One Hit Wonder?

After Jonathan Gray’s 15-yard run to start Texas’ last drive of the Oklahoma game, my heart started pounding and I began, literally and physically, feeling five years of pent-up emotion simmering inside of me. “Ball security” I repeated at least three times as Gray ran again for two yards. Oklahoma calls their last timeout with 2:50 remaining, and my breathing starts coming up a little short.  After the timeout, Jerrod Heard rushes to the Oklahoma 15. It’s another first down and I say, “That should do it.” My eyes are beginning to fill. Gray and Heard run it three more times, and that’s it. Game over.  Bob and I stand up and bro hug. No words as the five years of pent-up emotion are now in full physical release.   Bob says, “How ‘bout a beer?” Bob and I sit down on the couch with our beers in his L.A. apartment, and I’m barely able to choke out, “We won’t forget this anytime soon.” Bob gently pats me on the back, and I briefly go into full chest-heaving weeping, but I have to control it as best I can so Bob’s girlfriend Kate doesn’t hear me from the kitchen.

Why a Texas Football game can generate so much soul penetrating emotion, I’ll be asking myself for the rest of my life. Maybe it’s rooted in the 1800 miles that separated me from the Longhorns for most of my childhood and teen years.  Who knows?—and anyway, that’s a conversation for another time. Now, for better or for worse, the Longhorns have six more games to play.

The Oklahoma win led me to modify my editorial schedule a bit. You may have noticed I haven’t issued part 2 of “How We Got Here “about key decisions Charlie Strong has made over the last 18 months or so.  As you might have guessed, I wasn’t exactly going to heap praise on Strong about what I think were the key decisions that led Strong to his 7-11 record before the Oklahoma game. The emotional win in that game hasn’t completely allayed my concerns on Strong’s decision-making in the long-term.

Long-Term Decisions

It was a mistake to bring Shawn Watson along from Louisville as the offensive coordinator. Strong had the budget to hire anyone in the country, and he opted for a comfortable choice by picking the familiar Watson. If I’m Charlie Strong in December 2013, after landing a career-defining, life-altering job, a job that could give me and my children financial security for life, I’m not making the hire that is going to have perhaps the greatest impact on my success based on loyalty and my comfort zone.  With as much as Strong had at stake, I find it disappointing that he would choose Shawn Watson, a journeyman offensive coordinator with a C+ resume at best. It was Watson who convinced Strong that Tyrone Swoopes was the best option at quarterback to start this season.  As it turns out, hiring Watson proved to make Charlie Strong very uncomfortable, and Watson’s tenure as offensive coordinator and Swoopes’ tenure as the starting quarterback ended one game into Strong’s second season.

The decision to hire Shawn Watson goes hand-in-glove with Strong’s decision to redshirt Jerrod Heard in 2014. I’m on record in the middle of last season criticizing the decision. I thought at the time that Swoopes didn’t give Texas their best shot at winning games in 2014 and that redshirting Heard was pure speculation on its long-term benefit to the program.

We all feel much better about the Longhorns and the 2015 season than we did a two weeks ago, but, to—borrow my father’s phrasing—do we all agree that we would be even more sanguine about the rest of this season if Jerrod Heard had more than five games of experience?

Recruiting

I’m no recruiting maven.  I confine my reading of college football recruiting news to the month of January and early February.  I made an exception during the spring and summer of 2014 and 2015 when I saw stories about Charlie Strong and Shawn Watson looking at quarterback transfer candidates.  I thought Texas was in desperate straits at quarterback during those times, and I was hoping Strong would land a transfer to at least compete with quarterbacks already on campus.  As you know, there were to be no quarterbacks transferring to Texas in 2014 and 2015. Further, the only drop-back quarterback from whom Strong and Watson received a verbal commitment in 2014 or 2015—Zach Gentry—ended up signing with Michigan and Jim Harbaugh.

With Texas so desperate to find a quarterback in 2014 and 2015 why was Kai Locksley (who was considered an athlete as much as a quarterback prospect) the only quarterback Charlie Strong signed in two recruiting seasons?  I have a theory, and it’s just a theory. I think the elite high school quarterbacks, their parents, and their coaches didn’t think Shawn Watson was the right coach to develop their talents, Teddy Bridgewater notwithstanding.  Can you say one hit wonder?

If my theory has any validity, then between the Swoopes debacle and quarterback recruiting, Shawn Watson has really hamstrung Strong’s program during these past two years.

Going Forward

It’s somewhat ironic that Texas’ MVP at this point in the season, Jerrod Heard, is a player Mack Brown recruited and whom Charlie Strong was reluctant to play until he got desperate.  Heard was Texas’ leading rusher in the Oklahoma game with 125 yards in 21 carries, and it wasn’t a fluke. It was part of the game plan. Texas can’t execute that plan and win that game without Heard.

Let’s hope that Strong has learned from his mistaken hire of Shawn Watson and his mistake of not finding out what he had in Jerrod Heard in 2014. Texas is still hampered by those mistakes in Heard’s and Norvell’s inexperience, but Charlie Strong deserves credit for making the move to Heard and replacing Watson with Jay Norvell as the play caller and all the good that has happened since.

If Charlie Strong and his staff can follow up the Oklahoma win with more well designed and executable game plans in the next three weeks against very beatable opponents, then the Oklahoma win will be validated as the turning point for Strong and the Texas football program.  If they stumble against Kansas State, Iowa State, or Kansas then the big Oklahoma win will just be a one hit wonder.

Lock of the Week

I’m 2-0 in Locks of the Week in 2015 with Alabama beating Georgia and Notre Dame beating Navy and covering the spread.

It might be my memory playing tricks on me, but it seems like over the years, after Oklahoma has lost to Texas, they right the ship and go on to have very good seasons.

So my lock this week is Oklahoma at home to cover the 15-point spread against Texas Tech.

Author’s Note

I have written often about my father in these pages over the years, and I was thinking of him this week as I was writing the first part of this column.

In December 1972, my father and I watched on television as Roger Staubach came off the bench to rally the Dallas Cowboys from 15 points down in the fourth quarter to beat the San Francisco 49ers in an NFC playoff game. When Ron Sellers caught the winning touchdown pass from Staubach, I started crying. My father said to me, “That’s OK, Bill, I didn’t see you cry when things went against you.”  I guess that’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.

HooK ‘eM,

W.E.

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