burdine

I can give another vote for Mel's in Tomball in general. Excellent home cooking and great burgers and rings.

It's pretty much the same approach Ryan Day and Lincoln Riley take. It can work at a pretty high level. But you have to really trust the DC completely.

Patterson has always been edgy. Something this defensive staff could use more of. Hopefully, it's at least a Co-DC situation with PK focusing on the front and Gary on the back end. I think Sark as offensive playcaller really needs the defense to run well on gameday without him. Patterson seems like a good approach to that. He has also been an excellent talent evaluator which it looks like we are going to need.

I think he has two this year. How many do we have this year? Our guys are mostly getting drafted late. When is the last time we had two first round picks in the same year?

Baylor might be a good model for where we are today frankly. I know that we're Texas and all. Didn't their coach go 2-7 last year? Did they try and get him to tank as some on this page are suggesting? I think they tried to fix/upgrade what they had.

This goes back to my point of trying to get player development working. Bama puts kids in the NFL. We aren't going to win those battles with our draft track record. That isn't on Sark probably.

He does only have one kid of his own in Worthy on campus really. Maybe it's too early to make a call? I agree we need to get the Def staff sorted out.

Agree, I would rather have had Brian Kelly too. But we are where we are. This is the bet we made. Not supporting it to the best of our ability in Year One will only hurt our program going forward. We have to play out this hand and figure out how to make it better.

It's the end of Year One. We need to play the hand we have, the best we can. Staff turnover has real costs to player development, an area we demonstratedly suck at and something we absolutely need to fix. Maybe think about how do we improve this staff instead of starting over again.

This is pretty much where we are. Just get the defense back to average and keep the production of offense and we have something to sell.

If we had a Big 12 average defense this year the whole season narrative is different. Sark has to own that the defensive staff didn't work this year. If he tweaks/upgrades the defensive staff to get a Big 12 average result next year, what does that season look like? 8-4ish? Get a QB starter from the portal, that might improve some on top of that. I don't think there are quick fixes here but I don't think we have to be doomed to repeat this season either.

if we get 2 quality starters out of the portal then we probably did pretty good. Hoping for QB and DE.

It's not really my whole premise, I just didn't write out all the other things that get discussed here which matter too. I guess I think it's under-discussed that we just aren't putting kids in the league like we used to and some of our competition for talent still does. We have recruited at a much higher level than we have been putting kids into the league the last 5 years or so. Why is that? Kids see that. All the wasted 4 and 5 stars at Texas that don't get drafted high or even at all. I also think that is not something that gets fixed overnight. I think all the staff turnover is part of that. I get this season sucked. I get we have no momentum. So either we nuke this staff again after the next year or two and hope to catch lightning in a bottle and get lucky OR we try and see if this staff can gel or be upgraded over the next year or two while keeping these kids in the same system so they can develop properly. It seems like we are past the quick fix stage unless we get very lucky. This offensive staff seems good enough. Maybe figure out how to change or maximize the staff we have instead of wholesale talking about nuking it all the time. I know patience is a tough sell. I think the theme of kids go to Bama to get in the league and Texas kids get to be undrafted free agents needs to be changed and it might take patience to do it.

How about DL and OL and LB which are big needs for us?

Recruits are going to the schools putting players into the NFL. Until we start doing that, we are very vulnerable to negative recruiting. We are gonna have to develop some kids and get them drafted to really get momentum IMO.

I'm an idiot. Can't find it??

I can see the OL comments. Play was improved over the back half of the season. Things got steadier. We return 3 starters and Karic and Conner got serious playing time. Also might want to listen to Tope Imade on the Hornscast podcast. Interesting comments on Flood and OL coaching. Tope Imade podcast interview

Recently we have recruited at a top 10 level under Herman and Strong and mostly got barely top 25 results from that recruiting. Point to consider: Maybe our way forward is not to jump to top 5 recruiting to fix our issues. Maybe we need to focus on developing what we have and what we get which is still better than most programs even in the SEC. Development takes time though. There is a reason middle schools run the same offense as the high school they feed to. Development takes time. How long have our guys been running their offense and defense? If we can start delivering results near our recruiting rankings then I think we can say we have solved our development issues. Once recruits see real developmental results it should get easier to beat the rap on us that we waste talent. I'm not knocking rooting for a great recruiting class. It would really help. It would speed up the process for sure. But I don't think it's the main issue our program faces.

Noted! Hook'em!

Thanks for the sharing and transparency. As a regular guy with a life, I enjoy Surly but it was not immediately apparent to me that it was the best place to financially contribute to my Horns. There might be quite a few like me. Thanks for getting the ball rolling. It seems like NIL really will be the future of the program.

I'd be fine with a digital photo of him getting the MFer wallet with the cash in it. That would be fine consideration in my book.

Yes props to the Surly overlords. I'm sure they commit more than $$$. I bet their time is pretty valuable too.

Just so it does not get lost in my well-deserved public shaming. I have already given a $100 to the Worthy Award. I will give another $200 if ten more want to also add $200. Maybe this is more for the non Burnt Ends people. Since the Burnt Ends folks are already doing their part.

Good to know. Then what the hell is it if folks can't contribute to it?

I'm not trying to be better than anyone else. There is some big NIL announcement in the next week or so. Anybody know what it is?