Oklahoma State

Paul Wadlington is my Texas Football guru and I’m going to summarize highlights of his Oklahoma State Postmortem: Offense column.  You can read Paul Wadlington at https://www.on3.com/teams/texas-longhorns/

Wadlington

Texas had a season high 19 offensive possessions. They had 9 meaningful possessions in the Iowa State game. Texas scored 31 points on 10 possessions in the first half. They scored 3 points on 9 possessions in the second half.

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Texas had 14 penalties.  The Longhorn offense failed to convert a 4th and 3 on the Oklahoma State 28-yard line by lining up in an illegal formation. Later, the Horns had a 2nd quarter drive that got to the OSU 12-yard line, but false starts on Karic and Sanders helped to create 3rd and 22 and an eventual Auburn field goal. The Texas offense had 5 different penalties for procedure or lining up incorrectly. 

Willie Earl

Some Texas fans are complaining that Oklahoma State had no penalties while Texas was called for 14. Maybe Oklahoma State got away with a hold or two, but they didn’t have any procedure, lining up wrong, false start penalties, or jumping offsides on defense penalties. Texas had all of the above. Also, Oklahoma State was flagged twice. Texas declined one and the other was offset by a Texas penalty on the same play.

It seems like Texas is jumping offsides on defense in almost every game. This is a coaching deficiency, right?

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Question: How does a QB go 19 of 49 in modern football against a defense that surrendered 523 yards?

Answer: Because the head coach didn’t stop him at 13 of 34.

Willie Earl

My perspective on Sarkisian’s decision or non-decision to not replace Quinn Ewers with Hudson Card in the second half:  Making the switch would have been an adjustment. Sarkisian doesn’t do adjustments.

Wadlington

Texas was 3 for 19 on converting third downs. When the big plays dried up, it was incumbent on Texas to concern itself more with chain moving and making some scheme or personnel adjustments than trying to hit Xavier Worthy in double coverage downfield. If Texas even performs at the season average of other Cowboy opponents on 3rd down, the Horns are probably celebrating a win.

A passable Longhorn passing game would have meant 45+ points on the board, ultimately more Texas runs, and fewer possessions for Oklahoma State to rally. The cause of second half inefficiency was the nexus between head coach, quarterback and perhaps the Longhorn receivers.

Ultimately, when the offense you want to run isn’t working because the QB isn’t making the throws available, you can either hope it turns, pare down the offense considerably, or you can make a change.

Sark bet it would turn and it didn’t.

Willie Earl

Hope isn’t a plan. Again, it’s the adjustment thing.

Wind

David Bergstrom and I played in my club’s member-guest tournament last weekend. The format was a round robin of five 9-hole matches. All weekend the winds were southwesterly at 15-20 mph gusting to 25. It was very windy. So windy that even putts were affected. This required adjustments to club selections and shot alignment on almost every shot. Bergy and I staged a big comeback winning our last two matches. We won the last match 7 ½ -1 ½.  Every point counted in the overall, so all 9 holes were played in every match.  We finished second in our flight and won $450. Righteous bucks.

After our final round, Bergy and I sat down in the clubhouse to watch the Texas-Oklahoma State game picking it up midway through the first quarter. I commented that it’s got to be windy there too. Bergy checked the Stillwater weather on his phone which showed 18 mph south winds. I read some where that the field in T. Boone Pickens stadium runs east to west, one of the few if not the only football field in high school, college, or pro not to run north to south. Okies.

I’m wondering if Sarkisian’s gameplan took the wind into account. It wasn’t obvious to the untrained eye if he did. During the second half when it was clear that Ewers was having a bad day why weren’t more short passes called. Such as the one that went to Xavier Worthy for a touchdown when he lined up as a wingback and the pass to Bijan out of the backfield for a touchdown. It was the only reception of the game for Bijan. Keilan Robinson also caught a short pass out of the backfield that gained 19 yards. It was his only reception as well.  Successful or not, does Sarkisian not like running the same play more than once?

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Paul Wadlington also does Postmortem columns on defense/special teams. I encourage you to seek out his offensive and defensive breakdowns weekly if you want to better understand Texas Football. Below is his Special Teams breakdown.

Wadlington

A terrific effort overall. Texas won every phase of the return game. Morice Blackwell blocked a punt, Trejo had a punt to the 1-yard line that should have turned the game and Worthy had multiple strong punt returns. Texas won this phase of the game convincingly and if you’d told me before the game that the Horns would have blocked a punt, returned another to the opponent 20, recovered a muffed punt in Cowboy territory and out gained the opponent by 100 yards in returns, a loss would have not been in my predictive index. Losing finds a way.

Willie Earl

Losing finds a way. That defines Steve Sarkisian’s tenure at Texas so far.

All Gas, No Brakes

Do you think No brakes refers to Sarkisian’s defense? ????

Song of the Week

Those of you who were alive in 1974 and ’75 may remember the release of “Endless Summer” in June of ’74. It was a best of album with the hits from 1963, ’64, and ’65. I had the luck of seeing the Beach Boys in the Municipal Auditorium the evening of last day of class of the spring semester of 1975. I went with John Scott and met up with my brothers during the intermission. John and I sat on the floor about 20 rows back from the stage. When the Beach Boys went into a medley of their biggest hits–I’m gettin’ bugged driving up and down the same old strip I gotta find a new place where the kids are hip–we could see the balcony bobbing up and down to the beat.  It was crazy. I thought to myself, it’s okay that it’s doing that right? It won’t fall down on top of us will it?

Then, about five or six weeks later, home in Reston, Virginia, a girl who had spurned me in high school invited me to go with her to see the Beach Boys and Chicago in concert at the Capital Center in Landover, Maryland. Evidently she had come to her senses.  Now we’re talking sublime luck. The groups had a hugely successful tour that summer playing multiple sold out shows in most of the stops. During the concert, Chicago played, then the Beachboys, and then they played together! The Beach Boys became the soundtrack of that summer. It was a good summer.