GoldAppleCorps

I don't want to start calling names because frankly Jamaal Charles and maybe Jordan Shipley are the last two players I recall with speed to house it on a breakaway. Having those players on the field makes a DC hesitant to call zeros. With no layers to a defense, one block or a broken tackle means hearing Texas Fight. They make everybody's job easier.

This gruntles my soul. Too many times I've seen a Texas player break into the clear. He'd give it everything he had before being tracked down by a DB from across the field. I'd be excited by the 25 yard gain, but wonder why he got caught. Texas now has several players across multiple positions that simply outrun the defense. Somebody might be able to catch him eventually, but not over the 100 yards that make up the playing surface.

Please consider that a lot of those defensive metrics are hard-coded numbers. Texas Tech's offense had the ball 13 times (11 not counting end of halves). Obviously I saw the three coverage busts that led to easy points like everyone else, and aren't excusing those. I'm just pointing out that Tech still has a competent offense, and they had lots of sequences with the football. We may have done Tech a favor by making them switch QBs.

If you had to diagram it, you play at home at 11am. Next week, you go on the road to a hostile environment in a smallish stadium at 11am. The week after, you play your Big Game of the season at 11am. By that time, the team simply thinks 11am is when they're supposed to be playing football. I've seen too many instances of Texas trying to crank the engine with 10:00 left in the 2nd quarter to discount this.

You knew he wasn't going to break the record by gaining 4 yards on 2nd and 8.

From an office on the side of Hwy 84, getting up one more time than I've been knocked down... TEXAS!

My point being that you don't really know what a leader can do when everything's working out. When everyone's a step away, overthinking their job, and mistakes are leading to other mistakes, your leaders show up and refocus everyone. They're the ones that are able to seemingly switch the momentum back to their side. In reality, they're doing it because the players calm down and play like they've been trained.

Colt was criticized in his first season for being timid in the huddle. He's a kid standing next to grown-assed men who played for trophies. He's not going to tell Kasey Studdard to pick up the effort. That team had a few leaders, so it wasn't rudderless, but it helps if the QB is authoritative. With experience comes wisdom. Colt obviously learned to stand and command. Card will get there (not necessarily, I think the MNC terror broke Garrett Gilbert mentally), but you can't teach experience. I'm confident the team will respond to Casey Thompson's leadership, at least against Rice. Leaders can only emerge when times get rough, though.

Pretty reasonable to see where a 19 year old kid making his first road start in Fayettnam just freaked out. He wanted to do a good job in an important game, and the weight of the moment made him get into his own head and think about it. He opted for handoffs and give reads when he needed to risk passing. He double checked his windows instead of letting the ball go. By that time, it was too late for a fast moving game. As fans, we're still battered and fragile. We've had our optimism crushed too many times. It's all understandable. Letting him sit and catch up to the pace of the game stands to really help Hudson Card. Casey might fling a couple of turnovers, but it won't be because he lacked confidence. He's going to make Sark pull him back as far as aggression goes.

Card was overwhelmed playing his first road game against a crazy opponent. Understandable, but not forgivable. Casey gets his shot. The OL is the deep voodoo. Your best five OL players don't necessarily make up your best OL. They have to play as a unit. You can't harden that unit (!) in practice when the defense is a known quantity and has an interest in not killing your ball carriers. You only know what you have when you expose them to a hostile defense. If Flood says the team keeps going with the guys currently playing, I can only trust he knows what he's talking about. Hopefully, we won't learn anything new about the team playing Rice. I hope the tape shows that the team learned something after the Arky loss.

What gruntled me along those lines is that PK's defense kept working even when we subbed in the bench. Orlando's defense was brilliantly designed. It had Swiss watch complexity. When all the pieces did exactly what they were supposed to do, it was beautiful. However, when a guy got hurt or subbed out, his replacement didn't quite get the memo. The entire defense would be wrecked. PK has his guys playing a complex defense that conceptually simple. Every player seemed to grasp his role. Even the late TD run had 3 Texas defenders ready to make the play (but failed to execute tackles - I'm sure that point came up this week). This defense took away the easy stuff and made ULL execute the hard stuff. It's clear that there's more to come.

So I die on Wednesday instead of Thursday! Who gives a shit?

Heh. True. However, your model has to agree with reality, otherwise you get things like "everyone in the world has 3/10 of a testicle".

32 points is a weird configuration. Not sure how we land there, but I'd accept that if it means an inspired effort by the Cajun defense made Texas earn their points on long, time consuming drives. I'm hoping for better than 26 honest points against PK's defense. We've written a lot about our offensive weapons and production, but I believe this defense can be special. I also believe it will be really hard to tell what's going on. That's not a bug. It's a feature. The opposing QB won't likely be able to figure it out, either.

If the running game is getting 5 yards per carry, football becomes a very easy game. I'm continually amazed at how many offensive coordinators want to play that 4-D chess match and outfox the DC by getting away from an easy play that's working. Make them stop it first. Breece Hall certainly isn't a tomato can, but playing defense by keeping Bijan Robinson in front of you seems like a recipe for hearing the fight song.

ULaLa can only play 11 players on defense like everybody else. Sark's offense has a home run built into every play. The reason why these two thing are related is because it limits the amount of "patient" drives we have (in a good way). Now, as much as I'd like Bijan scoring on every scamper, that shit ain't realistic. Certainly, if he's grabbing 10+ yards, let him roll. Since I don't think ULaLa's defensive coaches are morons, they'll certainly want to adjust. That's when things get fun. Picture "trips right" - three receivers to the wide, field side of the OL. Customarily, these receivers run at different "levels" in the defense: shallow (cross), medium (curl or hook), and deep (fly or post). It's almost impossible to cover receivers 1 on 1 for any length of time. Unless they've found 4 "shutdown" corners, there's going to have to be some rotation and help. Our receivers are taught to play routes and concepts instead of positions. You may be lined up inside, but you're still the "deep" route. This prevents the defense from aligning based on formation. They're going to have to play the routes as they develop. As the game moves and the RPO forces more attention to the LOS, the chances are the receivers will encounter misaligned coverage. When the shallow or mid-level guy gets it, that's a nice 8-15 yard gain. Eventually, the "misalignment" will happen to the deep guy. The NB looked into the backfield to see what Bijan was doing. His receiver got 2 steps on him. Now, the receiver encounters the deep safety. That safety will now ALWAYS be wrong. If he attacks inside to the field, the receiver bends his route to the pylon. If he tries to leverage the sideline to help, the route gets bent inside to the goalposts. Either way, the safety will be outside the shoulder of the receiver. The QB just leads him to daylight. The safety is on tape looking like he blew it big-time, but the reality is that pressure from other options put him in an unwinnable situation. Sark stresses seeing the deep route first. If it's covered, fine. Move on to other progressions. However, if the defense is properly respecting a non-predictable offense (!), the deep route will open at some point during every series.

We won't see a finished product on Saturday. I'm sure there will be plenty of things of film that Card (and likely Thompson too) will be asked to improve on the following week. Remember that Sark just put Mac Jones in the league - in the first round. I know we haven't had anything to do for 8 months, but it's time to stop over thinking this. One of the best (if not the best) quarterback teachers in the business picked Hudson Card. He had a choice, and could have picked the guy who tossed 4 TD passes in essentially one half of a football bowl game. Casey Thompson comes highly recommended - and Sark thinks Card is better than that. He didn't pick Card for a mind game. He did it because playing Husdon Card at QB gives the team the best chance to win the game on Saturday. The unknown is always scary, but a highly rated QB was chosen by a credentialed QB guru to play behind an OL selected and trained by a coach (and colleague of the OC) whose previous unit was recognized as the best in college ball. At that QB's side will be one of the most electrifying backs in the game. We won't see the finished product on Saturday, but there's a reason why donors with a ton of cash paid 8 figures to dismiss the previous staff. There's an outrageous amount of talent on this team, and they weren't using it. Sark got the best in the business (yes, most of them came from Alabama) to manage this talent. Rather than trying to analyze from 4 levels deep, we're going to see true development that we've been missing for 15 years.

<trigger alert - no bitcha to me> Kai kinda reminds me that Jordy Nelson kid that wasn't overly fast or super athletic. He just seemed to materialize all by himself 8 yards down field on 3rd and 7. Everyone in the stands would just yell, "Why won't someone cover that little fucker?".

Is Ricky Powell - photographer ref: Car Thief from "Paul's Boutique"

Charlie played his guts out for Baylor, but he's one hard sneeze away from concussion protocol.

This is what I've been noticing for a bit. Seems Herman would say, "Here's the plays I want to run. Teach your group to do this.". Sark asks, "What does your group do well? We'll run those plays.".

Without tape or anything more concrete than "This is what we heard", it's impossible to know what the truth is in the zero-sum world of Scrimmage #1. Personally, I'm gruntled to hear that the defense is cohesive. PK's defense has a lot of moving parts. It's more philosophical than Orlando's Swiss-Watch designs, so it should be more tolerant of injuries and substitution patterns, but it does require everyone to be on the same page. If the defense was able to compete without major busts, that's a huge step forward. If I recall correctly, neither Sark nor PK are guys that hold back. Other coaches might say, "We want to test <x> of our offense. Stay in base and don't stunt, twist, or blitz". I don't believe either competitor takes that tack. It's likely that the OL and the offense faced every nasty thing Coach K has taught his defense thus far. In that light, it'd be expected that the offense doesn't quite measure up yet. I don't think they were, but even if both QBs were performing at 95% perfect, Sark would still call them out as inadequate. There's still 3 weeks until game time, and he wants every second to be used to improve. There's now tape on this offense against a real defense full of starters. The players that digest the information and bring those lessons to improve their performances will see the field more often. This was rehearsal #1. Everyone's got homework and notes.

Ideally, several other receivers should be headed that way to form some sort of block. If they weren't there in "trips" or something, then pulling OL and/or RBs/Motion TEs should try to form up into a diagonal "tube" leading back to the center of the field. The resulting chaos kind of looks like the mesh part of a KO return. There's a decent chance the ball carrier emerges with daylight ahead. That's one kind. The important point is that none of this, especially a straight toss to the sideline, stands a prayer of doing anything but killing a WR if the defense is in press or bump coverage. I suppose you could accidentally catch a CB on a blitz and get somewhere, but largely you have to win a deep battle to make the defenders cheat backwards before throwing short. What looked like a naked sideline pass was really just so poor that the blockers hadn't gotten time to set up. Most of the tape shows sympathetic Texas teammates arriving at the scene of the crime just as the defender gets up to celebrate.