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GoldAppleCorps

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Everything posted by GoldAppleCorps

  1. Baylor is currently respecting the fundamentals of football. They don't have talent at every position. They cannot dominate decent teams. However, their OL is playing within itself, slowing the game down, controlling by design what they can control, and giving themselves a chance to compete in every game. If the opponent obliges with stupid tricks, the final score will be very lopsided. Minimizing mistakes and controlling the clock got Bill Snyder a statue. The odds are that Baylor will lose staff to other programs quick enough that an enduring "culture" likely won't take root, but for the game approaching in 2 weeks, Texas will face a team that executes a very simple game plan very well. Texas will put more talent on the field. If that talent likewise executes very well for the entire game, Texas will land a decisive win. I'll leave it to the individual reader to determine the chances of executing the game plan with minimal mistakes.
  2. Agreed. I suppose Ebner posts the highlights. Abram Smith is stronger and is the current focus. Baylor plays defense with their offense. They're not plodding, but football still comes down to running the ball. On defense, Baylor relies on the magic provided by two very talented LBs in Jalen Pitre and Terrel Bernard. Whenever Baylor is making stops and plays, it's almost exclusively because these two were involved. The DL is pedestrian at best. They have an LSU transfer DT in Siaka Ika who's decent, but can only stay on the field for 4 or 5 plays. Really, they're there to hold up blockers until Bernard or Pitre can make a play. I'd actually consider what would happen if an offense were to use their own "spy" and just tell a TE to find Bernard and block him no matter what else was happening. I'd be content playing 10 on 10 with Bernard limited. The longer a play takes to develop, the more likely it is these two LBs disrupt it. The Baylor secondary is propped up by these limitations because they won't factor on the back end otherwise. The Texas "skill" players can run by them, but only if the LBs are given something else to worry about. Texas likely won't get more than 8-10 possessions. Wasting them on speculative play actions just puts more pressure on the Texas defense to grow up. I need the Joshua Moore that catches passes to show up in Waco. More of the Bijan/Roschon/Kelian triad will ask the Baylor defense to find their own great players. Wasting possessions will make for a long day of watching the opponent's stretch offense spill 8 yard gains. Be violent and intentional with every snap.
  3. Baylor's offense has one big move. They run outside stretch zone like we used to do in the Victor Ike days. It's a really simple scheme where the OL sort of trots out wide-side and tries to widen out the defensive front until the RB finds a gap and cuts upfield. They have a very disciplined back fast enough to exploit creases in Tristan Ebner. He doesn't break tackles, but likes his open space. Other parts are based off that scheme dulling the defense. Instead of trotting wide-side, the QB can hold the ball, wait for the OL to get moving left, then work right with his RB. Conversely, passing occurs when the defense goes on auto-pilot. The primary target is Tyquan Thornton. He is a legit threat and understands how to get behind defenses. Bohannen is good enough to throw to an open receiver. He picks his spots. I feel like I've witnessed PK's tendencies to avoid getting burned by the pass by allowing run after run after run to gash the defense - all the while waiting for the surprise pass that never comes. This isn't the game to do that. Bohannen won't be able to break a defense with his passing acumen. Keep the safeties down, play shallow zones, compress the run game, and dare the QB to dazzle. Texas knows what it doesn't do well on defense. There's two weeks for the coaching staff to prepare for a predictable opponent that wants to go right at Texas' problem areas of assignment football and tackling. We'll need to improve as a program and not just scheme away from deficiencies. We're better than Baylor at every position, but aren't playing like it. This isn't a "we should win" game. If the same Texas team returns after two weeks, we're seeing about a 34-28 loss. If the first Texas defender starts arresting the ball carrier, this is a 45-17 statement.
  4. If you're going to pull a guard to get out in front of an RB, it isn't going to be Tope Imade. Even by OL standards, Imade is a wide land mammal. He'll improve the pass blocking if by nothing else making the defenders take time to run around him. Glad he's finally getting his chance. Need to see him make the most of it.
  5. Standing behind a double-bass somewhere between Heaven and Hell... T-E-X-A-S!!!
  6. OU's defensive priority is pressure from the edges. Texas's OL does their best, but pass protection on the edge isn't their calling card currently. I mention this because while analyzing the TCU game, Sark mentioned that Casey could step up into the pocket more. OU's run stopping DTs aren't their strong suit. Washing them out and stepping into the pocket would open up the QB run lane if the defense overloaded to cover the receivers and Bijan as the escape valve. Casey's long run in the TCU game demonstrates he's got wiggle and speed. This offense has too many weapons to deliberately call the QB's number, but if the defense uses all their players elsewhere (or the Tackles fail to contain OU's very talented Ends), then stealing the yards up front would keep drives alive.
  7. Team: "They know our play!" VY: "So?"
  8. When Zach Evans gashed us for two runs, then TCU promptly fumbled a pointlessly intricate double reverse, I thought, "That's the most Tom Herman thing I can think of!".
  9. Unless you're credentialed in it, I guarantee that no one understands labor law in the United States and agency law. It's really frickin' complicated. Count me as one of the ones who aren't credentialed. However, the Supreme Court in their arguments that lead to NIL, were stark in their assessment that the NCAA could not define amateurism in the way they've historically done so. The justices outright stated that the NCAA was an illegal cartel. In this, the direction could not be more clear to the NLRB that student athletes would meet the definition of "employee" if considered without historical interference by the NCAA. After this, labor and agency law take over, and I'm completely clueless on that. I'm not arguing this is good. I'm stating that the SCOTUS requires it.
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  14. You knew he wasn't going to break the record by gaining 4 yards on 2nd and 8.
  15. From an office on the side of Hwy 84, getting up one more time than I've been knocked down... TEXAS!
  16. 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.
  17. 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.
  18. 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.
  19. 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.
  20. 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.
  21. So I die on Wednesday instead of Thursday! Who gives a shit?
  22. 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".
  23. 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.
  24. 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.
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