Final thoughts from a Longhorn sportswriter (with harsh words for the Texas DC)

By Scipio Tex


The Longhorns didn’t lack for competitiveness, effort, or a phenomenal crowd. Rallying from a 20-7 deficit took belief, guts and fitness in brutal conditions. And the offensive brain trust delivered, particularly in the 2nd half.
There was one glaring outlier to the Texas effort and he is to defensive coordinators against the hurry up spread as his namesake is to the rankings of great American cities.
Marrying a bag of pressures doesn’t constitute a coherent defense. Football players are more than mindless Xs running to spots. They have to be taught the game - from the position up. Not from the whiteboard down.
You cannot stop modern offenses without individual player agency and basic fundamentals. That begins at the position level.
It’s called the Call Matching Fallacy and if you read the 2019 Thinking Texas Football guide, you learned all about it. I thought experience in the system would give Texas the chance to improve on last year’s failed performance against comparable offenses (Tech, OSU, WVU, OU) as we could concentrate less on mindless call execution and lining up right and more on player positional development, but when you accept that there really is no system, just a bunch of calls on a play sheet, you have some sobering conclusions to consider.
After an entire game of getting out-coached by a 29 year old passing game coordinator and singlehandedly propelling LSU QB Joe Burrow into the Heisman race, that 3rd and 17 call was the piece de resistance.
There are layers of incompetence in that crap cake call so sticky that they are almost impossible to tease out. It defies Football 101. It defies basic probability analysis. It defies game situation: the success of the Texas offense, the time on the clock. It defies the reality of what LSU had been doing in the passing game. It defied the individual strengths of our players. A six man blitz with a safety mirror is zero coverage. 4 men in man coverage on LSU’s 4 excellent WR’s. Our weakest link vs. their team strength. On 3rd and 17. 2:38 on the clock. With the Texas offense dominating.
It’s indefensible football.
Props to Longhorn Nation, the Longhorn players, and several Longhorn coaches for showing up. Including Yancy McKnight. It was clear who the better conditioned team was.
There was a game right there to be stolen away.
On to Rice.