Growing up, a common topic of conversation topics between my mother and father around my family’s dinner table was my father’s work as a middle manager in finance for IBM. My mother was a good listener and fully engaged in the conversations. Seeing this side of my parents’ relationship was reassuring, which was often punctuated by loud intense arguments.  My father worked on teams. Some men he worked with were on his level, and some were his managers. Though I didn’t understand the conversations regarding what my father and his teammates were working on and their objectives, I was never bored by them. My father’s asides about some of his teammates were not always flattering and sometimes funny.  One aside that I still remember happened sometime in the early seventies. Listening in on a casual conversation about Monday Night Football and, Howard Cosell, my father’s manager at the time, asked, “Who is Howard Cosell?” As a teenager, I was dumbfounded that someone who didn’t know who Howard Cosell was could be my father’s work superior.

My father used the phrase “a hand-wringing agonizing reappraisal” to describe why his managers called a meeting after the results of their decisions had turned out poorly.  As often is the case in the corporate world, team members knew the decisions were wrong when the managers made them, and my father’s phrase was meant to deride his team managers. I used the phrase to the amusement of fellow salespeople at Time Warner when our sales manager had called such a meeting.

I didn’t know until a few days ago that my father probably learned the phrase from John Foster Dulles, the secretary of state during the Eisenhower administration (https://academic.oup.com/dh/article-abstract/16/2/201/338714)

The Dulles quote was “Agonizing reappraisal.”  I think adding “Hand wringing” to the phrase, which made it even more demeaning to the managers, was a Hub Frink original.

Since the Georgia game, I have been agonizingly reappraising Quinn Ewers, Steve Sarkisian, and the Texas football team overall. Maybe the Georgia fans were right when they said Texas was overrated because of the weak schedule they’d played.

Quinn Ewers has had two straight subpar performances against Oklahoma and Georgia, featuring slow starts for him and The Texas offense. Add the slow start in the Mississippi State game, which Arch Manning started, and you have a trend of slow starts for the Texas offense. Like most offensive play callers, Sarkisian is said to script the first 15 plays or so on offense. Check out the opening play calls by Sarkisian in each of those three games.

Mississippi State: (07:51) No Huddle-Shotgun Manning,Arch pass complete short left to Golden,Matthew caught at TEX46, for 22 yards to the TEX50 (Lanier,Brylan), 1ST DOWN, PENALTY MSST Face Mask (Lanier,Brylan) 15 yards from MSST50 to MSST35, 1ST DOWN.

1st and 10 at MST35      (07:31) No Huddle-Shotgun Manning,Arch pass complete short right to Bond,Isaiah caught at MSST26, for 16 yards to the MSST19 (Washington,Hunter; Pollock,Brice), 1ST DOWN.

1st and 10 at MST19      (07:01) No Huddle-Shotgun Manning,Arch pass complete short right to Helm,Gunnar caught at MSST21, for 2 yards loss to the MSST21 (Mitchell,Nic).

2nd and 12 at MST21    (06:28) No Huddle-Shotgun Manning,Arch pass complete deep left to Moore Jr.,DeAndre caught at MSST01, for 20 yards to the MSST01 (Washington,Hunter), 1ST DOWN.

Oklahoma: No Huddle-Shotgun Ewers,Quinn sacked for loss of 6 yards to the UT19 (Downs,Ethan).

2nd and 16 at TEX19     No Huddle-Shotgun Blue,Jaydon rush middle for 2 yards gain to the UT21 (Jackson,Jayden; Lewis, Kip).

3rd and 14 at TEX21      No Huddle-Shotgun Ewers,Quinn pass intercepted by Bowman Jr., Billy at UT45, End Of Play.

Georgia: 13:54) No Huddle-Shotgun Ewers,Quinn pass complete short left to Bond,Isaiah caught at TEX22, for 9 yards to the TEX22 (Everette,Daylen).

2nd and 1 at TEX22        (13:30) No Huddle-Shotgun Ewers,Quinn pass complete short left to Helm,Gunnar caught at TEX21, for 3 yards to the TEX25 (Everette,Daylen), 1ST DOWN.

1st and 10 at TEX25       (13:06) No Huddle-Shotgun Ewers,Quinn pass complete short right to Davis,Juan caught at TEX28, for 5 yards to the TEX30 (Allen,CJ; Aguero,Joenel).

2nd and 5 at TEX30        (12:36) No Huddle-Shotgun Wisner,Quintrevion rush left for 8 yards gain to the TEX38 (Jackson,Dan), 1ST DOWN.

1st and 10 at TEX38       (12:01) No Huddle-Shotgun Ewers,Quinn pass complete short left to Wingo,Ryan caught at TEX35, for 1 yard loss to the TEX37 (Starks,Malaki).

2nd and 11 at TEX37     (11:34) No Huddle-Shotgun Wisner,Quintrevion rush middle for 2 yards gain to the TEX39 (Stackhouse,Nazir; Wilson,Raylen).

3rd and 9 at TEX39         (10:58) No Huddle-Shotgun Ewers,Quinn pass incomplete short left to Wisner,Quintrevion thrown to TEX40 QB hurried by Walker,Jalon.

4th and 9 at TEX39         (10:51) Ratliff,Ian punt 44 yards to the UGA17.

Notice how all three games started with a succession of pass plays from shotgun: four straight pass plays from shotgun against Mississippi St., nine straight pass plays against Oklahoma, and seven straight against Georgia. This is from Sarkisian, who goes out of his way to emphasize that his offense is based on a power run game. Against Oklahoma and Georgia, respectively, Texas’s first five drives finished like this: one touchdown, three punts, and one turnover, three punts, and two turnovers. Maybe Sark’s scripts are getting stale.

One Move Left

I agreed with Sarkisian’s decision to replace Ewers with Manning late in the first half of the Georgia game, but I disagreed with his decision to return to Ewers at the beginning of the second half. Texas needed the added dimension of Manning’s running ability to create offense. If Sark had never put in Manning, he would have been criticized, but yo-yo-ing back and forth indicated to me that Sarkisian had lost his confidence during the game.

Barring injury, if Sarkisian goes to Manning again, he has to stick with him. Speaking of confidence, I thought Sarkisian, Ewers, and Manning displayed defeated facial expressions and body language during the second half.

Vanderbilt

Alabama slayer Vanderbilt surprised the pundits with its defeat of Alabama and its 5-2 start to the season, including an overtime loss to #21 Missouri.  Against Alabama, Vanderbilt possessed the ball for 42:08. Shortening the game with ball control is their M.O. and the reason they’ve had a good season so far. They held the ball for 34:25 last week against Ball State and 34:35 versus Kentucky. They convert 52% of their third down.

Quarterback Diego Pravia is the star of Vanderbilt, and this is how my man Paul Wadlington at Inside Texas describes him.

Pavia is the QB that makes it all work. You love him when he’s on your team, you hate him when he’s your opponent. But you’d better respect him. The former New Mexico State champion wrestler and JUCO walk-on has thrown for 50 touchdowns and only 16 interceptions in his career to go with 1906 rushing yards and another 16 rushing touchdowns. He’s a fearless, durable dual threat with a penchant for play maximization. He’s intrepid and teammates feed off of his energy and belief.

His 470 rushing yards leads the team and he’s completed 66.2% of his passes for 1391 yards and a healthy 9 yards per attempt with 11 touchdowns and 1 interception. Blitzing to contain him isn’t a great idea either: he averages 9.3 yards per attempt and has 5 touchdowns with 0 picks when blitzed.

PFF credits him with only one turnover-worthy play all season. Against Georgia, Quinn Ewers had six.

Vanderbilt’s leading receiver, Eli Stowers, is a big, fast, tight end who plays more like a wide receiver. He has 33 receptions for 463 yards on the season.

Texas has way more talent than Vanderbilt, but if Texas gets off to another slow start, with Vandy’s ball-control offense, we could be in for a closer game than we’d like.

Hook “em,

W.E.

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Did you know that I used to be in the Who?

Commemorating my High School Class of 1974