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Thoughts on the UTEP game

Posted by HenryJames on September 8th, 2008 under Football

While this game did indeed last four quarters, it was effectively over with at twelve minutes left in the fourth quarter. After Rod Muckelroy returned a fumble for a touchdown, both coaches threw in the towels and there was nothing left to learn from watching.

So what did we learn from watching the other 48 minutes? Greg Davis will run the same plays out of the same formation against every defense because that’s what he likes and that’s what he knows. I’m pretty sure he orders the same thing at every restaurant he visits. Why? He likes his routine. He likes his comfort zone.

Colt McCoy played flawlessly for most of the game, and there is no doubt that he is our quarterback. Even if John Chiles was given something to do other than hand off, he still isn’t going to beat out McCoy. One thing McCoy does need to work on is throwing the ball away. I think he’s fallen in love with scrambling and making plays off schedule. Sometimes the smart move is just to throw the ball away. Unfortunately it’s beginning to look like he’s going to have to carry this team in a few games this year.

We should have run for over 200 yards against UTEP. Why didn’t we? Because we still don’t know how to design a running game that plays to our backs’ strengths. Fozzy Whitaker is the only guy we have who can excel at what we’re currently doing, and so he is now our only hope at the position. “We’ve got a couple of downhill slashers (in McGee and Ogbonnaya), but Fozzy’s got great lateral movement, and he’s pretty quick,” said Greg Davis in this morning’s Statesman. So the obvious question is why are they all given the same plays? McGee and Ogbonnaya need to get the ball with their shoulders squared to the line because that’s how they run. Giving them and Cody Johnson the ball while running parallel to the line of scrimmage or making them come get the ball from the quarterback is madness.

Our receivers played well enough against man coverage applied by corners who had no business playing man coverage. We still haven’t shown a deep threat, and again we’re looking to a single player (Malcolm Williams) to be that guy. How is that our running and deep passing games depend on two individuals? We ran a two tight end set maybe a handful of times despite playing against a vastly undersized defense.

The run defense wasn’t up to snuff, but people need to step back from the ledge. “We were going to go into the game and give up a little in the running game to help our safeties out,” Will Muschamp said in today’s Statesman. “We were going to play a little more Cover 2, a little more quarters stretch and be a gap short on the line. We wanted to make them be a little more patient offensively.” So we purposely took away part of our run support to help out our young safeties. If it looked like our linebackers were struggling, it’s because they had to cover an extra gap.

We did miss Lamarr Houston. There is a big dropoff at defensive tackle from him to the 3rd guy in the rotation. Rashad Bobino constantly runs himself out of at least half the plays because he has no concept of what it means to actually beat a block. And Earl Thomas continues to struggle mightily against the pass. He’s late to pick up guys in his zone for whatever reason. Different players from last year, same struggles in zone. But the secondary did tackle a lot better this week.

This game was never in doubt for the Longhorns. Our offense is hot and cold at this point, but McCoy is doing everything that is asked of him. He’s at his best with a short passing game using high percentage passes. He’ll need some help down the road in the running game though, and hopefully Whitaker will be that guy. The defense will be a work in progress. The front seven is going to be pretty solid, but the young secondary will continue to make mistakes. We knew that before the season started. This team will look very good at times, and it will look very bad at times. We need to just temper our expectations accordingly.

Also, please peruse EyesofTX’s Good, Bad & Ugly and PB’s Postgame React.

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27 Responses

  1. bighornfan32 said:

    September 8th, 2008 at 8:05 am

    agree on all points. I dont know why everyone is gnashing their teeth so much with our performance the other night. We arent going to be great right away. How could we with how many freshman and underclassmen we have?

  2. Holdem said:

    September 8th, 2008 at 8:15 am

    They looked like a team playing on the road, at 9:30, against a crappy team that was fired up to play them.

  3. Steve Nebraska said:

    September 8th, 2008 at 8:22 am

    Our running game looks like something a 12 year old would run on XBOX. No regard for personnel or the defense.

  4. DBH said:

    September 8th, 2008 at 9:47 am

    That’s an insult to 12 year old XBoxers, everywhere.

  5. 12 Year-Old XBox Defensive Coordinator said:

    September 8th, 2008 at 11:00 am

    Greg Davis is my bitch.

  6. dick said:

    September 8th, 2008 at 11:45 am

    I’m also convinced that spread offenses just make a defense look bad bc its effective getting yards and you don’t need a lot of talent to run it effectively. It’s been the great equalizer these past few years.

  7. Expensive Golf Sux said:

    September 8th, 2008 at 11:45 am

    The UTEP defense was basically K state’s and Nebraska’s from last year. Bring 6 or 7 right up the gut. Teams that think they are undermanned will do it every time now, because we haven’t shown we have a good answer. Last year the best answer we had was the counter to Jamaal and hope he doesn’t get tripped up in the backfield by the backside end or tackle.

  8. PB @ BON said:

    September 8th, 2008 at 12:10 pm

    “We knew that before the season started…”

    Yeah – that’s the thing I keep coming back to when I get upset about any given deficiency. The thing is, this team is precisely what we thought it would be so far.

    At least insofar as you think this story has a happy ending, we’re on the right track. I’m encouraged, for the most part.

  9. Nordberg said:

    September 8th, 2008 at 12:26 pm

    WE ARE WHO WE THOUGHT WE WERE!

  10. steven said:

    September 8th, 2008 at 1:36 pm

    I’m a pretty happy camper and optimistic so far. This is probably Mack’s best team since VY and certainly has the potential to be one of the better ones he has had. While this team has less gamebreakers, I think Mack has quietly been improving the overall quality of the team. I am looking forward to a successful season for this team.

  11. M said:

    September 8th, 2008 at 3:50 pm

    If only these games could be played in the political arena.

  12. Huckleberry said:

    September 8th, 2008 at 4:20 pm

    I commented in the live blog that Fozzy looks eerily similar to Jamaal Charles in his freshman year.

    That realization simultaneously made me excited about this year and depressed about what Fozzy will run like in two years.

  13. Groundhog Day said:

    September 8th, 2008 at 4:31 pm

    Jamaal Charles was the most underappreciated person to play for Texas in a long time. He won a few games by himself last year, but all people will remember is the fumble he had against OU. He will be a great player certainly much better than the overrated Ced Benson who didn’t blossom until in the same backfield with VY.

  14. Ransom Stoddard said:

    September 8th, 2008 at 5:32 pm

    I don’t need to temper my pre-season expectations of an 8-4 season. What I’ve seen so far makes me think I was dead-on.

  15. dick said:

    September 8th, 2008 at 6:36 pm

    Nobody is telling the people with 8-4 expectations to temper their expectations.

  16. Chateau Montelena said:

    September 8th, 2008 at 6:41 pm

    How is Jamaal doing in the league?

  17. steven said:

    September 8th, 2008 at 7:34 pm

    8-4, where on earth are the four losses going to come from. Texas wins at the very least wins 10 games this year. We are a better team than we were a year ago and we are only going to continue to improve.

  18. EyesOfTX said:

    September 9th, 2008 at 4:00 am

    Yes, the way our non-conference schedule has shaped up, it does appear we will win more than 8. It’s hard to see us losing more than 3 conference games, and if Tech’s defense is really as bad as it has looked thus far, more than 2. You have to believe we beat at least one of OU, Mizzou, and KU, and Tech is the only other team on the schedule that would appear to be a real threat at this point, with Colorado and OSU on down the list.

  19. Mysterious Package said:

    September 9th, 2008 at 7:56 am

    OU is a loss.
    Mizzou-50%
    Kansas-50%
    We lose 2 out of 3 here.
    Tech, CU, OSU:
    We lose 1 out of the 3.
    If we win our shitty bowl Mack gets to his 10 wins. That is now the gold standard for our bush leauge expectations.

  20. BrickHorn said:

    September 9th, 2008 at 8:07 am

    Unless our running game improves dramatically, I will have no confidence in our games against Tech, OU, Mizzou, Kansas, CU or OSU. Fortunately, if things go according to the usually pattern, our running game should improve dramatically starting Oct. 18.

  21. Kafka said:

    September 9th, 2008 at 8:29 am

    I’ve pondered the GD play calling syndrome (i.e. calling plays in a way that is not real time responsive to what is actually happening on the field) and I’ve come up with the following factors:

    * comfort zone (i.e. the HJ theory)
    * stubborness/hubris: we’re Texas and we can run any offense we want to because we have superior talent/schemes
    * GD is not a realtime kind of guy. It is difficult to know what is going on in realtime (i.e. most of us understand the game much better after we have studied the video).
    * it is a tremendous amount of work to devise a game plan that takes into account all the individual matchups in an actual game. Huge amounts of video study required but the payoff is significant. Speaking as a 59 year old guy, you work a lot harder when you are in your 30s and 40s than in your 50s.

    Regarding running attacks, I’m starting to think that, if you don’t have a primo all around TB (like Adrian Peterson or DeMarco Murray), then maybe the TB should be optimized for inside running and blocking/dump pass receiving. The guys like Bush, Ramonce, and Fozzy are always going to do better (in terms of performance and injuries) in space so it is best to get them the ball via a short pass or endaround or pitch. Play both guys at the same time. The bruiser plays TB and the Bush type guy plays in the slot (but is moved around a lot).

    I don’t get the idea of zone blocking all the time. Why not be multiple in your blocking approach and sometimes zone block and sometimes down block (i.e. traditional blocking with its inherent mechanical advantage compared to zone blocking)? Maybe they already do that.

    Good point about all the backs running the same plays but I think the horns also have some good specialization going on. 3rd and 1 is now pretty automatic with Cody running the ball. Ogbonnaya is a good 3rd and long guy with his ability to block and receive. the talents of Vondrell and Fozzy are quite different and they should be utilized differently.

    Sign that the offense was not crisp and methodical: the media is asking Colt, Quan, and Ship about how they practise broken plays and those guys are talking about how that is their favorite part of the offense. Quan’s advice to the young receivers: when Colt is scrambling, go long. Why do you want to go for the most difficult to execute pass play under chaotic conditions?

    GD/Colt still seem bewildered about how to respond to aggressive blitzing. There are known, proven approachs to responding to blitzes:
    * get the ball away faster (implies shorter routes and timing patterns)
    * provide more blocking/fewer receivers to simplify the QB’s decision making process
    * checkoff passes to backs and TEs who initially block and then make themselves available for dump passes
    * move the pocket
    * rollout

    I don’t get the impression that Mack and GD are quick to notice when Colt is starting to get out of rhythm (and adjust the play calling to more short passes/runs).

    Finally:
    * Mike Price (UTEP coach) being Mack’s friend probably discouraged Mack from putting the pedal to the metal
    * Mack would like to cloak the offense in secrecy as long as possible

  22. steven said:

    September 9th, 2008 at 8:35 am

    Mysterious, I know that you are not a gambling man cause if you were, you would lose your shirt and probably not even be able to afford a computer to post with. Now stats are one thing, but thing that has always separated OU and Texas from the rest of the league is speed and athleticism on defense. OU and Texas has that and the rest of the league simply doesn’t.

    For all the criticism of Texas’s secondary, Mizzou’s appears to be worse and without the upside, they are not going to be getting better with experience. What would you be saying if we had Mizzou’s backfield? You’d probably have a seizure or something. Also they don’t seem to have much of a running game making them too one dimensional and this may become a big handicap when they actually run into a quality defense. Texas will be favored in this game.

    And Kansas? Get real. What has Kansas done to earn so much respect aside from beating up on a bunch lousy teams last year along with one decent team in Va. Tech and even they showed how mediocre they are by getting beat by E. Carolina. While Kansas still has a disciplined team and a solid QB, last years team was better than this years version. Kansas lost just too much in the draft. Kansas just does not have enough horses to keep up with the UT’s and OU’s of the world. They have no running game and their slow as molasses defensive ends could not mount a pass rush to save their lives. Texas will be favored in this game.

    Tech, now they could present a problem because they always play Texas tough up in Lubbock and they tend to play much better at home but until their atrocious pass and run D improves, I don’t know how anyone can say that Texas is not favored here as well.

    Again both CU and OSU have not shown that they will have any semblance of a defense this year. Now of course an upset can spring up here and there but just to go and say that one will happen every week is just silly. So from your posts, I will bet you that you are not a bettor and if you just happen to be one presently, I can only infer that you will not be one for long. Certainly not past this season.

  23. Mysterious Package said:

    September 9th, 2008 at 8:50 am

    “And Kansas? Get real. What has Kansas done to earn so much respect aside from beating up on a bunch lousy teams last year along with one decent team”-Orange Bowl>Holiday Bowl
    They also have coaches that make adjustments. Mizzou has no defense but this game is a toss up my friend just like KU thats why a “betting man” would say we lose 1 and win one. Which one I dont know? but I will take OU right now at -3.5 if you want to go there.

  24. TWC said:

    September 9th, 2008 at 8:57 am

    Tech may have returned 10 starters on defense, but that doesn’t matter if they were mediocre last year. It’s nice to see all the ridiculous preseason hype around the likes of Kansas to finally be subsiding.

  25. hiphopopotamus said:

    September 9th, 2008 at 9:41 am

    All I’ve heard on the likes of Kansas is everyone saying they can’t handle their schedule and that last year was a fluke. Which may be true.

    But I do know that a VERY good Texas team came into Memorial Stadium in 2004 with VY and Ced Benson to play an awful (4-7) Kansas team and even then they needed some late officiating help and a hideous (beautiful) scramble by Vince on 4th&18 to pull the game out. So suffice it to say that while texas still holds a clear advantage at most positions on the field, they will likely have a tough time winning in lawrence this year.

  26. steven said:

    September 9th, 2008 at 9:41 am

    Last time i checked UT being favored in both games does not equate to 50/50. Now every game is a toss up and it is possible to lose any game, but the odds are better than 50/50 for UT against either of those teams.

    And KU getting to the Orange Bowl due to fortuitous circumstances does not equate to Kansas being the better team last year. How many BCS games and B12 championship games would UT have reached if they were in the north and played the schedule Kansas played last year. If they had met each other, UT would have been favored, Orange Bowl or no Orange Bowl. Not saying UT would have won cause last years Kansas was pretty stout but we still would have been favored. This year, Kansas is not quite as good as they were a year ago and Texas happens to be better, I do not see how you could say the Texas and Kansas this year would be anywhere near 50/50, more like 70/30 in our favor I would say.

  27. steven said:

    September 9th, 2008 at 9:55 am

    Sure HipHop, I remember that game and I am not attempting to assert that Kansas is not good team. I personally believe that Mangino is the best coach in the B12. What he does with what he has at hand in Kansas year in and year out is impressive. But that year, as great as VY was, he could still be inconsistent from time to time and Kansas that year fielded a far better defense than they do today. Also while not being as spectacular as the VY team of ‘04, Texas is likely to be more consistent in the level of their play game in and game out. If Colt has one strength this year, I would say that it would be consistency.

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