0 40, football was a passion. Don’t laugh about Rice... they still had a year or two to go under Coach Neely, were respectable at the time, and former Owl QB Dr Frank Ryan was my favorite pro player.

We had just been introduced to the same 3A district as McKinney, against whom we managed like 30 yards of offense, and obviously no points. A 4A (big as it got back then) Fort Worth school managed only a TD against that defense, the only one they allowed all year in addition to 4 or 5 field goals yielded.

The Mckinney Lions breezed through the playoffs, as I predicted, and we all anticipated their thrashing of Bridge City for the state championship. Monday morning after the title game word rocketed around the school like a pregnancy rumor that some guy named Steve "Wooster" had scored FOUR touchdowns on the Lions, before sitting out the second half as his Cardinal teammates mopped up. And "Wooster" was headed to Texas! Well then, so was I. The sizzle would be in Austin.

We went to all the home and close away games together, varsity and freshmen. The varsity fared no better in ’67, but the freshmen... they mauled everybody. Word had it MY class was the best Texas recruit class EVAH! what with 236-pound monster DE Bill Atessis—largest player on the whole team, plus Bill Zapalac, Danny Lester, QB Eddie Phillips, and Scott Henderson. There was even an honest-to-goodness in wide receiver Cotton Speyrer ... (what’s Royal got up his sleeve now?) The class had also featured Julius Whittier, Texas’s first black recruit (though you had to look really close to be sure) as well as two players from a Denver high school—Bobby Mitchell and Freddy Steinmark. Even kicker Happy Feller was highly regarded!

To beat the fall apartment hunt, buddy Sam and I came back to Austin mid-August and picked out an efficiency on Trinity across from what became Waterloo Park. Late the previous spring, I’d bought an MG Midget. Over the summer, Sam had earned enough for a Roadrunner, including the extra for the 426 Hemi engine option. We were set, and we were idling around town during summer workouts. There were few sources of info... Dave Campbell’s Texas Football was just becoming well-established. There was also the Statesman and the summer version of the Daily Texan, plus the usual scuttlebutt around campus. I ran into walk-on buddy Stan a couple of times and he was excited about where things were heading.

Word began to filter out that we’d be running a whole new offense... that it was designed to make use of Steve Worster’s quick-start skills at fullback... that it did this by moving the fullback right behind the quarterback (WHAT???)... that it had been conceived by Coach Bellard (bell-ARD—a fan fave and Royal heir apparent)... that it was based on a simple quarterback read that would lead to the FB diving into the line or, following another read, a QB keeper or a toss to the HB on the playside... that it was unstoppable because it always insured the offense had at least a man advantage at the point of attack... that it would leverage the speed of HB Chris Gilbert (who’d already reeled off two thousand-yard seasons) and the durability of legacy HB Ted Koy.

But this is all murky. This was not an all-at-once, glossy-brochure PR announcement. In both the press and on the field, it played out in dribs and drabs, week-by-week. The desire apparently came when Gene Stallings amped up the Aggie option attack and handled ’Bama in the prior Cotton Bowl. Just before the season started, the new look was billed as the "Y" or even "Homer’s Triple" (after Homer Rice, then coaching the Cincy Bearcats, who’d implemented something similar in Texas HS ball). The name "Wishbone," often "Wishbone T," apparently cropped up just before the Tech game. Houston sportswriter Mickey Herskowitz takes credit, but other stories have it that after glancing at the diagram of the offensive set position, he said it looked like a "‘pulley’ bone." Royal is credited with refining that into "Wishbone," but, believe me, it was not like Royal to go around refining rusticisms.

Back then, school didn’t get rolling until late September. Our first game was scheduled at Memorial against Houston (ranked 11th to our 4th) on the third Saturday. We were going to Tear. Them. Apart. Instead, Bradley threw twice as many interceptions as completions (2-9-4), and we were lucky to salvage a tie on a Q4 TD by Koy (another well-worn Royalism: "a tie is like kissing your sister"). We’d gained almost 300 yards rushing, but one less than Houston, and they could pass. What the hell is it with Royal? Is he just the biggest waster of talent ever? He may seriously need to consider stepping aside.

Okay, hell, we’ll right the ship against Tech. Pile the Roadrunner full—our dates (not Jill) and another couple. Somewhere between Post and Slayton that afternoon, with everybody asleep and me driving, I destroy a thousand-dollar engine (about what a year of school cost) cruising at 140 (yes, young readers, those were the days!) Halftime of the game, and we are down 21-zip, and I want to throw up. Second half, it’s announced James Street is replacing Bradley. Street!? Wasn’t he recruited by Falk? Are we just tossing in the towel? To make matters intensely worse, Sam had lined us up with places to stay at some friends’ frat, and so our little group had the joy of being the only Texas students at the raucous celebration of a Tech upset win (I still to this day automatically clench my fists when I see anyone flash downward "Horns").

This was just three years after the Tower shooter, and by no means do I wish to make light of that tragedy, but the mood on campus that week of the Tech loss was comparably somber. Indeed, the desire to get the onus of that earlier horrific event off of us intensified the expectations on the football team—C’mon guys! Show that we can bounce back. Show that we are winners. Show that we are better than that. There was a funk lingering three years over the Forty Acres before scraping bottom in Lubbock. Then, as now, there’s no deodorant like playing top-drawer football.

The new offense came in for savage second-guessing, and the coaches right along with it. The slim silver lining that the team had come roaring back in the second half and looked for a while to make a game of it was not on people’s minds. Nobody was looking to hang hopes on a 5’10, 165-pound unheard-of quarterback who hadn’t even lettered the year before. Do you remember him playing even a down last season? Cuz I don’t! Thanks to a connection to the service manager at the Dodge dealership out on N I35, the Roadrunner got towed back to Austin and a new hemi dropped in, all on someone else’s warranty, so there was one bright spot. Oklahoma State shows up (not anyone we played regularly back then), and a nifty Street to Speyrer connection for 60 yards led to an expected win—Hey, maybe we’ll be a passing team? This Street feller looks like he can really heave the ball.

Then it’s road trip to Dallas and nail-biting as we’re down 8 at halftime, but we claw back and win. Beating the GDMFSOB Sooners always feels good. Now comes the real test, with #9 Arkansas visiting. And. We. Crush. Them. We crush them with a running attack like nothing you’ve ever seen before. Turns out there’s a big difference between watching the Wishbone purr and watching it sputter (some say the full option aspects didn’t even get installed until this point in the season). You now had to watch intently. Can’t tell you how many times my eyes followed Street down the line... pitchout! only no football. Eyes back to the center of the field where Worster would be breaking into the secondary. The reverse happened often as well—Worster mobbed and stopped for four--what the...? Koy’s got the ball sprinting down the sideline. When it worked like that it was a thing of beauty, a thing of genius, a thing of utter bafflement. And it kept working right up through the Cotton Bowl where we embarrassed Hacksaw Reynolds and #8 Tennessee to end up finishing #3.

Did that capstone victory earn us any respect? No. We started the ’69 season—the 100th year of college football—with a #4 ranking from the AP, following overwhelming #1 Ohio State (ever heard of Woody Hayes?), #2 Arkansas (Frank Broyles), #3 Penn State (the year Texans learned to start disliking Joe Paterno) and ahead of #5 USC (John McKay ). Yes, some legends were in the hunt that year. We’d graduated Chris Gilbert after he’d tacked on a third 1000-yard-plus rushing season, first collegiate player in the nation ever to do so, but we’d replaced him with some kid out of Wisconsin, Bertelsen (said he preferred to play in a warm-weather state), who’d acquitted himself pretty good on the frosh team, we heard. I don’t remember whether it was after we chewed up 523 ground yards against Navy or 611 against SMU or 517 against TCU, but somewhere in mid-season Sam pulled out the detailed box scores and calculated that Texas’s second-string offense ranked as the #2 offense in the nation in total yards gained. Ponder that. Royal, being a Woody Hayes devotee, always liked to characterize his style of football as "three yards and a cloud of dust." We students took to calling the Wishbone "ten yards and a cloud of Astroturf." Meanwhile, we’d vaulted up to second in the AP thanks to our lopsided victories. The Buckeyes were winning lopsided too, that is, until late November when they ran into a fired-up #12 Michigan squad and tumbled 24-12. Neither team scored a point in the second half.

All season, among sports announcers and sports writers, it was "Wishbone this" and "Wishbone that." The ABC crew went on about how their camera crew had voted James Street the most difficult quarterback to track of all time and by a good margin (watching the ’Horns on TV those years would always be zig and zag in the camerawork department). "Why aren’t other teams copying the Burnt Orange?" "Can anyone ever stop UT?" Longhorn fans enjoyed the notoriety and had long-since bonded with the ’Bone.

But the Texas-Arkansas game really brought the national spotlight—the audience was huge, unprecedented. Everybody in the country wanted to see this Wishbone thing. Texas had settled at #1, the Razorbacks at #2. ABC finagled and the game got moved back to the first week of December, and, if I recall correctly, special dispensation had to be conjured up to allow the two teams to each enjoy a second nationally-televised game (or did they rig up a two-state broadcast of Slippery Rock vs. Shippensburg as the other "regional action"?)

Football fan and new president Richard Nixon flew in by helicopter to attend and present the national championship plaque (UPI awarded based on regular season back then). Also at the Big Shootout, Colonel Sanders was in full KFC regalia, as was a young, later-to-be-president Bill Clinton. Both squads were all-white, the last time that happened. Pretty soon, even Bear Bryant was imploring the Alabama state legislature to let him have some African-American running backs after black USC tailbacks pinned six TDs on him.

James Street fueled the Texas comeback victory with this 42 yard TD run in the first play of the 4th quarter, bringing the Horns within six after a successful two point conversion. The rest is history, forever known in Longhorn folklore as "53 Veer Pass -- Street to Peschel", a 44 yard pass on 4th & 3 that put the Horns in place for the game winning touchdown.

The streets and clubs of Austin were wild that night in jubilation. Undefeated Penn State’s players had already wussed and voted to accept the Orange Bowl bid rather than play in the Cotton Bowl against whoever emerged as #1, and so they were dinged in the AP’s #1 consideration (not that it would stop Paterno from whining like a bitch).

Dispatching Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl was an afterthought... that year, anyway. I was at the game; don’t remember a thing even though it was history-making—Notre Dame’s first-ever bowl appearance (Ara Parseghian had had to convince the administration to lift its self-imposed ban, the last major program to do so). The following year, the last year for MY class, after our second undefeated season, I watched Texas play Notre Dame again in the Cotton Bowl (this time on TV). Would it be back-to-back national championships (I mean "for real," not the UPI we’d already got)? Texas came down the ramp looking loose, jocular. The Irish came down the ramp with game faces. I knew right then that our nation’s-best 30-game win streak was over.

The Wishbone was still chugging the following season, but consecutive losses to Oklahoma and Arkansas capped off by an el foldo against Penn State in the Cotton Bowl (giving them a measure of sweet revenge for ’69), made ’71 a less-than-memorable year of football. Worse, Royal started giving the Wishbone away. First Bear Bryant then Barry Switzer showed up to learn its intricacies direct from Royal. What the hell!? Well, whaddaya expect? Royal’s from goddamn Oklahoma. Traitor!

The topper was Bellard taking the Stallings vacancy at Aggieland (where, thankfully, he promptly floundered—hey, maybe we dodged a bullet!) The Wishbone was out of fan favor and steadily out of our offensive planning too. The next two seasons, the Sooners slapped us silly with our own system, then beat us handily twice more before we eked out a 6-6 tie in Royal’s last year. It was bitter, galling, to watch Switzer dominate college ball with our offense. Teams soon learned to defense the ’Bone, provided they had the talent. But it hung around. I seem to recall Air Force getting up near the top of the rankings with it in the mid or late 80s.

I’ve heard some say the 85-scholarship limit the NCAA voted in back in the early 90s was the death of the Wishbone—no more stockpiling running backs. For many of us in Austin, the steam had leaked out twenty years earlier. But we reeled off 30 straight victories at a time when we thought we were looking at the End of Days, football-wise, with a team that 1) had no quarterback, 2) was trying to learn an entirely new scheme and 3) had most of its talent in its youngest class.
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Hell of a read, Oldtimehorn. Hopefully 2011 year harkens back to '67-70 in the results department.

Miami answered some of the better 80's OU wishbone teams with the "Miami 4-3 Over" defense that is credited with introducing speed as the primary require of a defense and basically ending the reign of the triple-option in football.

Of course here we still have SEC teams utilizing the spread-option to win championships, Oklahoma is still making hay with stolen property, and humans are still dying and paying taxes.

We've heard a lot in the practice reports about how Harsin's strategies include installing a large variety of formations and looks that put too much on tape for opposing coordinators to be able to prepare for in a game week.

Continue reading this post »

Priority one for Mack this fall is obviously determining the Quarterback to hold the reins for the dream wagon. I have an opinion or two on that front but it's important to note that the horses that will drag the wagon to 8 wins and Top 25 relevance will not include a QB this year unless we get some unexpected production at that position.

The Elusive Shadow over at Burntorangenation wrote a post about upholding objective historical fact vs. the new myth of the Gilbert era. Unfortunately the Shadow had neither the means nor the inclination to review the 2010 game tapes to defend Gilbert's performances over the course of the season and implores us to believe in his own memory over the prevailing myth.

Heading into the season, we knew there weren't any dominant pieces to the Longhorn offense. The hope, which I articulated and which you could hear Geoff Ketchum promulgating on the radio, was that Gilbert's arm strength and accuracy combined with a running game that could punish 2 deep safeties would turn an offense of solid starters into a capable unit as a whole. Gilbert was supposed to be THE PLAYMAKER for the offense who needed to make things happen by putting the ball where it needed to be move the chains and put receivers in position to gain yards after the catch.

Additionally, because of Gilbert's admirable second half performance in the National Championship game and solid reps during the offseason, it was believed that he had the experience to enable his talent. Did the Texas offensive line play as well in pass protection as we might have hoped? No. Did Greg Davis abandon the running game at curious times and put all the weight on Gilbert's shoulders? Yes. Did we run an incoherent scheme? Yes.

But in light of our season's expectation of Gilbert and what we thought he would be capable of, we must conclude that his season displayed less ability than we initially believed him to possess. Scipio's description of him as a "system QB without a system" proved to be perfectly accurate.

My fear for Gilbert is that his arm strength and accuracy downfield is only enabled through simple reads or staring down targets and that he can't wind up and deliver the goods without unrealistic amounts of time (or elite receivers) to read the coverage and fire. Even without zoomed out angles or an understanding of the proper reads and checks, this interpretation of Gilbert's struggles certainly matches the available data.

As far as who will drive the wagon this season, I'm torn. What has some Texas fans nervous is the early non-conference schedules that hits us with both a potent passing attack (BYU) and a credible ground game (UCLA). If we give Gilbert a second chance and he maintains a high turnover rate, we could run out of mulligans as four of our first six opponents have a reasonable chance of defeating us.

Case McCoy's weak arm doesn't actually scare me as much as it does others when I review them on tape because he seems to possess the same sense of timing as Colt, who made a habit of throwing slower balls at defensive backs' heads, trusting that his receiver was going to be in the best position to catch the ball. Case's inability to make all the throws can be schemed around since Harsin's offense primary requirement is accuracy. We aren't going to ask him to make too many difficult throws to be successful. But he has to hit the deep post and fly patterns and make the big play when it's needed.

I've never seen Ash save for scanty practice tape and high school highlights (which are impressive). If he's as good as Shuttlesworth's Asset says he is then it makes sense to get him involved early and see if he can win the job outright. Worst case scenario -- Wood, Gilbert, and McCoy all transfer next season and we have Ash, Brewer and another freshman we make room for. The only way that happens is if Ash has a season that would convince everyone that they had no future as a starting QB at Texas. That said, I'm not ready to anoint someone I've never seen in a college game or even practice.

What's important to note is that none of these guys are pulling the wagon. On offense we're building around the running game and attacking space that it affords us while on defense, it's all about the front 7. The cart horses are as follows...

Offense:

Trey Hopkins-David Snow-Mason Walters. I like the more recent reported lineup that goes left to right: Allen-Snow-Espinosa-Walters-Hopkins. I was a fan of Walters to Right Tackle and not remotely disturbed by the news that he couldn't handle Okafor in pass protection, although Oak is far from being the only good strongside rusher in this conference. Hopkins' reported comfort within that assignment changes the formula though, and a right side with Walters and Hopkins together presents some exciting possibilities.

This RB unit is doing the real work on this offense. Unless Malcolm Brown seizes the starting role for a 1000 yard season or Fozzy finally drops a 1500 all purpose yard season, the real playmakers are the ones whose names are in bold above. I expect something like in 2006 when we had a couple of guys who approached 1k yards (Charles and Selvin Young).

Mike Davis, because we need to scheme for someone on the outside and Davis' open field moves, route running potential, and hands make him the guy that we'll scheme for. He's had a rough August with too many dropped balls but he may just be ready to see some live action at this point. Mike brings it on game day.

Whoever emerges at TE...maybe DJ Grant. Harsin knows how to do damage with these guys and everyone on our schedule has become used to using this position against us in the past few years. I really liked Grant in practice in 2009 before we lost him to injury, along with every other viable pass catching TE. In our Red Zone packages we are going to finally make some use out of these Flex TE's that we have stockpiled like Gold bullion.

Fullback. Stoops got himself a fullback last year and actually had a fairly versatile one on the 2008 team that could play HB/TE/FB, it really helped them be multiple in the no-huddle. In this league, when you can send a guy out of the backfield to chip a Brad Madison, run over a Shaun Lewis, or catch the ball out of the backfield you have a rare weapon. Looks like they want to use Cody Johnson here and if he's a real blocker we're going to hurt teams with him and Mean Joe. You may not see big numbers here in terms of yardage but you will see the lead blocks, seals, kick-outs, and occasional runs or catches that will break a defense down.

Defense:

Kheeston Randall and Alex Okafor are going to play on the same side quite a bit if Diaz is anything like Muschamp. Manny's predecessor placed extreme importance on shifting his fronts around to create optimal matchups because our secondary was playing a lot of man and the DL had long grocery lists. He played Kindle and Houston together in Over fronts and really wrecked the zone running games in this conference.

I'm betting Oak isn't going to get to play much 9-tech in space and he's stunting inside frequently on blitzes anyways. He and Randall have to get push in the pass-rush and hold up their side in the running game because the Jeffcoat-Howell/Daniels/Dorsey/Bible? side isn't going to be able to carry the water for anyone else just yet. This is where our mismatches are in the trenches.

Watch Randall's draft eval tape from last year and notice the plays where he gets penetration into the B-gap or he stands up to a double team and then notice the shots on the RB's that he sets up for our LB corp. Expect more of that this year and more media attention and appreciation. Good video to watch to build hope for stuffing A&M and OU -- their centers couldn't handle him.

The Linebackers are all going to have strong seasons. If I were the defensive coordinator I would play Hicks at MLB and if it became apparent that Robinson lacked the mentality of a Mike or struggled to fill gaps, move him back to the weakside and play Acho on the strongside and possibly as a 9-tech in nickel situations. However, that's not really how the Diaz defense works and I'm pretty sure Robinson is up to the task of "making the DL right" as he can play downhill with speed and at least match what Chris White did at this position for Miss. St. last year.

That's all scarcely relevant though as this team will survive lacking elite, between the tackles, run-stuffing personnel at linebacker and settle for demolishing the passing game as blitzers and zone defenders.

Kenny Vaccaro is your other impact player for the 2011 squad since he gives us at least one starting safety with coverage abilities and a possible 100-tackle eraser against the run/screen game of the Big 12.

Thoughts?

We're back from the Dallas Zoo where the mountain lion hides in the shade and the tattooed handler feeds mice to the bearded lizards before your eyes!

In part I, we examined the lesser squads of the league as well as some of the more troublesome teams. Tim's anointing of the Red Raider defensive line notwithstanding (seriously? Better than the one with Brandon Williams, Dixon and Whitlock in 08?) the bottom half the of the Big 12 is nothing to write home about but certainly stronger than something you would find in most of the other conferences.

In review, we've got Texas pegged as a running team that is secretly building packages behind a vastly underrated interior OL and some dangerous young skill players paired with a defense that is strong enough for a Big 12 running game, loaded with pass-rushers, and backed by a solid safety duo that will have to cover for a green crop of corners.

Let's begin:

Thank God they aren't on the schedule:

Nebraska

Forget the fact that talent and venue doesn't seem to make a lick of difference when we play this team and consider these facts:

Somehow Jared Crick still has a year of eligibility left. He's coming off a 2nd consecutive season with 9 sacks playing defensive tackle and I did not think that would happen once he was no longer partnered with Suh. We had to avoid him and focused on running over Steinkuhler and their nickel personnel with unexpected QB running packages. I still think their nosetackle is overrated for his last name but it's a good bet that he drops his 6'6" frame to a better pad level in his 2nd year as a starter.

Their linebacker Lavonte David compiled 152 freaking tackles last year with 10 pass break-ups, 6 sacks and 9 other tackles for loss, he's pretty terrifying. The secondary returns another future 1st or 2nd round corner in Alfonzo Dennard Sr. plus their strong safety Cassidy. With Pellini defenses the key is this: returning players in the secondary means misery for passing offenses because they play team coverage unlike any other team I've observed in college football.

On offense the white ghosts are back and their embrace of the possibilities of shotgun/pistol option football makes them pretty formidable. Niles Paul is gone but it wouldn't take anything at all for T-Magic (not to be confused with a Michael Bolton-playing radio station) to be twice the decision maker he was last season. He single-handedly lost the Big 12 title lead to OU with a baffling display of incompetence which may have shortened Pellini's life expectancy by 10 years.

I think schematically they are way ahead of most of college football and I wouldn't relish trying to score on that defense after it's been adjusted to handle the physicality of Big 10 running games.

Alabama

I can't believe I'm saying this but with Greg McElroy they would be a runaway favorite against us and anyone else. The blitzing possibilities afforded by Texas' defensive roster plus the skill with which Diaz creates pressure makes Texas a tough matchup for any team with an inexperienced quarterback that could give us a puncher's chance.

You may recall that had McCoy not been injured or the offense not pulled that early red-zone boner that cost a touchdown Texas may have quickly built a multiple score lead on Alabama that would have necessitated that McElroy throw the ball. You may also recall that of the 11 times he dropped back to pass he was sacked on 5 of those occasions. My point is this, you could throw mad pressure at him and he didn't turn the ball over. He may not beat you but he was the ultimate game manager who would take any punishment before he coughed up the ball with a hasty decision.

Here is what Bama does have going for them though: An enormous offensive line with 4 starters back. From center to right tackle they go 294 lbs, 311 lbs, 335 lbs and were 2nd team SEC, All-American, and All SEC Freshman team respectively. Oh yeah, and Trent Richardson still plays there with Marquis Maze.

The defense is just about back to it's 2009 level as well. All their secondary starters are back and 3 of them were All-Americans last year, the other is Dre Kirkpatrick. The linebacker corp is about 32 deep I believe and the DL is stocked with Juco talent or returning starters. They would bury us and should we return to BCS level this year we shouldn't be eager to attempt to pay them back just yet.

50-50 propositions:

Missouri

Gary Pinkel's use of the TE part of the depth chart is deeply frustrating to me. This is a team the employs much of the same playbook that Greg Davis played with here and manages to put together a credible running game, field a tight end who can both catch and block, and still employ shotgun spread formations with wide splits.

They lost Gabbert, who threatened a good portion of the field, but have a returning 1000 yard receiver (TJ Moe) and this year's receiving tight end threat is named Michael Egnew. Should they start James Franklin we can be reminded of what happens when their QB is a running threat who isn't attempting to destroy a ring of power.

We're gonna have to hope that Diaz can confuse and corral Franklin because they have a lot of receiving options between their backs, receivers, and Egnew that we would not be able to man up on and out-execute. Did I mention that their tackles are returning starters that held OU without a sack?

On defense they have typically managed to field 1-3 NFL talents every season and Pinkel has converted that from run-stuffing safeties and future Pittsburgh DL to more useful guys like Zaviar Gooden who can run sideline-to-sideline and play coverage, or pass-rushers like Madison or Smith who took advantage of Aldon Smith's injuries to combine for 13 sacks last year.

Here's the brightside, they really only have the resources to be excellent at a limited number of things. If we can get to Franklin and stay in front of their skill people they can be had. Should they score early and plug our running game we'll be in a terrible spot playing in front of the kind of rowdy drunks who have been making Kansas bleed for over a century.

Oklahoma St.

Oklahoma St. has had the most underrated running game in college football for several seasons now due in large part to the magic that Joe Wickline works with their offensive line. Last year he transformed 4 new starters into the league's best unit and their diamond formation (3 backs forming a triangle around a QB in the pistol) proved to meld with zone-running and kendall hunter like the stench of bat crap to Aggy bravado.

I happen to think that the loss of Hunter and their no. 1 fullback Bryant Ward will make a big difference. Hunter did, after all, run for almost 1600 yards last season. Don't get too excited though because likely starter Randle averaged 5.5 ypc last year and had 400 receiving yards. He'll be deployed by former Jacksonville WR coach Todd Monken who has some experience in maximizing versatile backs.

Whatever is made of their running game, Weeden to Blackmon is something we couldn't stop with Aaron Williams or Curtis Brown and we certainly we won't have an easy answer without them. Weeden is a very mentally tough and intelligent quarterback besides having a great arm, great 2nd and 3rd targets, and a magnet in Blackmon.

If we can't shut down that running game they are going to drop at least 30 on us again, winning this game in a defensive battle is not a realistic vision.

They don't have a ton of scary personnel on defense but it's being directed by Bill Young, who turned Kansas football players into a dominant defensive unit. They use a "star" linebacker, which means that they play a S/LB hybrid as SLB like OU or Diaz prefers, and that player was a freshman All-American last year (Shaun Lewis). Their SS Markelle Martin is another play maker that broke up or intercepted 13 passes last season. Young's preferred style is to react and wrap-up, forcing you to earn your way down the field and his track record in that philosophy speaks for itself.

They really got burned a few times last year when teams had the skill talent to work them down the field (OU, Aggy) and whether the better league offenses can do that will depend a lot on whether they've found some players at defensive tackle in converted TE Nigel Nicholas or 332 pound Christian Littlehead. If the latter can keep their smallish linebacker corp clean of Mason Walters or Trey Hopkins that's a nice start. Like everyone else they're really built more to stop spread offenses than a 2-back Power/PA team but they won't automatically give up touchdowns just because we send out a fullback on 1st down either.

Game's in Austin again this year (thanks Nebraska!) which makes it a coin flip. Expect a slugfest in this one and I'll go on record as projecting a victory in one of these 2 contests.

Keep Miracle Max on speed dial:

Texas A&M

Texas is so selfish and entitled for daring to break up the Big 12 and force the Aggies and the rest of the league into a beneficial and fan-favored partnership with the PAC-10. Good thing we have those noble hearts in College Station who have the guts to do the right thing and head into the SEC alone, gutting the Big 12 and leaving the children with mommy Texas to provide for alone.

It gives me no joy to say that they are perfectly designed to defeat us in front of a starving fan base this thanksgiving. If they didn't already have a possible Red Zone target in young TE Nehemiah Nicks or junior WR duo Nwachukwu and Swope they have Jeff Fuller whom we will have to cushion like mad and double team within 20 yards of the end zone if not the entire field. With his 6-4 frame and ball skills he is a match-up nightmare and sadly not their only good receiver even if he is far and away their best.

Compounding that fact is that Vince Young wannabe Jerrod Johnson fell apart last year and granted Tannehill some valuable starting experience to prepare him for herding the sheep to the well of hidden delights this year. Tackles Jake Matthews and Luke Joeckel have each had some serious seasoning and could be the best pass-blocking ends in the conference.

The interior OL isn't bad either and worked our lot last year when Cyrus Gray went for 200 yards on our bowl "hopes". I hold out hope that our run defense will far stouter this year but Gray and Michael are very dangerous between the tackles and in the screen game. Sherman can attack the whole field with this offense so long as his thinking isn't interrupted by TV timeouts or those conniving Longhorn network reporters don't interrupt his afternoon naps, those cheating bastards. Oh to be in the SEC! where sportsmanship and the gentleman's code is honored like the very Word of God...

I might put our own defense or OU's at the top of the conference but DeRuyter has the right personnel to give us some real fits this year. They're using a legit 3-4 in which all 3 DL are actually guys who can hold up inside and they go 285-295-300 apiece. Space-eaters of the sort that the wrecking crew used to be built around. Fortunately they don't quite have the linebacker talent they were once famous for but Damontre Moore is definitely a credible replacement for Von Miller who was a once in a generation-type talent (at least I hope to God he was) and their other outside backer is dangerous as well. Hodges is gone but their Inside backers are of a solid quality and they generally stock that position pretty well.

The secondary is another unpleasant place with 4 starters back (and a good nickel as well), including Trent Hunter who has started 7 seasons in a row, and Coryell Judie who had 4 picks last season. They turned in very solid performances last year against the conferences' better receivers with very little pass-rush help on plays in which Von Miller missed with his pounces.

There is the talent at corner to allow for 8 man fronts against our running game and talent/size on the DL to not be plowed over. They are going to play us like it's the superbowl in front of a fanbase that wants blood and it will take turnovers, special teams, and some Boise-style magic to come out of this alive. It'd be nice if we caught Tannehill early before everyone else begins vetting him with blitzes and disguised coverages, tough luck there.

Their performance against the next team is another factor that could impact how they play us, perhaps a loss in Norman would demoralize the team if not the fans.

Check out the SPSB take here.

Oklahoma

Landry Jones played far better last year than I anticipated after his first season and his TD toss to Kenny Stills over good man coverage from Acho uno ocho in the RRS was very alarming. Perhaps in addition to having a fantastic understanding of the game Josh Heupel can relate it in his teaching as well. This is another QB who will be a little more prepared for the confusion Diaz is going to unleash this season, and I know Venables is going to throw some similar pressure concepts at him in practice all fall. Jones has the arm strength to really make you pay for a busted assignment or single coverage.

Stills and Broyles are All-American and All-Conference level WRs respectively and they've got a solid TE (seriously what the hell Mack!) and a now sophomore FB named Trey Millard that make their offense pretty multiple in the formations they can rush out there in their mad, blazing pace that always seemed to catch Muschamp for a few big plays. Perhaps most frightening is Broyles whom, as Aaron Williams can attest, can turn a missed tackle on the sideline into a quick score. Given our youth at Corner and Diaz's preference for Cover-3 you can be sure that Broyles will have many chances after short catches on the sideline this year.

They are losing DeMarco Murray who ran or received for big gains in 3 of 4 of his RRS games but Roy Finch has the look of a Quentin Griffin to me with his shifty cuts. There's also Brandon Williams whom we all would be coveting if not for how well Malcolm Brown compliments Jonathan Gray.

Their OL only gave up sacks on 3% of their snaps last season but I attribute much of that to their frequent QB rollouts and exhausting pace. I love Jeffcoat and Okafor vs. their tackles this season and we have better interior rush options this season with our blitz packages. Against their running game it may be a different matter and they have some talent inside starting with center Ben Habern, though his matchup with Randall last season wasn't remotely impressive, and the monstrous 320 lb. Tyler Evans. We bottled up this crew in the running game apart for some big plays on the edge last year so this is another game where Texas' addition of Hicks and Vaccaro to the equation are going to eliminate some opportunities in the open field enjoyed by teams last year.

Their pass-rush looks good assuming Ronnell Lewis' career arc looks anything like Sergio Kindle's, which any Sooner would assure you it does. Alexander started to get it together last year and Stoops may have the best pass-rushing end tandem I've seen there in years.

Truly sad what this offseason has done to their linebacker crew which was otherwise considered the best in conference. If Corey Nelson really was "the best defensive player by far" in their spring game the injury to Travis Lewis may not sting as bad but I hardly believe it. Nevertheless, Tony Jefferson IS ideally suited for their SLB "royback" position and their starting corners are among the best 4 or 5 in the conference.

Generally, because Stoops maintains so much continuity within his staff and their strategies we know what better OU teams look like. They can run the ball (likely), attack downfield (absolutely), have savvy playmakers at safety who punish and create turnovers (this years' SS is 175 pounds and neither started last year...), and unleash hell from the LB positions (already digging into the depth chart).

For those reasons I believe the key for their season and their defense is in whether or not Jamarkus McFarland makes the leap at defensive tackle and can disrupt our running game and create an interior pass-rush for them. If so, they can handle us and A&M en route to getting smashed by Alabama in the national title game. If not, it's an excellent defense and well-led offense that won't be able to escape the conference schedule without a loss or two. They get us and Okie Lite away from Norman, and that home winning streak won't last forever...but they're probably going to beat us.

Greetings travelers,

While the introduction of round-robin scheduling led Bellmont to assure everyone that Texas would schedule more interesting games before conference play, in the year 2011 playing the entire league will not serve to lighten the difficulty level of Texas' opponents.

This season we're essentially replacing a Sam Houston St or La Lafayette date with Missouri and Kansas. Opponents that have access to greater resources than do our average non-conference foes and who are far more accustomed to competing against Texas. As we'll see in our examination of the conference, this does not make a return to 10 wins more likely. We have some strategic advantages this year but are facing a league of teams with lots of returning offensive linemen and defenses stocked with defensive backs and pass-rushers.

Some of you may be over-saturated with preseason projections, though I doubt it, but my aim here is to take a glimpse at all of our conference foes and project the following:

What will they be good at? What will they suck at? How do they match up against the rest of the league? How do they match up against Texas?

We're going to get right into the strategies of each team and consider the likelihood of a 10 win season, or bowl eligibility, or being mired in mediocrity...let's start at home.

Texas:

Longhorn Scott has us very well pegged as a Power running team and Mack's early announcement of Chet Moss' position switch to fullback confirms that our primary focus this year will be on 2-back formations and running concepts like Power O.

Our strengths on offense, few as they may be, are these: we have a very talented incoming power-back and a stable of serviceable running backs on campus, we have the best interior Offensive line in the conference with young talents Trey Hopkins and Mason Walters on either side of Snow who is one of the conference's best centers, we have some up and coming wide receivers, loads of fast skill players, and a coaching staff who can scheme raw materials into industrial capital.

The addition of Harsin is the key in that last strength because we had many of these same assets last year and couldn't get out of our own way en route to the end zone. So long as we find a quarterback who can avoid interceptions and who knows where the ball should go (big ifs) we can do a lot building around Power O and the holes smashed by our offensive line. Guys like Mike Davis and DJ Monroe offer big play possibilities if they can be featured in packages that are complemented by a running game that can get 4-6 yards consistently on 1st and 2nd down.

On defense we are loaded with skilled pass-rushers, we have several good open field tacklers in our linebacking corp and in the defensive backfield (Vaccaro, Phillips), and we have one very legit defensive tackle. Whereas Texas fans pull their hair at the thought of fielding someone next to Kheeston Randall the rest of the conference (as you will soon see) is wishing to Cthulhu that they had just one Kheeston Randall on their roster this season.

Our weaknesses on defense are as follows: we don't have a 2nd defensive tackle yet and consequently need a way to flush the pocket down the middle and protect our linebackers from 2nd level blocks, we don't have a between the tackles middle linebacker who can stonewall blocks and plug holes, and we don't have anyone who can play on an island against the likes of Justin Blackmon.

On offense we are missing experience at receiver, a quarterback, and a TE/HB/FB who is an asset in run blocking and a reasonable threat in the passing game. I particularly curse Greg Davis for that last shortcoming as his disinterest in the running game led us to fail to develop a position that is now primarily featured in modern multiple offenses. Sigh, anyway, we are also without reliable offensive tackles which means we need all of Harsin's Boise trickery in moving the pocket, playing Ole' with pass-rushers, and building from the running game because last year's playbook would possibly fail even harder without Kyle Hix, if you can believe it.

Most of that should have been review for totebaggers like yourselves, the more interesting concern is this: which of our conference foes are equipped with the schemes and personnel to exploit our soft underbelly on defense? Or our inexperience outside? Who has the bodies and toughness to plug our running game? I've divided the conference into groupings based on those very metrics.

Certain Roadkill:

Kansas

Turner Gill was that name you always heard when some commentator asked why a school wasn't interviewing more black candidates for head coach. Overlooked in that discussion was the fact that Turner Gill wasn't a worthy candidate for most of those major positions. His Kansas team was held to a field goal opening day against North Dakota St last year.

Neither of their tackles top 285 lbs. and their best end is gone. I don't see any reason our team would struggle to run right over this crew unless we get banged up or are considerably worse than I foresee.

On offense they don't know who their quarterback is and lack a Dezmon Briscoe or Kerry Meier that would alarm you in the passing game while their OL gave up multiple sacks against any defense with a pass-rushing pulse last season. Let's not filter through the mess in Lawrence, suffice to say that they are a work in progress and we will defeat them.

Iowa St.

We get them at home this year, we always win that one right? Seriously, if we lose to this team in Austin again Mack's career will be in serious jeopardy. That said, they do pose a few problems.

One is that they are actually still built to defend teams that like to run the ball and their 2 outside linebackers combined last year for 241 tackles, 13 TFL, 7 INT and 6 PBU. They return a fairly competent noseguard in Stephen Ruempolhamer as well. Against a Greg Davis run game they would absorb it along with his sideline passing game for 400 total yards and 17 points.

However, even if they could do the same to this year's crew the odds of this offense reaching 28 points again on Diaz's defense are pretty poor. Last year's effort was made possible mostly due to turnovers and the success of the zone-read featuring Arnaud and Robinson against our frustrated defense. Both of those players are now gone.

Potentially Dangerous:

Baylor

Briles has done a markedly better job in the last few years in developing OL than has Texas and the fact that Baylor is routinely putting more big guys in the NFL draft than us should be a source of fantastic motivation for Searels. This year they return 4 starters to block for the famous Robert Griffin III and a cast of very fast receivers and backs.

They list a TE on the depth chart but this is a 4 WR spread team that lives by the improvisations of Robert Griffin, 4 verticals plays, and your shotgun-spread arsenal of zone-runs, QB draws, and screens.

Where this fails is against a zone-defense such as Diaz employs with guys like Hicks, Acho, and Vaccaro on the field. Baylor caught us last year by getting Kendall Wright isolated on Blake Gideon, Jay Finley finding a huge crease and easily outrunning Gideon and Scott in the open field, and landing some turnovers that gave them awesome field position.

Against Gideon+Vaccaro and a zone defense those iso-situations will be tougher to come by and in general I expect our back 7 to be 5x less vulnerable to big runs and yards after catch thanks to the zone scheme and Vaccaro's constant presence.

Their defense has perhaps one credible pass-rusher, a small nickel lineup featuring Ahmad Dixon in place of a 3rd LB, and one remaining 300+ pound DT. This is a group begging to get pounded by Johnson and Malcolm Brown.

The fact that Texas handled Robert Griffin quite competently last year should give you confidence that his "Heisman" skills won't enough to make a difference. A difficult task to be sure, but they are designed to get fast players in space and handle the same strategy from opponents and consequently the 7 or so legitimately good athletes on their team won't be of much use in standing up to a Walters-Snow double team or trying to truck-stick Keenan Robinson.

Texas Tech

Lonnie Edwards is probably the best guard in the conference and every OL, while Tuberville has been trying to slim them down to make zone blocks, is 300+ pounds and a returning starter. That lot is blocking for Eric Stephens who had over 800 all purpose yards last year and Aaron Crawford. On the outside they have their usual cast of experienced possession receivers who used to cause everyone fits back when 4 and 5 receiver sets overmaxed everyone's capacity to defend the forward pass.

Now that everyone is stockpiling pass-rushers and defensive backs the name of the game for the Red Raiders is running over people on hitch screens and zone runs slowly but surely. Not particularly frightening but they were pretty efficient at it against everyone but us and OU. They have a new quarterback this year who isn't the beneficiary of Leach tutoring so we'll see how that goes for them.

Their OL could lean on our front pretty heavily over the course of 4 quarters which makes them fairly dangerous, but I imagine that a new starter against Diaz blitz schemes with little in the way of a home-run threat at the skill positions could be a recipe for disaster, this team is no longer the litmus test for whether a coordinator can handle the Air-Raid.

On defense they lose Colbe Whitlock, at freaking last, and start two tiny defensive tackles in front of the TCU coverage schemes brought from Ft. Worth by former Horned Frog DB coach Chad Glasgow. Whitlock gave us fits the last 2 seasons and his departure should be celebrated by us all, not least of all because he left no protege to follow him. Glasgow does have quite a lot to work with in the defensive backfield with Cody Davis (a freshman All-American) and some experienced corners and safeties, I think he'll put together a pretty strong unit.

Again, it's a team that is fairly well built to handle a spread passing game but has no answer for lead blocks by fullbacks or future NFL guards save for dusting off their 8-man fronts and hoping their 200 pound backfield doesn't get tired of tackling Brown and co. Remember that Nebraska struggled doing this last year with Jared Crick and Lavonte David so...

Kansas St.

Really most of the danger from K St. from year to year is that they consistently match up well against us and seem to have coaching staffs who know exactly how to befuddle us every season. Greg Davis wasn't their only victim either as they have consistently found ways to attack our defenses as well. Then there is their towering dominance over us in the other sports which I can't explain in this space or any other.

I'm sure Mack is hoping that our staff overhaul will cause Snyder and co. to be forced to finally throw out their "how to clown Texas" cheat sheet and that will certainly help but this team will still be fairly well built to challenge our weak spots.

They lost Daniel Thomas, around whom they focused their offense like a West Texas HS around the black athlete on the team, but replace him with transfer Bryce Brown from Tennessee who is next to go into the Snyder meat grinder.

The interior OL is gone but this was already a patchwork job by Snyder of mixed running/option schemes, JuCO and 2nd tier Texas athletes, and mental toughness...essentially all the things that give a finesse team fits.

I'm betting that Randall has a stronger performance in this game and that the team will have more toughness overall to take advantage of their sizable talent gap in a scrap against this lot.

On defense they have several guys back in the secondary and lose only a few pieces from a front 7 that the league absolutely ran over last year for over 6 yards per carry. It's an improved unit though that has been infused with JuCo talent and a Miami transfer at linebacker (Arthur Brown) who was apparently the best LB last year playing on the scout team. DE Meshak and co. will pass through the fire of easy Div II schools and be in far better form when we meet again. We get them late in the year before A&M at home and it would be the easiest of these games to drop.

This one tells us if the cultural transformation is complete or a work in progress because Snyder turns non-qualifiers and cast-offs into smashmouth teams of the sort we want to become.

Next post we'll get into the ranked teams.

Greetings tote baggers, I'm back from Maui and settled in to Dallas where the Nickel Rover office has relocated and added some permanent staffing. Today I'd like to talk about the defense beyond what I wrote in Peter Bean's "Longhorn Kickoff 2011" which is the best Texas Longhorn football preseason magazine money can buy.

Last year our defense had 2 distinctive weaknesses that teams hammered en route to handing us more home game losses than we had seen in the previous 4 years combined. Truly the soft spots of the defense were magnified by horrendous time of possession, turnovers that occurred frequently all over the field, and weak special teams play but there were some clear concerns many of us had after seeing Iowa St. drop 440 yards on us.

Our 2nd defensive tackle position is viewed as a big question mark and weakness, as it was last season, and UCLA and KSU seemed to expose the defense as a soft unit against the run. Our actual performance against the run last year was to allow 135 yards per game at 3.5 yards per carry. Not exemplary numbers and 1.3 yards more per carry than we allowed in 2009, but not horrifyingly bad either.

Texas A&M gave up nearly identical yardage and was hardly blasted as being a poor unit against the run, when you lose 7 games at Texas whatever you don't do with excellence is hammered with ferocity by those who are eager to ensure that all possible blame is distributed.

Our problems against the run had a little to do with our play at the 2nd tackle spot, a little more to do with the fact that we usually had 2 outside linebackers and 5 defensive backs on the field, and a lot more to do with the fact that neither safety and only one corner offered much in the way of run support (Aaron Williams, Vaccaro was obviously good as well when he was on the field but he then took Aaron's place inside).

Against the pass the 2010 Texas defense was barely tested at first, and then gradually teams learned that they could pick spots to attack our safeties in coverage. Now that we have subtracted 3 NFL corners from the roster that situation doesn't look much better. The latter at least will be improved by the zone defenses and Vaccaro replacing Scott.

But a young secondary that will have to deal with Ryan Broyles, Justin Blackmon, Kendall Wright, TJ Moe, Kenny Stills, and possibly worst of all, Jeff Fuller, stands out as our biggest potential weakness. Phillips is a willing tackler and I think a potential zone defense star but not a guy you can trust on an island outside against Fuller or Blackmon. Byndom or Diggs may someday become that but it won't happen this year, if ever, given their disadvantages in the height department. That means Gideon is going to have to play over the top on these guys and leave Vaccaro and the linebackers to keep an eye on the solid collection of tight ends, slot receivers, and running backs that the Big 12 is fielding this year.

Bolstering the secondary's efforts is the fact that we have easily the most athletic linebacker corp I've ever seen at Texas. Acho plays well in space and is an absolute terror on the edge. If his move to weakside linebacker means that he'll have the opportunity to play more outside the tackles and rush from that position I think it's possible that you will see an Acho lead the team in sacks for the 3rd consecutive season.

Robinson is quite good in coverage as well and Hicks offers a similar skill set to Robinson/Acho plus better tackling ability. The trick, as Scipio well detailed in his linebacker preview , is improving against the run with a corp of anti-spread linebackers who are disinclined to blowing up lead blockers and setting someone else up for the kill shot. Muckelroy had a little more of that in him and incoming Edmond and Chet Moss will probably fill that role for us in the future.

However, Diaz likes to force the running game to the sideline and have a fast middle linebacker, like Chris White at Miss St. or Keenan Robinson at Texas, be there to make a tackle for little or no gain. Either Keenan is going to have to adopt a more physical mindset, Texas' defensive tackles are going to have to command attention, or we'll have to sit through another season of fairly solid run defense.

On the back end, I think the presence of Phillips, Vaccaro, and Diggs in the nickel provides a better safety net for missed tackles or blocked linebackers and will transform some of the inside-zone cutback runs we endured last year from touchdowns to first downs.

Because Diaz's Cover-3 defense lends itself to 8-man fronts that will move Vaccaro closer to the line of scrimmage, and because at least 3 of our best eleven defenders are linebackers, I think Diaz will play 2-back and Tight End formations with his 4-3 defense and try to out-scheme opponents with fire zones rather than introduce much in the way of new formations to improve the run defense.

Against the pass there are some solutions to a problem like Jeff Fuller I expect to see this season.

Zone defense is the first of these, the Cover-3 positions 3 defensive backs over the top and should prevent receivers from beating us down the sideline deep even if does set us up for watching Landry Jones or Ryan Tannehill complete 6 yard hitch routes with impunity.

Another solution we'll all been talking about is the blitz. I believe Jeffcoat, Acho, Robinson, Wilson, and Okafor are all well above average as pass-rushers for their respective positions and Diaz's blitzes tend to set everyone up for free runs at the QB at one point or another.

Formational alignment is the last solution and think Texas fans can expect to see a different formation this season employed in obvious passing situations, the 30 dime front. You need a defensive tackle, 2 five techs, 2 linebackers, and 5 or 6 defensive backs (depending on if you want to keep a 3rd linebacker).

It's much like the 3-3-5 which we've sort of employed before with the difference being that Muschamp maintained an Over Front and one of the "linebackers" was just a defensive end who stayed standing up. In the 30 dime front there are only 3 true DL and they can all fly upfield to the quarterback. We could leave Randall in there if we like or replace him with Desmond Jackson or a better pass rusher, allow Okafor to loop inside where he has gained plenty of experience, and Jeffcoat can attack the outside shoulder of the tackle like he normally would on a pass read.

On the edge we can blitz Hicks, Acho, Robinson, a corner, whomever we want. The advantage, as the article details, is that you rush the passer with your best rushers in the best possible alignments. Because our linebackers are particularly athletic and adept at blitzing, I can see us leaving them all on the field and just removing a defensive tackle.

Formations and blitzes such as these will allow Diaz to field 8 solid-to-very good pass defenders while being able to get intense pressure on the quarterback. You can only complete so many 6 yard hitches to a Fuller or Broyles before either your quarterback or your receiver gets lit up and loses their edge or the ball.

And thus Diaz will cover for the extraordinary loss of AJ and the postal service while still maintaining a functional run defense. Or, if we just develop our young DL quickly things could get really interesting.

Listening to Ari Tempkin of all people, defender of Greg Davis, I overheard a fascinating point and stat about our 2010 Texas Longhorn football team that offered some intense insight into our horrifyingly bad offense.

Tempkin claimed that Texas' tight ends last season accounted for 6 catches. 6. For the entire season...

Now it so happens that he's wrong, between Barrett Matthews, Greg Smith, and Dominique Jones, Texas TE's actually hauled in 21 balls for 121 yards and 2 TD's. In other words, slightly more than Shipley offered us at the position every saturday in 2009 and even greater still than what David Thomas averaged in 2005.

Tempkin was pretty far off (or I misunderstood) but the fact remains that Texas drew little benefit last season from deploying a tight end on the field. It's easy to see where that took its toll on Gilbert's effectiveness and a great starting place in understanding how that hamstrung us is Burnt in NY's post-game writeup from last year's RRS.

The sideline-to-sideline passing/rushing attack of Texas last season was in fact comprised of plays that had challenged opponents in previous seasons and players that are extremely dangerous on the edge. Malcolm Williams IS a dangerous player down the sideline, Kirkendoll can in fact run a 4.4 40, Marquise Goodwin does star in track in the offseason. What made those plays and players like that dangerous on the sideline in the past was the abundance of space that could be found there as defenses were forced to cover the expansive area of the field around the hash marks.

It was easy to scream at the TV or field last year for more pass calls to the middle of the field but far fewer answers on how exactly this could be achieved. It's not as though Davis is completely oblivious to the need to threaten that area of the field, even if he was clueless/uninterested on how to achieve such a feat.

Keeping Gilbert interception-free might have been part of the equation...a failed one we might add, but the lack of targets has to be another. We could rehash how much Matthews disappointed, Smith was useless, and Jones underused and unheralded or ponder the lack of an effective slot receiver who could find space against a zone but I'm ready to move on to better things: answers, hope, Blaine Irby.

The recovery of Irby to something near his early-2009 form is like Bono's miracle drug for the Texas offense. The odds of that actually happening aren't too great, regardless of what you may have heard on the rumor mill. The level of route running and timing Irby had developed and was approaching with Colt McCoy isn't going to rematerialize with Gilbert/best challenger after 1 offseason of practice that was taken slowly to protect his knee. Assuming, of course, that he can even recover physically to his pre-injury athletic form. The most we should hope from Blaine though might still approach the total production from the position last year with Irby finally having a shot at reaching his potential in 2012 after receiving a medical redshirt.

Barrett Matthews was a mule that I and many others attached much of our hope and heroin to for last season only to see him be catapulted into the middle of a minuteman meeting. Personally I don't think Davis put him in positions to succeed last year alternating between calling no plays for him, throwing it to him at a standstill against zone defenses, and then using him as a 3rd down target in crucial situations where he inevitably failed.

What's he capable of in the new offense? More, I'm sure. Mcfarland, Jones, Howard, Terrell, they'll all have their chance. The fact that HarsinWhite moved Malcolm Williams to halfback reveals that the staff sees the need to threaten the middle of the field and are going to look to use his size and speed wherever it's needed rather than as an occasional heat check for funsies or late game hail marys.

The Power-O series which LonghornScott detailed for us here (intro), here (responses), here (strongside complement), and here (weakside complement) are going to do a lot to open up the middle for us to launch the play-action attack off the Power-O series which will be detailed in a promised LonghornScott post on the subject (we're all waiting LS). To summarize the non-existing post, the goal is to suck in the linebackers who have never been particularly aggressive or punished for the way they've played our zone running game the last 3 seasons, and then punish them.

The most likely answer to the vacuum Shipley left over the middle though is the same answer to "who will step up and become a weapon for Texas on offense in 2011" or "who is going to be targeted on those play-action tosses?" Mike Davis. Post-routes, drags, PA Waggles, Davis' change of direction and speed coming over the middle in a healthy 2011 campaign is what will rejuvenate the Texas offense and open up the sideline game for screens, outside runs/sweeps, and set up the running game to overhwhelm outmanned fronts.

As fall practices approach and the season slowly paces its way up to us I believe that the mirage of an oasis we behold in the Texas heat will materialize to be MikeD on horseback offering us a canteen. Drink up, Judah Ben-Hur.

NBA:

Some of you may have noticed I was fairly off in my predictions for the Conference finals. If you didn't read that piece, do you remember which teams lost the series while only winning 1 game apiece? Those are the teams I picked to win.

One of my more egregious mistakes was in saying that the Thunder could bother Nowitzki and shut everyone else down on the Mavericks with their athleticism and ability to contest 3 pt. jumpers. 30 points from Nowitzki would not be enough to guarantee Dallas success, I wrote.

Well, if a guy scores 30 points on 15 shots or less, that kind of efficiency is going to murder you. Especially if it takes place in the 4rth quarter after 3 quarters of competitive play. The Mavericks team defense and firm team-ball offensive identity made them miles more assertive and confident than the Thunder in the 4rth quarter and that's how all those comeback victories were managed.

Identity is one of remaining obstacles for this OKC team before they can ascend to the level of NBA Champions and it starts with Durant. The Durantula does not yet understand how he can truly excel in this game.

He has one of the highest standing reaches in the game, can finish around the rim, makes his free throws, and can nail catch and shoot jump shots from anywhere on the court. Somehow he has concluded that his best offense comes from trying to take guys off the dribble from the perimeter and then setting for pull-up jumpers.

Even the best shooters don't make a high percentage of those shots and they do not often result in free throw shots. Derrick Rose did the same thing to a far greater extent and ruined the Bulls shooting less than 30% in the final 2 games while taking nearly 60 shots and maybe 15 free throws.
Kobe Bryant seems to have taught the rest of the league that the way to become a successful offensive player is to master the shot that everyone wants you to take and it is a recipe for low-scoring and boring basketball.

Durant should be finishing plays like Ray Allen, catching the ball off curls and screens and then shooting. He needs to take Dirk Nowitzki-high post game 101 this summer and learn how his face-up jumper and length can result in efficient offense. Watching him continue to attempt to take faster players off the dribble rather than backing them down and burying them with high-percentage shots and free throws is going to drive me crazy. This, along with some growth from young Westbrook, would take the Thunder to the next level.

Now Dirk and Lebron have a lot at stake for them in what story our modern mythwriters are going to tell about them. For Dirk, his status as a top 15 player of all time seems to be in question while Lebron is expected to win multiple titles with Wade to be considered a serious challenger to Jordan.

For those of us who can consider these matters untarnished by winning bias, there are different considerations for these two superstars in this very appealing finals matchup.

Dirk Nowizki, for a 7 footer, is an unspectacular rebounder and defender. In two of the departments in which you would expect an athlete with such physical advantages to excel he offers maybe average production. That said, he may be the most efficient scorer of his time and amongst the all-time greats. His ability to score in the high post is unmatched by anyone else in the game right now and when paired with his 3 pt. shooting, free throw percentage, and passing ability it makes him the most terrifying offensive option in the league.

Lebron James has a chance to make his case now as one of the 3 greatest players of all time, if he can guard Dirk as he did with Rose late in games, and stop the German. The King's ability to defend perimeter scorers, make weakside blocks, and ruin fast-break offense is an underrated element of his game. On that end of the court, he is maximizing the possibilities of his phenomenal athletic advantages.

I think he could stand to develop a high-post game as well, although at least his drives get him to the free throw line, but should he demolish Dirk after exposing the MVP that would make for a legendary playoff run.

As for this series, don't forget Jason Kidd, who has dominated games without scoring a lot, and Tyson Chandler who will be the strongest inside presence the finals. On the other side, the contributions of Haslem and Mike Miller push the Heat over the top into a massive juggernaut when they play well. Their health and success in this series should make for a Heat victory. Otherwise, it's anybody's game.

Crack-baby Athletic Association:

Great preview of the the Aggies that Sailor already linked, beating them is going to be a tall order and it's probably best for your enjoyment of next season if you pencil in that game and the RRS as losses. Not to say we couldn't win either, but if you count on it...

What terrified me in that article was that Aggies didn't mount a particularly effective pass-rush last season. What? You could read that in 3 ways: One, that without Von Miller they will be totally inept at getting to the quarterback. Two, that their growth as a young defense in the 3-4 already had to overcome a weak rush anyways so losing him doesn't sting. Three, Von Miller wasn't that great.

I'm going to go ahead and reject number three and postulate that if Miller's seasonal impact wasn't what you would expect that this is only because he was injured early in the season. Given that the Aggies do have some young talent coming up on the DL and at OLB I'm leaning towards number 2; the Aggies are going to grow a lot on defense this year and will no longer require Miller to cover up their lack of playmaking talent in getting to the QB.

While the Aggies offensive improvement is truly disgusting to me, what really concerns me is the prospects of long-term defensive ascendancy under DeyRuter. We need someone to snatch him up as soon as possible. A Big 12 in which we combat OU AND A&M for defensive supremacy is a dark world in which I would rather not fumble for light. Pray that we keep winning recruiting battles for the likes of Malcolm Brown because the defensive line gap is one of the major factors in keeping our Cold War with OU a 2-superpower contest.

Who will save my little boy? From Oppenheimer's deadly toy?...What may save us me and you is if the Russians love their children too..

NBA:

Before the playoffs started I had (not in writing, sadly) LA-OKC and Chicago-Miami as my final four with the younger Bulls overcoming the Thunder for a finals victory.

Dallas surprised me, like they did most of you, but I at least convinced myself to pick them over Portland because I have a lot of respect for Tyson Chandler. With him and Haywood they have a close approximation of the squad that made it to the Finals in 2006 behind Stackhouse-Terry-Nowitzki jump shooting and the interior defense of Diop and Dampier.

That said, I don't think this is a Finals team in 2011 and I believe their win over LA was more circumstantial than it was an indicator of their greatness.

The Lakers have been bruising their way to the Finals the last 3 years by making scoring in the paint nearly impossible against their forrest of 7 foot players, scoring efficiently with those same trees, and of course Kobe having some huge games along the road.

Where the Lakers have been weak and constantly regressing is in their perimeter defense where Kobe and Artest are losing steps and Fisher has always been less than stellar. This is a defense poorly suited to handling ball movement and contesting multiple shooters on the perimeter. Tightening up the paint against the Mavs was somewhat akin to building a turreted-wall to stop an air strike.

That said, the limits of air power are well-documented, and the remaining opponents on the Mavs' path to a championship are faster on the perimeter than the Lakers, as well as being a little more motivated than the weary champions. The Thunder can contest jumpers by Kidd, Terry, and Nowitzki with far more gusto than did the Laker backcourt. Defending Nowitzki is a task that no player has ever been particularly adept at managing but Dirk scoring 30 a night is not enough for the Mavs to win a 7-game series as witnessed in every other playoff run by Dallas in the Cuban era.

Chicago and Miami are no different in being well-stocked with athletic wings who can stay in front of Dallas' aging guards and get a hand the face of shooters, even coming as help. Additionally, all these teams have penetrating guards who will feast while being guarded by Kidd, Terry, Stevenson, etc. Kobe was no longer able to do enough to turn his mismatch against Kidd and co. into a sieve that would open up into a deluge of Laker scoring options and really the Lakers have traditionally opened up their offense inside-out anyways.

Some combination of Ibaka, Durant and Collison ought to bother Dirk while the other Thunder chase the Mavericks off the perimeter and inside into the waiting arms of Perkins and Ibaka. Dallas plays strong team defense but their best individual defender, Chandler, will be wasted guarding the likes of Perkins and Ibaka while Durant and Westbrook work against Kidd? and Marion?. Anyways, this Maverick defense is not more capable of handling Westbrook-Durant than was the excellent Memphis squad that was just vanquished.

I'm doing a 180 on the Bulls' chances of taking on the Heat because of the resurgence of Carlos Boozer, revived from his slumber by an offering of Joel Anthony/Bosh/Zydrunas defense. The strength of the Bulls is in their abundance of excellent options and strong team defense which is being pitted against a team built around 3 good players surrounded by scraps from a junkyard.

Wade and James are better than anyone on the Bulls roster and Bosh is the rough equivalent of Joakim Noah in total contribution to a team. Rose, Gibson, Korver, Boozer, Deng, Brewer, and maybe even Watson are all better than the options on the Heat roster not named Bosh, Wade, or James. Which strength will tip the scales?

In terms of what actually will happen on the court, the nature of the Bulls' depth will allow them to defend Wade and James' penetration anchored by Noah inside (you see his block on James?) and take away what those 2 superhumans do best. They were content to allow Bosh to do his thing in game 1 knowing that a big game from Bosh is not an ingredient to Heat victory unless it's paired with James or Wade success. In comparison, when Wade and James are penetrating and taking over it opens up the offense for even a stiff like Illgauskas to become dangerous.

On the other side, Wade and James can't defend Rose, Deng and Boozer on their own. The Bulls have too many scoring options and good offensive players at positions that Wade and James wouldn't naturally defend. Most importantly, 4 of these 7 games are going to take place in Chicago where their deep bench and supporting cast will be inspired with confidence and energy to combine their efforts against the Big 3 of Miami.

Maybe the home team doesn't win every game but I'm betting on Chicago winning game 7 to finish out the series. Then we'll see an offseason where the Heat pick up a decent player or two and become too much for anyone to handle for the next 5 years.

I would lean towards Chicago in a series with the Thunder but I won't bother to think it through until it becomes a more certain outcome.

In the big scheme of NBA titles the window of opportunity is gone for the current Celtic, Spurs, and Lakers squads. Garnett and Duncan cannot sustain the output that Boston and San Antonio success has been built upon. Against the Heat Garnett managed one throwback game, a 28-18 explosion, that led to Celtic victory. Against the Grizzlies Duncan couldn't do that even once.

The Lakers can actually be right back in the title hunt with a few roster tweaks that makes them younger and faster on the perimeter. Shannon Brown is NOT the answer but replacing Fisher and finding another SF/SG who can defend and shoot 3's while the new coach convinces Kobe he must defer more inside to Bynum and Gasol would keep the Lakers in strong position to keep appearing in the finals. Or landing Dwight Howard, that wouldn't hurt either although LA is already well above average at the 4 and 5.

Boston is in the 2nd best position of these 3 powers because Pierce, Garnett, and Allen are still strong supporting players and their best player, Rondo, is still young. Should they make some small roster tweaks and begin to find a replacement and assistant for Garnett who isn't older than 30 and totally washed up they could still challenge in the east. Most likely it's all over for them since Pierce and Garnett are likely to fall of a cliff soon in terms of their production. They don't have other options but to hope in their sustained quality though.

San Antonio is in a terrible spot. They did a great job of surrounding their stars with supporting players and it wasn't enough. Duncan-Parker-Ginobili is no longer a good enough team to win an NBA title. Sad day for those of us who loved watching the Big Fundamental quietly school the rest of the league and appreciated Ginobili's athletic and diverse game.

Great day for those of us who think Tony Parker is an overrated buffoon whose Finals MVP should be presented at Duncan's feet in a ceremony in which he completes a walk of shame the length of the river to reach Duncan while being chased by Eva Longoria wielding a whip fashioned from Duncan's shoe strings, Spurs championship banners, and Brent Barry's teeth.

I really don't know what the next move is for San Antonio except to jettison Parker and hope for a collapse of a season that enables them to draft in the lottery and start over with a new superstar without losing their ready-made supporting cast. Like a repeat of what happened with Duncan, essentially. If they pull that crap off again the rest of the league should just give up.

The Draft:

I noticed that Todd McShay had Dareus as the best player in the draft and there have been some evaluations and Sports "science" stuff to indicate that he's a better prospect than Ndamukong Suh. Anyone remember when I lambasted McShay for grading Gerald McCoy above Suh? If you thought I was above bringing this up again you are mistaken...

In their rookie seasons:

McCoy had 22 tackles, 3 sacks, 9 tackles for loss, and forced 2 fumbles. Very strong showing, he was definitely a worthy first round selection. We all witnessed what he did to Texas in 09, we never doubted he was a talent.

Suh had 66 tackles, 10 sacks, 15 tackles for loss, and 1 forced fumble.

Whatever McShay may think, Dareus will not be better than Suh either, the House of Spears was a once in a generation talent. This generation's Warren Sapp, since Haynesworth doesn't give a crap. The Lion's decision to go ahead and add another dominant defensive tackle to the mix must be terrifying the rest of the NFC.

Everyone else on the defense merely needs to be competent and in the right place when you have 2 defensive tackles who command double teams. As it happens, they have Avril and Vanden Bosch at defensive end and a very strong nose tackle in Corey Williams already. They could easily move Suh to nosetackle in passing situations and play Fairley at 3-tech, it's a loaded defensive line with a lot of options. Terrible group to gameplan against.

As far our crew, Sam Acho's treatment by the public evaluators is pretty puzzling to me. No upside? Questionable in space? Limited explosion as a pass-rusher? Not strong enough against the run?

The dude played defensive tackle on passing downs, logged 8 sacks for 2 consecutive seasons doing it, and set a record in the cone drill. If I were a 3-4 team I would be all over Acho as a SOLB or even WOLB. You know he can handle your schemes mentally, his energy level and effort is outstanding, and his production in college was very good. Again, the fact that he was a strong edge rusher AND someone counted on to get interior pass-rush as a tackle should say everything to zone-blitzing 3-4 teams. I could even see him as an inside backer.

Curtis Brown and Aaron Williams were treated fairly well, if teams don't see the value in having a guy like Aaron Williams who is physical against the run and strong in coverage than I'm not sure what lessons they were drawing from the Green Bay defense last year in their use of Woodson. Perhaps they didn't learn any lessons.

The truest lesson of last year's Green Bay defense is to find 2 or 3 blue chippers who can dominate multiple facets of the game and then surround them with competent guys who can follow assignments.

This is the 2nd consecutive year without a first round pick from Texas, but you can reasonably expect the notion of Texas as a breeding ground for soft, moody players to disappear with the success by Colt, Shipley, Acho, Houston, etc.

It will be phenomenal news for the 2011 season if we have someone rated as a first-round pick in the next draft because most of our stars are underclassmen. Randall will need to have an explosive season or demonstrate an ability to handle NFL-level double teams to go in the 1st. Keenan Robinson and Emmanuel Acho are definitely NFL prospects but linebackers don't go high unless they are absolute terrors. I think Acho is the more explosive player and he could have a huge year if he's healthy all season but I don't see either of them as a Cushing or Clay Matthews.

David Snow is the other Senior who has produced in the past and while I'm a huge fan, center is another position where you need to be really dominant to warrant first round money.

You can bet that Geoff Ketchum is rooting hard for Tray Allen to have a big season at left tackle and justify his selection as the best player in the state coming out of high school. At least it's likely that he'll start there, since his main competition seems to be injured Greenlea, injured Poehlmann, and Harsin suddenly deciding to break up the awesome interior to stick undersized Hopkins at left tackle.

If Okafor has a big enough year to be a first round pick that's cause for excitement cause it will probably mean he had a monster season. Ditto for Vaccaro, I see potential in both of these guys but I don't expect either to blow up enough to draw a draft grade that would lure them out before their senior seasons.

Gideon's treatment in the draft process will be very interesting as I'm sure he'll be asked by reporters about his chances in the NFL. I can't imagine that his 4.7 (projection) pro day 40 time and junior film would get him anything more than a free agency signing.

NBA Playoffs:

I'm rooting for the Thunder, of course, and I'm excited by the consequences the Perkins trade has had for the squad. As solid a player as Perkins is, the real value of that trade was in ditching the lifeless bodies of Nenad Krstic and Jeff Green. It would be easy to see the post-trade results and say, "Perkins is one of the best centers in the league" but the reality is that he's an average center (in a good way) who is taking minutes formerly held by terrible players.

Serge Ibaka is also seeing increased playing time and looking like the next Dikembe Mutombo. How far he develops offensively will determine the Thunder's ceiling over the next few years. If he continues his defensive excellence and develops more offensive moves than that team should be competing for titles for the next decade, all of the supporting pieces around Durant and Westbrook are very solid.

In the meantime getting past the Grizzlies is more difficult than many of us would have guessed and I expected them to be a tough out. Marc+ZBo and playing inside-out is being affirmed by Memphis' success as the superior means to winning basketball games. Younger Gasol's shooting percentages have been god-like and the fact that teams can't handle Randolph with a single defender combined with ZBo and Marc's passing abilities is a nasty situation to deal with. Add in Allen and Battier's defense and you have a team perfectly designed to defeat the perimeter-oriented teams of the modern game.

I expect the Thunder to get out alive because their team is deeper and I think Perkins and Ibaka can handle the Grizz interior just enough that Durant can make the difference. It's not hard to imagine the Grizz taking any remaining team to 7 games though, if not beating them.

You may all remember I sang the praises of the new Heat lineup last offseason, claiming that DBerri's Wins produced statistical analysis would indicate that a team with Wade and James surrounded by scrubs is going to be very good. Now that we've seen it over a full-season and through 1 1/4 playoff series this view has been affirmed. Either of these players is capable of a single-game explosion that carries a team to victory, containing both of them enough to win 4 games out of 7 is a seriously difficult task and one that Boston is clearly incapable of.

If you were drawing up a blueprint of how to beat the Heat it would be having someone who can defend the basket against penetration, a la Duncan 5 years ago or Howard now, 2 legitimately good perimeter defenders with enough height to play back against the drive and then offer a contest on a jump shot, and then an offense built around a low-post scorer who commands double teams.

Any team that relies on scoring from perimeter players is going to be frustrated and overwhelmed being defended by James and Wade, scoring consistently against the Heat has to be achieved by a guy who can't be defended by these two. The rest of the league can thank God that Bosh isn't a better post defender.

Then, even a team with a dominant low-post player has to deal with Wade and Jame's athletic ability to come help on a double team and still arrive on the perimeter to contest jumpers. It's like dealing with the Bulls when they had Pippen and Jordan, really difficult.

So, teams that match the blueprint? Well, your hated Lakers of course. The challenges of dealing with the mismatches presented by Gasol, Odom, Bynum and Kobe are really too much for any team if the Lakers play intelligently. Fortunately that's a big if, it's hard to keep 4 stars content enough to put in the sacrifice necessary to win championships. Especially when the leader is selfish, blames teammates for losses, and isn't the best player.

Kobe blaming the bench for not getting the ball inside to Gasol and Bynum enough was comically stupid. My friend Ryan pointed out over some Pluckers wings the other night that if Steve Blake and co. got the ball to Gasol every opportunity they had it would barely match the opportunities Kobe has to do the same thing.

If Kobe was a better leader he would take it on upon himself to make sure that what's essential to victory, feeding the forwards, is happening. Usually he does this just enough to get them through but I could easily see him getting sucked into an alpha matchup with Wade and James that thwarts everything the Lakers need to do in order to win. Anyone who doesn't want to see that happen? Well probably yes actually, I'm sure many of you would rather pluck out all your nosehairs than see one of those 2 teams get the title.

Anyone else match the description of teams who could overcome the Heat? Low-post based with strong perimeter defenders? The Memphis Grizzlies present that kind of troublesome matchup, but surviving until the finals would be very difficult for them. The Thunder don't get enough scoring inside and I think Durant and Westbrook would have too much trouble in that matchup to carry the load offensively.

The Mavs are actually intriguingly good since few teams have ever had a great answer for Dirk Nowitzki. Chandler has made them competitive in the paint like they haven't been since Diop and Dampier roamed there and Kidd is quietly still a star player because of what roles he can play on their team. He's not fast enough to stay in front of a Rose or Westbrook, but he can body up Kobe Bryant and he's big enough to contest midrange shots from guards. His rebounding, passing, and the fact that his traditionally limited offensive skillset has been effectively reduced to shooting open 3's has given some new life to his career.

Should they get past the schizo-Lakers than a rematch with the Heat could be in play, where they are probably slowly overwhelmed by not having anyone on the roster to deal with Wade and Lebron.

The Bulls aren't going anywhere unless Boozer gets it together because Rose's 40% shooting act and Noah's efforts inside aren't winning a championship anytime soon, I don't care what the MVP voters think.

If you grant my assumption that no one in the East can handle playoff-mode Wade and James that leaves the Lakers and the Grizzlies as the teams with the personnel to manage that task. Since I'll be rooting for the Thunder to go as far as they can and upset the Lakers that pushes me to go with the Heat as your 2011 NBA champion.

Thoughts?

Pro Insipiente:

I'm a fan of apologetics with CS Lewis and GK Chesterton numbering amongst my favorite writers, and with that in mind I'd like to make an Apologia for my continued faith in Garrett Gilbert.

I left the spring game wondering if perhaps Case McCoy gave the team a better chance to win as a game manager who could use the talent around him and minimize mistakes while the running game and speedier receivers did the heavy lifting on screens and in yards after catch. Gilbert I was almost ready to abandon after remembering him miss a throw to an open Hales, fail to convert in the Red Zone (we've seen that too many times) and throw that atrocious pick to Jackson when he had a receiver past the defense if he had moved his eyes around.

Then I watched the replay on ESPN3 a few times and things changed. McCoy became more the benefactor of luck and Gilbert a steady talent with an early, glaring error. Case's mistakes were greater and more frequent but he was bailed out on his deep throw by Darius White and made other errant throws where a defender could not catch it.

The Harsin offense does not seem to place a high priority on accuracy and making difficult "NFL" throws. Instead, it's about making reads and calls that will result in tosses to open receivers. With that in mind, what we want is someone who will grasp the reads of the offense and thus not place the ball in bad locations. Gilbert's interception clearly demonstrates that he is not there yet.

Assuming we had more than 1 guy who could handle the mental aspects of the offense, then accuracy downfield becomes a weapon. Sam Bradford, particularly in his freshman year, wasn't asked to demonstrate the high caliber of his arm but it showed up in how he led receivers and hit guys in stride. He was a weapon in his ability to perfectly execute simpler assignments. That's what we want this year. I think Gilbert gets there before anyone else and am not sure Case ever gets there. Anyone remember if Colt had such poor throwing mechanics as a freshman?

In the Trenches:

Hopkins may have the feet and athleticism to play outside at tackle but I'd rather we leave him inside where he belongs and take advantage of his ability to pull and get to the 2nd level with Snow and Walters. Having such a strong interior OL can potentially create far more time for the quarterback to throw than making Hopkins try to master the tackle position over the summer and fall.

Instead, I'd rather see what what Wylie makes of that summer and fall with Poehlmann, Kelly, Porter, Allen, Buchanan and Greenlea.

Tray Allen couldn't really handle Reggie Wilson in the spring game and Buchanan was absolutely abused by Alex Okafor. Wilson is the most "Buck" looking defensive end on the roster currently as he is an absolute terror in space. He reminds me of young Sam Acho in the way he manages sacks and pressures with a high motor and renewed acceleration when the initial burst fails. Everyonce in a while the tackle will guess the move correctly and be there, if an end can still make something happen when his move fails that is a better recipe for sustained success.

I'm betting Jeffcoat still starts though because his ability to use his hands will be useful in managing the stunts of the Diaz packages.

Okafor is starting to look like potentially the best player on the defense, although he perhaps drew an easier matchup in public than other stars. Still, he's been sold as a run defender who gained serious toughness playing inside but he is clearly licking his chops at the opportunities offered by taking on tackles in space.

Randall hasn't done much yet but it's worth nothing that he's been asked for the last 2 years to read and plug the playside A gap, often holding it against double teams. Now he's just getting a gap assignment and trying to take it. New technique, literally in his stance, and new aims. We know he can destroy most of the centers in this league one on one so I'm not too worried about Kheeston taking to this job. At the other spot it seems a safe bet that Howell, Dorsey and even Bible are starting to round, or unround, into form. I like Dorsey best for his speed.

Backfields:

Our linebacker corp is a team strength and amongst the deepest in the nation. They are also essentially all the same player. While the spread offense of the Big 12 has limited the need for a big, thumping Mike linebacker recent bowl games and defeats have emphasized that you do want someone there who can fill against the run.

Assuming Hicks plays the field side Sam role that Cobbs served in the spring game we have 3 guys whom in this league would probably excel best as weakside linebackers. Instead, for the 3rd year running, we are relocating an outside linebacker to the middle and hoping that our inexperience in blowing up blocks inside doesn't burn us.

Diaz is helping the crew by lining them up 8 yards back, rather than the 3-5 yards Muschamp positioned them in. Against the cutback of the Inside-Zone, which demolished our 50 fronts when Keenan and Emmanuel got caught filling other gaps, this will help tremendously as it provides them time to fill the worst creases and to take advantage of their greatest attribute, speed.

Cobbs, and likely Hicks, will have to zone-cover the flats or slot receivers and then explode onto the scene against screens and runs. I'm guessing Hicks will be the more skilled in this task, not being new to linebacker, but Cobbs has the better speed for this role in the future. When Acho and Robinson are gone expect to see Hicks at Will and Cobbs take over this role. In the meantime, Hicks needs to see the field and playing him out away from the line is going to be worth it for what he offers.

PlayMakers:

We have a few stars, believe it or not, who could surprise some people in the fall.

10). Justin Tucker: He's good at a great many things, including making touchdown saving tackles in the return game. Appreciate this guy, even if Will Russ easily replaces him upon his graduation, he may make a famous kick of his own before it's all said and done.

9). Mason Walters: Hopkins looks great, comparable to Walters, but the doubt in whether or not he stays at guard forces me to regard Walters higher.

8). Alex Okafor: I'm hoping he's from the Houston/Miller/Orakpo school of team leadership. That is, "show up to offseason drills or I will feed you to Mad Dog."

7). Kenny Vaccaro: Kenny the Maccabee, he'll get to do much more of what he excelled at in the Muschamp defense. Find the ball, hurt the ballcarrier.

6). Keenan Robinson: I'm not sure he leads the team in tackles again with Vaccaro regularly on the field and having vacated his Weakside spot that spared him facing a few blockers in the run game. On the other hand, he's going to get a running start this year and he's going to get to stunt a lot more. Also, his tremendous skill in making drops will be well utilized in the zone coverages.

5). Jordan Hicks: The fact that we moved around guys' positions and are making it a point to get him on the field in some capacity tells me that he is ready to do some exceptional things.

4). Emmanuel Acho: The best blitzer of the three and the one whom the position changes seem most likely to benefit.

3). David Snow: Hop aboard the bandwagon.

2). Kheeston Randall: Too good not to have a big impact this season in a simplified role.

1). Mike Davis: We have lots of guys on offense who are fantastic with the ball in their hands, have skills running routes or going up for the ball, etc. Mike Davis is the complete package, you could theoretically get him the ball in the short game, going deep, over the middle, or in the run/screen game. He goes for 1,000 all purpose yards or we are in trouble. Thank God we signed him last year.

I was in the Tavern the other night, just hanging out with a good friend, and it turned out to have been the chosen location for an Alabama NIT basketball game viewing. I wasn't totally aware of my surroundings as I mentioned to the friend the recent reports about dirty SEC recruiting and generally disparaged Alabama mocking their losing effort in the NIT. How terrible does your basketball team have to be to even care about losing in the NIT?

At this point it turned out I was overheard, and an Alabama fan turned to me and said, "You a Texas fan." Yes, of course. It's Austin. "I was there when your quarterback cried, er, I mean when he...(he trailed off here, not having completely thought through his sentence. Not clear if he was talking about McCoy or Gilbert)...whatever I was like 20 yards away, watched it happend." Cool, good for you. "Oh also, I was there when you lost to Iowa St...just fyi."

"Who cares?" I responded. Should've invited him to go enjoy his championship at Walmart, the benefits of hindsight. All that to say, SEC fans are largely an unintelligent bunch. The emotions of my life and self-worth are minimally impacted when Texas wins or loses. I was more proud of Colt after the Championship game than I might have been in a victory, seeing him be brave in the face of a tremendous disappointment.

That said, I will of course be at the Spring Game on sunday, taking note of the significant advances in Texas offensive concepts.

Before we proceed it's essential that you have read the smartfootball post on Boise St. and Longhorn Scott's piece where he dissects how Harsin torched Nevada in 2 plays (Disclaimer! Boise St. still lost that game!).

There have been several recent innovations in offensive football geared towards running the football and most of them are taking place at the college level, of course, where innovation rather than conformity is what garners the big bucks.

One is the addition of gaps for the defense to cover, which we are seeing in the pro-style offenses in the NFL and college, Harsin fits into this category. This is done with the addition of a 6th OL and/or halfbacks, wingbacks, and tight ends that are credible blockers and increase the likelihood of creases opening in a defense. When you pair these formations with zone-blocking you make it very likely that there will be a hole for the running back to find behind good blocking.

Harsin adds to this innovation the use of motion and deception to probe the defense for weak spots and then to make up for the lack of 4 and 5 star OL. Much like Tiger Ellison's Run-and-Shoot, many of Harsin packages plays well where it's not initially clear if you are looking at a run or pass. Go read Longhorn Scott's post again and you'll see what I mean.

Based on what we know so far, and I'm sure we'll learn more sunday, here at Texas Harsin is doing this more with the use of all our Flex tight ends we've been hoarding like Dwight Schrute with this year's must have Christmas toy. Malcolm Williams, Darius Terrel, DJ Grant. Flex them out, let them crack back as blockers and you have a recipe for punishing the nickel and anti-spread defenses of the Big 12 with flexible formations that are credible threats in the run and pass game.

Harsin's experience in aiding his linemen with uncertainty and extra gaps will pay big dividends with our weak depth at tackle. Somewhere along the line of scrimmage either our superior guards and center will open something up or our army of edge blockers will make it happen on the perimeter often enough to make our run game threatening, and consequently do the same to the play-action game.

Most important in this is the presence of Darell Wyatt, who has been said to be emphasizing down-field blocking by wide receivers with torrents of screaming and abuse for those who won't. In the last few years our staff has paid lip service to this detail but we haven't seen it since Quan Cosby and it hasn't been a theme for the team since Vince Young was here. As Burnt Orange Wookie once reminded me, check most any highlight reel of Vince Young and you'll see him pointing and directing blockers in the open field.

Failure in this department was one of the underrated factors in our offenses' inability to produce anything last year. Not only were our receivers hardly open or bringing down catches, but they weren't blocking much either. Watch Mack's reaction in the UCLA game or any other when a receiver is called for holding on a downfield block, he has the look of a man awash in credit card debt who's just had a check bounce. "It was hard enough to get them to do this without you penalizing me!" A few of those holding calls were bogus and I'm not sure I've seen Mack angrier, he knew the truth, the wide receivers were a huge failure in the offense last year.

So watch for that sunday, pancakes by flex-tight ends and holes on the edge for our backs.

Elsewhere in the football world it's worth noting that OU has adopted the Holgorsen "Diamond Formation" which resembles the wishbone but is perhaps closer to Harsin's approach in that it affords the Offense multiple gaps to attack with zone runs with the added benefit that the defense has trouble discerning where those gaps will be (because the blockers are in the backfield) and where the ball is heading. They run inside-outside zone and the rest of their normal run package and the players have similar assignments but the play looks far different.

For similar reasons the pistol is becoming one of the greater innovations in football these days, particularly for option teams. You can use the shotgun-3 step drop short passing game, the zone-read stuff (including the veer), or just hand off to a downhill back running inside/outside zone or power and package it with play-action like you would under-center.

Versatility and options, that's the name of the game on offense and defense. Diaz is doing something similar on defense, watch in recruiting as we will emphasize finding more linebacker/safety hybrids, more defensive/end buck guys, DL who can use their hands to stunt, and backers who can blitz. The more a defender can do the easier it is for Diaz to introduce confusion to the offense on whom exactly they will be blocking and where exactly those pass-defenders will be positioned. Confusion equals pressure and poorly-thought out decisions.

Against your Peyton Manning, reasonably experienced college QB, or team that screens well it's a dangerous high-stakes game but that's what you can expect on defense. It'll help tremendously that he's working to fool and confuse an offense that is being trained in how to read the defense and react to their likely manuevers. Mack has assembled a staff of guys who play chess and they're going to sharpen each other every day in practice.

As a response to the run game innovations Diaz's main strategy is 3-deep, 3-under defenses that can get 8 men to the line of scrimmage quickly and the blocking confusion mentioned above that creates possibilities for negative plays. Teams that can't count on busting big runs or passes regularly are inevitably crippled by tackles for loss. This is what Diaz is counting on, leave 3 guys in deep coverage to take away 1-play scores and then gang up on the line of scrimmage and make you beat the defense with intermediate routes or a screen/run breaking past the front.

So Sunday ask these questions in the course of the proceedings:

1). Are we getting WR blocking on the edge?

2). Is the defense tackling well in space? (essential to score prevention in Cover-3 schemes)

3). Is the Quarterback throwing it up for grabs? (tells us a lot about both sides)

I believe we can all agree that this is one of the finer Rick Barnes teams we've seen at Texas, although we can't totally judge it against the previous greats before we see the tournament performance. It's important to note here though exactly what the March Madness tournament really is, a wildly entertaining single-elimination tournament geared to produce a champion and more importantly to make piles of money.

It is NOT a rational measure for determining the best team in the country. The more teams that are allowed to play the greater chance there is for one of the stronger teams to slip up, as very few of the truly great NCAA Men's teams will ever be strong enough to navigate six games against quality opponents in a few weeks without dropping one.

Suppose there are 50 teams in a league. Team 1 beats 2-14 and 16-50 almost every time but for whatever reason team 15 is a bad matchup that gets the best of them better than half the time. Now, let's say in a tournament team 1 draws team 15 in the 3rd round after blowing out their first opponent and then winning a grinder in round 2. Team 15 wins the game and team 6 wins the tournament. Who was the best team? Team 6 gets the trophy, Team 15 had the big victory but Team 1 was the best answer for winning games against almost every opponent.

I'm not saying we should scrap the system, I enjoy it as much as the next guy (although the constant inclusion of more teams is a ridiculous measure) but it's important to remember this when measuring team performance. With that in mind I'd like to examine the better Rick Barnes teams and how they were knocked out, not with any hope of finding a common bond between all the teams, because that would likely be a stretch, but just for the fun of it. Who doesn't want to start this thing off by examining the agonizing losses of yesteryear?

2002-03.

The TJ Ford Final Four team.

The starters were PG Ford, SG Ivey, SF Brandon Mouton, PF Brad Buckman, C James Thomas.

Key bench: F Brian Boddicker, F Deginald Erskin, C Jason Klotz, G Sydmill Harris, G Terrel Ross

It's not hard to see why this was our most successful squad, they were loaded. Fantastic bench with shooting and size and a starting five without glaring weaknesses. I loved this team after watching it develop with and without Ford for the previous 2 seasons into this juggernaut. None of the problems that plagued other top Barnes teams were present here, again looking at that roster you don't find much fault with any position. So what went wrong? Basically, Carmelo Anthony.

Melo Stats: 12-19 (3-4 from 3, the team went 7-13 from deep) 33 points, 14 rebounds, 1 turnover, 3 steals.

He demolished us. There was a lot of talk about Ford and co. struggling with the zone and they shot 43% on the day but the far bigger problem was an inability to guard Warrick, McNamara from deep and freaking Anthony who helped Syracuse shoot nearly 60%. The dude was a 6'9" F/G whom we tried to handle with Royal Ivey. Also Ford dropped this line,

3-8, 12 points, 4 rebounds, 13 assists, 4 turnovers.

Not a terrible game but very pedestrian next to what Anthony did for Syracuse. We faced a better player and a better team. I loved that Texas squad though. If you don't recall watching James Thomas or scrappy Deginald Erskin who lost an inch of height every time the announcers discussed the legitimacy of his listed 6'7", to say nothing of the magnificience of Ford and Ivey, then I pity you.

2003-04

The post-Ford team. Perhaps not a legendary squad but that didn't stop them from drawing a #2 seed and getting Digger Phelps to pick them as his tournament champion.

PG Royal Ivey (not a natural point, he shared duties with Paulino and Moreno) SG Kenton Paulino, SF Brandon Mouton, PF Brad Buckman, C Jason Klotz

Bench: F Brian Boddicker, C James Thomas, G Sydmill Harris, PF PJ Tucker

This team resembled our current squad in that they lacked a true PG but they could guard the perimeter like pros and they were really solid in the frontcourt although Buckman slipped for inexplicable reasons and Thomas seemed to lose his strength Sampson style with the loss of Ford. Really there wasn't a transcendent talent to be seen and they simply scrapped away with their chemistry developed from 3 years together + the explosive addition of PJ Tucker.

Anyways, they ran into Thad Matta's Xavier in the Elite 8 and lost a game in which Craig Way and Rick Barnes both nearly murdered Ted Valentine, particularly after an egregious no-call on a Boddicker 3 late in the game.

The Xavier key was Romain Sato, who shot 17 free throws, made 14 of them, and thus carried the Musketeers to a 79-71 win.

I listened to this game on the radio so someone who recalls it better might chime in but 2 things stand out to me. One, the free throw disparity, Xavier 35-Texas 17, and secondly it appears as though Texas couldn't control the Xavier backcourt but their own size inside was negated by physical Musketeer play as Klotz was 1-10 and PJ 4-10.

2006-2007

This team was probably more talented in the starting five than the 2003 Final Four team but had a few crucial weaknesses.

PG Kenton Paulino, SG Daniel Gibson, SF PJ Tucker, PF Brad Buckman, C LaMarcus Aldridge

Bench: G AJ Abrams, F/C Connor Atchley, F Mike Williams

Point guard, frequently a problem for Barnes teams, was a key weakness here. Paulino could shoot the 3 quite well, and guarded more than adequately, but to call him anything more than an average point guard would be a stretch. Additionally, the bench was virtually non-existent. The rest of the starting lineup was loaded with length and talent though and the 2-3 zone matched the team strengths with the requirement for energy conservation and avoidance of foul trouble.

That said, the way they went down was quite unexpected, to the similarly frontcourt-driven LSU Tigers. Glenn Davis and Tyrus Thomas bulldozed the Texas frontcourt with the following results:

Thomas+Big Baby: 21-33, 46 points, 22 rebounds, 3 turnovers

Aldridge+Tucker+Buckman: 9-34, 27 points, 37 rebounds, 8 assists, 5 turnovers

Aldridge was particularly bad, shooting 2-14 with 4 points and 10 boards. I can't help but think that the advantage in rebounds for Texas was garnered by the 14 offensive ones they recovered after being thwarted in the first attempt.

So, Texas strength matched LSU strength and lost head to head. Gibson played a solid game and the Texas backcourt, while not dominant, held up their end of the deal. Again, just ran into a better team with better players. Tucker and Buckman ended up in NBADL or Europe and Davis and Thomas are in the NBA. Aldridge has done well in the NBA and seen his shots and usage increase this year, giving rise to a mistaken belief that he has become a dominant force, but he was the 3rd best Forward on the court that day.

2007-08

I liked this team far more than the Aldridge bunch, largely because I had come to know and love Augustin, James, Atchley, Abrams and co. from watching them grow together whereas 2006 came together very quickly from PJ and Aldridge's return combined with Gibson's transition to shooting guard.

The lineup, which we should all remember with ease, went:

PG DJ Augustin, SG AJ Abrams, SF Justin Mason, PF Damion James, C Connor Atchley

Bench: F Gary Johnson, C Dexter Pittman

After besting the Cardinal(s) Lopez twins of Stanford in the sweet 16 it looked like Texas was going to overcome size disadvantages in the tournament while the high screen combo of Connor Atchley and DJ Augustin provided the oil in the Texas offensive machine. From the starting point of the high screen followed the possibilities presented by all five starters having credible 3 point range. They spaced teams out and then cut them to pieces. The defense wasn't shabby either, Abrams and DJ made credible attempts, Mason was a lockdown guy, James rebounded 10.3 per game and Atchley was averaging 2 blocks a contest.

We got a lame draw as a 2 seed and an even worse one with the Calipari Memphis as the opposing 1 seed.

In a blowout most of us would rather forget, Texas again handled the interior size of the opponent well (Dorsey did a little damage, Dozier was useless) but were completely overwhelmed by Memphis' size on the perimeter.

Mason was the tallest at 6-2 and I can vouch as a then UT student that Abrams and Augustin were an inch or 2 south of 6 feet each (although no more than that). Derrick Rose was 6-3, Anderson was 6-6 and Douglas-Roberts was 6-7.

While Memphis wasn't able to beat the hell out of the Texas frontcourt with their forwards, neither were they harmless enough to draw away larger Texas defenders and really there weren't any options anyways. Barnes started 3 guards not because he was loaded with perimeter talent but because the 3 guards he had were amongst the 5 best players on the team. Even leaving Abrams on Anderson, not a premier offensive talent, didn't solve the problem of Augustin guarding either the larger Rose or the much larger Douglas-Roberts. During the game I yelled loudly for a zone to stop the dribble-drive and lend some assistance to the hapless Longhorn midgets trying to handle Douglas-Roberts and Rose but given the way Memphis defended it was really a hopeless cause.

Again, in the matchup of Texas' best vs. opponent's best we were soundly trounced.

The Memphis backcourt went 15-27, 55 points, 16 assists and 11 rebounds vs. Texas' 13-42, 40 points, 9 assists, 14 rebounds.

Derrick Rose demolished Augustin with a 7-10, 21 point, 9 assist, 6 rebound game over DJ's 4-18, 16 point, 3 assist, 2 rebound and 4 turnover defeat.

Additionally, the Tigers locked down the high screen with their larger and more athletic defense, shutting down Atchley and allowing their own 50% shooting performance to dwarf Texas' 36.2% effort.

So, if we must conclude anything from the defeat of our best teams it might be to recruit larger perimeter players (Barnes immediately stocked up on such athletes after this loss) but the better answer is to recruit better (and thus likely larger) players period. We haven't really been bested by superior coaching or schemes like Bill Simmons would love to suggest but simply by elite players.

Reviewing the current lineup:

PG Dogus Balbaby, SG Corey Joseph, SF Jordan Hamilton, PF Gary Johnson, C Tristan Thompson

Bench: F Matt Hill, G J'Covan Brown, F Alexis Wangmene, G Jai Lucas

If there's a weakness it's at point guard, but it's important to remember that Dogus can be a tremendous strength in the right style with his elite on-ball defense and box-score stuffing ability. You don't worry as much about athleticism unless a team is large inside with multiple options to shut down Johnson and challenge Thompson to play man on someone worthy of attention. Hello Kansas!

We won't know until we get in a few battles with Arizona, Duke or whomever else but I think this squad is as strong as any other mentioned above save maybe for the Ford team which was deep and virtually complete. Compared to the others I'd put them at Elite 8 or Final 4 but with our draw we could be final 8 or final 4 good but lose in the round of 16 because Duke is that good.

Have we ever beaten them, btw? Last time was close...

Football:

Diaz and 2 perceived leaders of the team (Gideon and Okafor) met with the media the other day, you may have read about it and noticed Oak's comment that seemed to imply that we were no better than a mid-major team last year.

Much more interesting to me was the evaluation by Diaz of Okafor as a defensive end, and not a tackle. Muschamp clearly thought that his eventual playing weight might settle around 280 and that he belonged inside in this league, I'll be a little surprised if we never play him inside like we did with Acho but there you go. My theory of Texas building their 3-tech tackles in the future by anticipating growth in high school DE's has suffered a serious blow, although that was more of the expecation for Muschamp's strategy.

Oak's claim that he was having difficulty adding weight as a tackle is an important bit of news, he was never going to dominate inside at 262 at the level we expected him to achieve on the outside when he came in as a freshman.

So, we've got most of the DL starters figured out since I believe we can be very confident that Jeffcoat and Randall will also find the field. That suggests also one of the young tackles looks like someone worth starting to Diaz and Davis. Since we'll be using multiple fronts and aggressive packages, you can expect a lot more of the Muschamp method of finding assignments players can handle and then packaging guys according to the requirements of the situation.

Okafor seems to have elevated himself into the rank of guys who stay on the field, like Acho, and wear a few different hats. In his case, defensive end in either the 3-4 or 4-3. I'm going to venture that Jeffcoat plays Buck and vascillates between 3-4 OLB or 4-3 right end.

Diaz also addressed our situation at linebacker, which I would summarize as "we have 3 dominant outside linebackers in a league where you usually only field 1 or 2."

We're looking for leadership out of [Emmanuel] Acho and Keenan Robinson. Jordan Hicks is a guy who I think has really impressed through the first three days. And we are not really worried about who is in what spot. We have flexibility in that we can play our best three.

Translation: In this scheme you are often either attacking or dropping into a short zone so traditional attributes for the linebacker positions are less essential. Hicks and Acho can both stunt inside or outside with the best of them and Robinson isn't terrible either. Really, they offer him perfect versatility since any of them can drop back and diagnose with the speed to reach a play or stunt inside or out and get into the backfield. The lack of a true Mike linebacker can be offset by the creation of 8-man fronts and penetration that leads to runners having to bounce outside.

All of this was pretty interesting and pretty much expected...as was the unfortunate decision to have Gideon speak and support him as a leader on this team. They are cross-training Phillips at corner and you can be sure that the demands of this scheme will be moving us back to a 4-corners philosophy in general. Gideon is not a corner and could never play corner. If I could pick the two most desirable attributes for safeties or corners in the Zone-blitz defense they would be coverage and open field tackling. 0-2.

This reeks of when Mack asserted Kirkendoll into leadership roles, or Greg Smith. Sometimes your leaders aren't your experienced seniors, and if those guys can't hold the jockstraps of the younger guys behind them it's going to be difficult for the underclassmen to be lead.

Prospects:

Last year I ridiculed national pundits who placed Gerald McCoy of OU on a similar or higher plane than Ndamukong Suh who I argued was one of the best defensive tackles ever to play the college game. This year we're going to build on that success.

Sam Acho is an absolute lock to be an impact player at the next level and his draft rankings in the 2nd and 3rd round are totally beyond my comprehension. The man played multiple positions, had upstanding character, had a nose for the ball, and put up fantastic stats in consecutive healthy seasons. There was some question about him being athletic enough to move outside to 3-4 linebacker, then he ran a 4.6 and set a record in the shuttle. Some are questioning whether he has the strength to play defensive end in the league...the man played defensive tackle here!

Aaron Williams didn't run an amazing forty and Peter Bean says his coverage drew some criticisms from former greats. His coverage at Texas, however, was always excellent and he has the versatility to play the run as a nickel, blitz, and cover the slot receiver that is becoming essential to defense at both levels. Uh, essentially a nickel rover if you will, which has evolved from Roy Williams' dominance to becoming the new Mike linebacker for defensive schemes (where you must place a badass).

They are easily the class of our draft prospects and I think both have obvious value in the league and each had a lot more to do with the 2009 defensive excellence than has been attributed to them in the media.

As for the Big 12 in general, Amukamara and Von Miller are being labeled the best in the league and I can't really argue the point. Acho, I suspect, could have the same impact as Miller but the latter's speed and pass-rushing abilities could put him in the NFL's elite tomorrow. I think Colby Whitlock could suprise a team as a 3-4 end or 3-tech tackle, I like Jared Crick a lot and I'm from Missouri on Nate Solder whom I never watched once. If Gabbert is a top 10 pick it's because some team is desperate for a QB, not because he's a guy you can't afford to say no to.

Of our 13 committed prospects so far I think we've managed to land a couple of standout guys:

Curtis Riser, though maybe not a tackle, was a must have and exactly the kind of guy I would make an exception for in chasing mostly tackle prospects.

Connor Brewer, I'm very suspicious that he is Harsin's expected starter for the future. Kid loves coming here, was taught the Boise offense in high school, and has the skill set desired for the system. Granted, so does Gilbert, Wood and Ash. But Brewer clearly has the advantage with the system. Which is cool, he looks pretty good.

Peter Jinkens, great weakside linebacker prospect. He's excellent in pursuit and takes the right angles, plus he's quite fast and is listed at 4.5. It's essential against modern offenses to have guys who understand how to pursue laterally AND have the speed to do so effectively. Can't have too many of these.

Alex Norman: Fantastic find, his tape looks like Desmond Jackson's, which I learned upon review made him one of our 5 best (at least) committments in 2011. Leverage and rip away, and he plays mean. The clips of him at offensive tackle look better than the highlight tapes of some tackles we've brought in.

Thomas Johnson, Cayleb Jones, in our new offense we shouldn't have any more trouble finding and developing receivers. The failed efforts of bringing in shifty guys and trying to make them into extensively complete recievers have gone.

Hassan Ridgeway, not the best edge guy we've ever brought in but he has a pretty good first step. 6-5 says he may grow into a good strongside end.

Bluiett, De La Torre, and Thomas are interesting takes to me that remind me of classes like 2008. I just don't see a ton of upside.

Basketball:

Blah.

None of us want to relive the experience of watching the 2010 Texas Offense handle the football like a Monkey trying to peel a banana while tripping on acid. Greg Davis and Mack's attempts to build something effective out of the pieces we had was comparable to our current government trying to avoid credit default by ordering more credit cards.

General incompetence and lazy work habits ruled the day as both our coaching staff and the upperclassmen had apparently been leaning on leaders like Colt McCoy and Lamarr Houston in the past to make everything happen without growing as leaders themselves who could duplicate that effort.

We all remember the one game in which our staff actually effectively gameplanned for an opponent. Evidently the stench of losing to OU, the general desperation after 2 losses, and the obscene pleasure Mack gets from beating Nebraska resulted in actual strategic thinking that went as follows:

Nebraska has great defensive backs and solid pressure packages but a small front 7 and a below average Nose Tackle. We have terrible Wide Receivers and lapsing pass protection but an interior OL and Left Tackle who can run block and a half dozen guys who can run sorta alright, including the QB.

10 yards of David Snow mauling Steinkuhler later and we had our victory.

The situation this year isn't terribly different. Our wide receivers may actually become the team strength but our situation at tackle is atrocious, our quarterback's confidence is likely shot, and it's hard to picture how the pieces fit together to build an offense that can do enough things well to maintain a consistent attack.

Fortunately we are now coached by a man who prefers to build multiple attacks with different pieces, but many of the primary issues are the same. Let's talk about the assignments and tasks players will have in the HarsinWhite 2011 "End Deficit play-calling" campaign and how our personnel can execute them:

Goal Number 1: Get the ball downfield in Davis, White, Goodwin, whoever's hands. We need to throw it deep and that requires people being reasonably open deep, the quarterback finding them, and the quarterback having time to deliver the ball. This is our offense, everything we do will exist to make this more likely.

Really that's it. I guess also,

Goal Number 2: Run the ball when necessary. Really this is going to mean all the time. With Paden Kelly or whomever we stick in there at left tackle Play-action is going to be a preferred option to buy time. Then there's protecting leads, converting short-yardage and goal-line, and opening up opportunities to get explosive runs on sweeps or screens. Think of the 2010-11 Pittsburgh Steelers as our analog, we may spend considerable time running power sets but our bread is buttered by deep lobs to Mike Wallace. You just have to take measures to do that safely with Jonathan Scott in at LT (in the NFL I mean, we would kill to have Scott here).

Alright, assignments:

QB: Protect the ball and make the reads. What I gather of the Boise System is that it requires only familiarity with the reads and the ability to make deep throws. The NFL hasn't been lining up to draft quarterbacks out of this offense, they've been more like Tedford's Cal Bears QB's (other than Rodgers) who were products of the system.

Now, that means the QB has to be on the same page as Harsin and understand the scheme and the prepared responses to how the defense reacts to our motion and shifts, but in terms of the throws we aren't going to be asking too much. Oh yeah, Harsin loves the speed option so there's that as well.

I think everyone on campus save maybe for Case (arm strength) has the physical tools to be a good quarterback in this system. It's going to be more about leadership and intelligence.

Interior OL: Harsin uses screens, play-action, sweeps, outside-zone, inside-zone and power. What is required of the offensive line is effort, competency, and some mobility. We are set at Center with Snow who gets downfield and to the 2nd level as well as anyone I've seen here in several years, and we're set at one guard spot if Walters stays there.

Allen is the next best fit for the scheme and you can probably count on more and more HS tackles converted to Guard with HarsinWhite since mobility will be a defining feature for the zone runs, screens, and pass protection. I think we're going to be strong here in the short term and definitely in the long term. Ashcraft is less of a natural fit for what we're doing now but perhaps after a few laps with Wylie he'll be ready to go.

Tackle: The requirement to be dominant at the point of attack on outside runs and screens means we really need some athletes here and I wouldn't be shocked if we ended up moving Walters outside for that reason. Kelly is a willing pass-blocker but I'm not sure if he's physically ready to take on defensive ends in this league one on one. Hopkins is more promising, Poehlmann, Porter, Allen and the freshmen round out the possibilities. Wylie is going to have to work some magic and a move by Walters should be in consideration. Kriegel is a dark-horse, God only knows how long his transition could take.

Extra Blocking Surfaces: Don't laugh, these guys are actually important now. As all of the motion and leverage in the running game is generated by these guys, it's important that they actually be effective blockers. I was actually surprised by Whaley's move to defensive end, if it's true, since he was a fairly effective blocker late in the season when he got his chance. Perhaps he's ballooned another 20 pounds, who knows?

Obviously Bergeron will get his chance and Matthews has a leg up but I really like Dominique Jones to take advantage of the opportunity here. Many of Harsin's 2 TE sets use a wing-back or a halfback more than a true, downhill fullback and these guys are usually going to be double-teaming or trapping rather than lead-blocking. Bergeron strikes me as more of a true fullback prospect but any blocking competency paired with the ability to receive should make him a frontrunner for a roster spot. We look decent here.

Running back: We want a guy who can carry the ball 20 times, make 1 cut and go, and explode through power runs. I'm intrigued by what Traylon Shead can do at this level, I know Cody is competent, and I love healthy Fozzy. Then there's even Jeremy Hills but Malcolm Brown starts whenever he's ready.

Weapon X: Not talking about the X receiver, who needs to have legit route-running and receiving qualities, but basically 1-trick pony, explosive guys who can be used in Harsin's screen, sweep, and option game. You know, all the stuff that we occasionally and ineffectively tried to use Monroe and Goodwin for last year? We are absolutely loaded here, besides having a number of legitimately fast true receivers who could be used this way we have the aforementioned track stars. Expect the big play with one of these guys to potentially catch even with the deep pass as relied upon plays for getting "explosives". The only concern here is blocking on the edge and in space, where we were truly abominable last year apart from Kyle Hix on the Monroe TD run in Dallas.

Receivers: There will be less of a need here for guys to master the timing routes and short game of Davis and a lot more catching on the run, over the middle and down the field. This is Malcolm William's big chance to finally be what we thought he might or Darius White takes over. Mike Davis should excel here and I'm betting on Jaxon Shipley finding the field sooner than later since he's also a safe and reliable target for the slants and posts that Harsin emphasizes from unbalanced sets.

Conclusion:

We have the athletes and weapons to do more damage than anyone Harsin has had before, but we don't have the ready-made functional pieces he needs to actually execute his schemes. Wylie, Searels, and Chambers are going to need to step it up big to build the tackles and EBS' we need to make this stuff work.

Most importantly, one of the QB's needs to buckle down and learn the system while making sure everyone else is following along. Injuries and poor recruiting at Tackle notwithstanding, there's enough on campus to put it all together if a peer kicks their ass and makes them do it.

Last year Scipio wrote an insightful pair of columns on matchups in the Big 12 "on the edge". There was a big gap between edge rushers and good offensive tackles and another gap between the have's and have nots in Cornerback quality.

At first glance it appeared that Texas held all the cards, at least on defense, as we fielded 3 of the better pass-rushers (in preseason estimation at least) and 2 of the top 3 corners. All that wealth in the defensive backfield led me to believe that running the ball against Texas was something to be avoided as Muschamp would have the quality outside necessary to load the box with 7 or 8 man fronts.

The problem was that our 8th man was essentially worthless. Creases in the front 6 against a zone play if Keenan and Acho took the wrong gap or a DT got sealed off became explosive runs with Scott and Gideon providing next to nothing in run support. Vaccaro was better and I'm not sure why he didn't start all season at safety but he was hardly an adequate sieve for the bleeding wound that was our safety play.

Kyle Hix, apart from his routine false starts and constant assistance from tight ends, actually played pretty well but Britt Mitchell was a cessation of 2 sacks against any team with the wherewithal and quality to place a good end on his side. Additionally, none of the receivers offered any kind of true mismatch on the edge down the field, but we'll troubleshoot the offensive personnel in another post.

In another excellent preseason piece Scipio described Muschamp's defense of packages, which will be a useful tool for understanding what exactly we need in the Diaz defense, a scheme n0t at all different than Muschamp's when it comes to building defenses out of assignments and packages.

Job 1: Control the middle

Defensive tackles in the zone-blitz defense need to be able to stunt into adjacent gaps and engage OL, and in fire-zones, which Diaz loves, be able to engage and pile-up linemen against the grain of the blitz. Overall you want guys with a quick first step and rip move, like Acho or incoming Desmond Jackson. You really need at least one space eater although you may not necessarily shade him over the center. Randall can hold that down well enough and even split a double team. Between Okafor, Dorsey, Bible, Daniels, and the incoming freshmen we have enough guys who can handle stunting and ripping against slower lineman.

Job 2: Attack

Whereas the flanking advantages offered by the pressure packages require only 1 or 2 guys who can be counted on to cause pile-ups by virtue of their skill, you can never have too many 230-260 pound DE/LB players. As it happens, we still have a fair few left on campus and I'm not sure why so many fans seem to be fretting Okafor's move inside. His strength and quickness is still needed there, whereas we have multiple figures who can be counted on to perform the 2 basic tasks of this position, 1). fly upfield and destroy what you find there and 2). drop into a short zone and destroy what you find there.

Jeffcoat, Wilson, Dravannti Johnson, Emmanuel Acho, Jordan Hicks, and Tevin Jackson, in no particular order are all well suited to the stunting and coverage required of this scheme.

Job 3: Diagnostics

Best to have a couple of lighter guys amongst the 3-under defenders who can cover Big 12 receivers in the short areas and be able to move across the field quickly to help clean up the mess if a screen or run breaks past the first frantic wave of aggression. Weakside linebacker and Strong Safety are the 2 most likely candidates and the latter in particular should be a rover type who can clean up plays spilled outside. As it happens I have confidence in both Acho and Robinson to handle the short zone drops and believe Hicks will be able to handle this as well. Vaccaro is my first choice for Strong Safety and I would say actually possesses the coverage skills and tackling range to be a strength in this role.

For Diaz's defenses our front 7 is actually a great strength for the team. I foresee freqent use of 7 DL/LB packages that rely on our linebackers' coverage dropping abilities over trying to man-up and lock-down as we have the last 3 years unless this spring turns up another defensive back who can blitz and play the run like a safety and cover a slot receiver like a corner. Aaron Williams' don't grow on trees.

Job 4: Last Wave of defense

Versatility is really the calling card for the Diaz-aggressive style defense and it's the price you pay for no longer needing 3 or 4 dominant defensive lineman to control the line of scrimmage while the rest of the team reacts. Confusion is the other weapon, thus no one is always going to play the role for which they are most suited. Randall may drop into coverage at times and Vaccaro may play deep in order to bring Gideon or whomever where they are not expected. In times like this when the offense correctly identifies what's happening, it can get ugly.

That said, this scheme is designed to help the corners play with good leverage deep and very often you will find them 15 yards off the receiver to insure that guys don't just run free. Obviously then, they need to be reliable tacklers. If you are going to play off receivers and goad the quarterback into making quick dump-off passes that won't hurt you, a frequent design of the zone-blitz, you need to make damn sure those dump-offs don't hurt you.

I can't really say much for our starting corners because I don't know who they will be but I'm going to throw out some names and you tell me how comfortable you are with them making the tackle that determines a score. Blake Gideon, Christian Scott, Nolan Brewster, Adrian Phillips, DeMarco Cobbs.

Since we've already used Vaccaro at strong safety or in the nickel I've just named your free safety candidates in order of experience. Gideon has been at his best in this role, but he was either protected from having to target moving receivers by Earl Thomas and Aaron Williams or facing high schoolers. Who trusts him to perform as well when 8 of our defenders are going to be encouraged to look into the backfield and the other 2 hanging back have less than 5 starts between them?

I'm betting on him as the starter so start hoping that whomever replaces Jerry Gray can teach these guys quick.

Nickel's useless defensive depth chart projection for pressure packages:

Group 1: Randall, Okafor, Howell, Dorsey, Bible, Daniels, Cotton, Jackson, Russell

(guys that will keep their hands in the dirt)

Group 2: Jeffcoat, Wilson, Acho, Johnson, Jackson, Reed, Edmond, Thompson (we're talking about guys who will usually play 5-tech or 9-tech standing or with their hands in the dirt. Edge players.)

Group 3: Robinson, Acho, Vaccaro, Hicks, Scott, Brewster, unknown savior at Nickel (short zone defenders off the LOS)

Group 4: Gideon, Byndom, White, Scott, Brewster, Phillips, Barnett, Diggs

All that to say, we need help in group 4.

SuperBowl:

Green Bay won, or so I heard on the Radio whilst identifying a Wandering Atrial Pacemaker rhythm and cursing my weekend schedule.

I thought the Packers were a fairly close approximation of the 2009 Texas Longhorn Runner-ups. They operated at their best when Rodgers made most of the plays, nominally assisted with a running game, throwing into tight windows and dodging pressure in spread-sets.

Similarly to Muschamp, their defense was at it's best with 3 corners on the field moving the best and most physical (Woodson) inside and relying on Matthews operating in space with Raji at NT to handle the running game. Sure Pittsburgh could run the ball against it, but an early lead combined with a few turnovers made oodles of power-running yardage useless in securing championship number 6 for the terrible towel.
This is more or less what a Texas upset in the 2009 Rose Bowl would have looked like had Colt not been injured and the early special teams plays by Texas had thereby resulted in early touchdowns rather than the meltdown that actually occurred before Gilbert-to-Shipley nearly brought us back.

Texas Staffing:

I reviewed the strategic changes we saw on offense and defense already, and there are plenty of Mack's own thoughts worth parsing through amongst his thoughts on the recruiting class we'll get to in a moment, so I'm just going to give some grades on the hirings.

Major Applewhite: A

We kept the only young staff talent on the Mack Brown Tree and consequently kept our recruiting class together. What's more, we've paired him with another talented offensive mind to further develop him into a future star for us.

Bryan Harsin: A

The Pittsburgh Steelers won games without necessarily dominating teams by virtue of a stat most of us are intimately familiar with, Bill Walsh's "explosive plays" philosophy.

I learned slowly in NCAA Sports, and I blame Greg Davis for this, that completing 3 yard stick routes and curls can rack up some impressive yardage without actually resulting in any points at all whatsoever and resulting in some embarrassing defeats. Eventually I started choosing plays where I read the safeties and made decisions downfield based on their position, crushing victories immediately ensued.

The Steelers demonstrated a mastery of this concept beyond what any other team in the NFL accomplished. The top 5 teams in the NFL in producing 20+ yard pass plays are as follows:

The Steelers held 10+ margins in both categories and I will die believing that with a healthy Polamalu or playing in the cotton bowl rather than JerryWorld they win that game. Not taking anything away from the packers, everyone needs breaks in a playoff system.

Anyways Harsin gets this. If I may quote Mack quoting our directionally unchallenged new coordinator:

I heard Bryan Harsin say the other day to one of the coaches, "You have to work just as much on a short pass as you do a long one, so why not spend that time on the long one and have a chance to score with it?"

Hallelujah.

Manny Diaz: B

In terms of being able to coach college kids to execute a scheme, Diaz sounds like a star. In terms of implementing cutting edge schemes that are adapted to the modern game, he's great. However, his philosophies don't reflect an understanding of Walsh's ancient wisdom. I reviewed a few Miss. St. games thanks to a tip from tdiddle and found a very solid defense that was, however, prone to giving up huge plays and relying on a run-based offense that ran tons of clock in games like the Auburn contest where the defense has received much credit.

I don't much much about who their free safety is, either than that he's pretty good, but his coverages would obviously benefit more than a little from an All-Conference Safety with range in the Ed Reed, Polamalu, Earl Thomas-mold. And when I say benefit I really mean rely upon.

I can't help but think that his schemes are going to make Blake Gideon and Christian Scott look even worse than in 2010. Of course, once we rebuild that position with rangy athletes such as we're bringing in we'll be in pretty good shape.

Benny Wylie: B+

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but it sounds like we've replaced lazy Mad Dog with an energetic and involved Mad Dog. That alone is worth Madden's weight in gold but I'm not sure we are going to focus on functional strength so much as we are going to increase the volume of enormous monsters produced. From what I've heard though, much of the stiffness we see in our OL and other upperclassmen has as much to do with Mad Dog's inattentiveness as it does his methods. When guys worked hard in the Mad Dog system, like Orakpo, his "build loads of muscle mass" strategies were effective enough.

Jerry Gray: A+

He's basically over-qualifed for this job. If he can evaluate and put forth effort on the recruiting trail while adding the ability to teach zone to our players (all of which I think is more than likely) then this is the best hire Mack made, the difference is that he's replacing a strength rather than a weakness. Still, be excited.

Stacy Searels: B

Didn't land us Westerman but there seem to have been other factor$ at play in that story. What's important here is that we remove lethargy and find a guy who can install the protections and running schemes necessary to run a close approximation of the Boise offense. I think we've done that. He is more of a zone-guy than a power or trap man but there is nowhere to go but up in our execution here.

Darrell Wyatt: A

I'm suspicious of the fact that the 2 best receivers in the last 3 years at Texas were both over 23 years old when they had major success here. Good job Kennedy, you successfully taught a wizard to dominate within 6 years of teaching and got the most out of a particularly mature 26 year old professional in co-op clothing. I'm expecting major improvement at this position over the next 2 years whereas I would have been nervous about whom we had entrusted our 2010 WR recruiting haul.

Bo Davis: ?

Don't know anything about him. He coached Dareus and Cody under Saban...cool. I think Wylie makes the biggest difference here where we can load up on the state's premium talent and simply overwhelm foes so long as they don't balloon out of control.

Overall Mack Brown did an amazing job here. Kirk Bohls claims Mack had Charlie Weiss as his no. 1 target for offensive coordinator but Kaiser Fatthelm opted to follow Muschamp to Florida. Blessing in disguise, imo.

Nickel Rover: If you know of anyone looking for entry-level workers in the Dallas area let me know and I'll shoot you an email, I'll be moving there with my then wife in the 2nd half of this year.

Recruiting 2011:

Recruiting has been better the last 2 years. We are replacing a senior class that produced 5 invitees to the NFL combine with more than a few NFL caliber prospects. I'm betting on the following order in 40 times from our reps: Cu. Brown, Williams, Ch. Brown, Acho...............Hix.

Really, all of them are athletic enough to find roster spots in the NFL and I think Ocho Uno and AJ could be stars. I wouldn't be shocked if Hix and Curtis were able to find jobs as role players while I suspect Chykie's mental weaknesses hold him back. I also have it on solid authority that we shouldn't expect any member of the postal service to do much better than 6 feet tall, if even that, in the measurements.

Anyways, here are my favorite recruits from the new class:

10). Chet Moss: A fellow Cedar Park Timberwolf, helped hold the class together. If he's even a Dustin Earnest I'll be pleased.

9). David Ash: This sounds like the kind of guy that Harsin and Peterson made a habit of turning into Heisman Candidates with superior attacks against inferior defenses. Strong arm, strong work ethic. There is a lot here on campus now if Gilbert stumbles. If you believe in the Lake Travis golden boy as I do, you believe this is a good thing.

8). Josh Cochran: We need tackles like Obama needs good news from anywhere. Flowers may be one of the superior prospects we've pulled in on OL but we should always be well-stocked inside with athletic mashers who didn't have the feet to keep up on the edge, so finding the tackles that actually remain on the edge is invaluable.

7). Malcolm Brown: Really we should be pulling in a guy like this once a year or every 2 years. He sounds great, a workhorse back that you know an improved running game could effectively utilize, but I'm with the other 3 million Texas pundits calling this a small part of the solution. I'd be happier if we could pair him with a game-breaker, which hopefully we will.

6). Jaxon Shipley: Some prospects you can judge simply by what they do on the football field. Larry Fitzgerald runs a 4.6 but on the football field he looks plenty fast. Jerry Rice, same story. Jaxon Shipley is good at the actual football skills that translate to success, I think he's a sure-fire starter and possible difference-maker.

5). Sheroid Evans: We should probably get back to the 4 corners philosophy with Manny Diaz cause our safeties are going to need range to patrol in the 3-deep coverages Diaz likes to use in creating post-snap 8-man fronts and pressure.

4). Kendall Thompson: Manny Diaz knows how to terrible things with 250 pound guys who can destroy on the edge or shoot gaps inside.

3). Garrett Greenlea: I'm buying his pass-protection skills and think he projects to Right Tackle early in his career here with the potential to move to the left side as an upperclassmen. Harsin likes to protect his tackles, being unused to having 4 star talent there, with play-action and max protection so having tackle prospects who made their name in the running game is a perfect formula for success in transplanting Boise to Austin.

2). Steve Edmonds: See Kendall Thompson.

1). Quandre Diggs: First of all, his speed and athletic abilities are everything you would want from in your corner. Second, it's far easier to exploit a 6'2" guy who poor hips on a double move then a 5'10" speedster on a go or fade. Plus, we are talking about a relative of Quentin Jammer here, I don't think he'll lack for physicality and using leverage.

Finally, he's a clear leader who brought this class together for the purpose of excelling at the University of Texas when excellence had been lost. Combine that kind of leadership and drive with those genes and skills and I think you have found an equation for another Thorpe Award. I'm not sure when he sees the field as he's probably starting behind Byndom, Barnett and White but it won't be long I'm sure.

Mack maintained his new policy of finding fresh, young blood for the program with the Manny Diaz hire that everyone seems to be in love with. I love that he's another up and coming coach, I love that he has a track record of improving defenses at a comparable level, but I don't love this hire.

In his press conference Manny Diaz laid out his first principles and philosophy very simply and clearly as follows:

Value no. 1: To lead the nation in wins.

He doesn't really elaborate this point with any complicated or in depth explanation of what defensive measures lead to victories, not even a nod to scoring defense, instead he uses a different criterion.

Criterion: What annoys offensive coordinators the most?

To me this is a terrible foundation for a philosophy. Is the point to annoy your opponent or to defeat them? It doubtlessly annoyed Michael Jordan a great deal when he would be struck down upon entry to the lane but fouling him in the act of scoring guaranteed efficient offense for the Bulls.

He defines this as securing turnovers and negative plays, the drive-killers. If those are your highest values you will tend to embrace an all-or-nothing approach that helps the offense secure either a quick score or total failure. I'm sure Diaz will use some sound principles and not usher in Carl Reese 201 this spring, or mimic how we would telegraph our blitzes in 2007. Nevertheless, I'm not a huge fan of pressure defense in this era of football.

The Plan: He sums up his strategy for creating the most frustration for Offensive coordinators with the phrase "Stop the run, hit the quarterback." This is the common wisdom for winning games in the NFL right now and I will readily agree that good things will happen when you achieve these things. Don't get me wrong, I think Texas can have effective defense under this man, but I'm suspicious of the driving principles.

The Specifics:

Judging by his press conference we can probably expect

-multiple fronts, like Muschamp used with players like Jackson Jeffcoat playing DE/LB roles.

-Zone blitzing, it's at least a more sound means of applying pressure than...others. Every team should have some overload zone blitz packages to use in 3rd and long or to periodically shake things up.

-1 gap fronts, if we ask anyone to 2-gap it will just be Randall. I'm definitely okay with this, finding 3 defensive lineman who can handle that kind of responsibility at the college level is a daunting task. Hopefully we do 2-gap Randall though, why not take advantage of this skill?

-Stunts and shifts, we'll want to field some versatile players in the front 7 that can handle stunting or dropping into zone coverage. Fortunately we already do this and the players we've recruited at defensive end and linebacker under Muschamp are perfectly suited for this task.

In fact, there is little discernible difference between what Diaz is proposing and what Muschamp implemented and preached here, except that Muschamp was wise enough to look for ways to get pressure with 4 and avoid committing defensive backs to purposes other than scoring prevention.

Were I a defensive coordinator at a place like Texas where premier talent is practically knocking on the door, I would install Gary Patterson's plan.

Number 1 goal of Nickel Rover's defense? Make scoring as difficult as possible. Play sound schemes geared around limiting an opponents strengths and limiting explosive play opportunities. Goal number 2 is turnovers, attack from a position of strength like Oklahoma does. You can aggressively attack team's tendencies from 2-deep coverages and teach ball-stripping drills. The best bend-don't-break defenses don't struggle to create turnovers.

If you can effectively teach zone the way Patterson does it frees up a lot of practice time for locking down an opponents tendencies, tackling drills, playing with leverage, ball-stripping, etc. Even with Muschamp we would see defenseman thinking and diagnosing on the field slowly at times. Watch the 2010 RRS and see how quickly our guys close on screens compared to what the Sooners achieve...I know that reading the Texas offense was a simpler task but still, OU does that to everyone.

It's not necessary to manufacture pressure in the backfield if you play sound zone defense and allow the defensive ends to fly up-field, as TCU does, or if you have NFL defensive tackles on your roster. Kheeston Randall is worth a negative play about every game and I anticipate similar production from Okafor and other young players on the roster in their futures here. Control the middle of the field and let your speedy defensive backfield destroy plays in pursuit.

That said, this can help a great deal as we've replaced a very strong defensive backs coach with perhaps an even stronger teacher who is likely to have more aptitude for installing zone-principles. He'll be busy early I suspect, as Diaz's preferred schemes are likely to emulate the Rex Ryan system and require corners who can play on an island from time to time.

All in all, Mack has paired a careful, yet explosive offense gameplan with a defensive scheme that will seek to maximize the number of possessions and opportunities the offense has to score. I was ready to embrace a new era of Texas Football geared around defensive excellence but I think this is closer to Mack's comfort zone and is certainly a sensible way to win football games.

I'm just hoping that in year one Diaz leaves a couple of guys deep.

And we're back.

Personally I've been navigating a move within Austin, an engagement to the future Mrs. Nickel Rover, and the end of my laptop's pathetic life. Mack has been similarly busy as we are now replacing virtually the entire staff and have few of the same faces that we saw on the sidelines in the 2009 National Title game, much less the 2005 Championship victory.

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