Dante Moore is on the right track. He had to play immediately which is always tough, and did so on a medicore UCLA team, but he seems to be off and running at Oregon. Need to see him play higher level competiton of course.
The rest of them, I mean, woof.
Generally I agree and I don't think the offense is ever going to be a plus this year. But the QB play has been so bad that if a personnel switch gets you replacement level play there, the offense can at least not be an outright liability. That would materially change the outlook.
We don't have a servicable starter either. This isn't last year where we were getting B-grade QB play from a third year starter and the fans thought the backup who had functionally no college experience could come in and be an A down the stretch playing for championships. We're getting an F right now.
There is absolutely no way Caldwell, Owens, or Lacey would be this bad. I'd keep Lacey out because I wouldn't be interested in throwing a true freshman to the wolves but Caldwell is an experienced FBS QB and Owens is in his second year in the system. One of them can definitely hit the easy, schemed open underneath/intermediate throws and execute at replacement level in the RPO game. Pair that with this defense and we can at least grind out a 9-3 type year that, while obviously a step back from the past couple years, isn't a setback.
Right now we're spiraling into the kind of 6-6/7-5, black saturday at the Cotton Bowl kind of territory that cedes some of the ground the program gained over the past few years. There is no downside.
Last year actually resolidified my belief that Texas will never get to the mountaintop under Sark unless it's just 1.) An unbelieavbe amount of talent stacked on one team that can overcome coaching flaws; and/or 2.) A ridiculous, lightning in a bottle individual playoff run from the QB position ala Joe Flacco's Super Bowl run. He's been a great program builder but he continues to be mediocre as a pure football coach and I don't think he's likely to rip off 3-4 in a row against comparable talent.
What would that even look like? Today was sub 50% completion and sub 5 ypa. You regress from today and you're talking about losing to SHSU.
You have to consider giving Caldwell a look. I don't holdany illusions about having a plus QB sitting on the bench but this team doesn't necessarialy need that. This team can compete if the QB can hit the easy stuff. Arch can't. He looks like you dropped a HS QB out there.
After Arch once again cannot execute the opening script against SJSU, Caldwell has to get some game run. And if he plays competently he should get the nod going into SEC play. Arch can play again after Georgia ends any ideas of SEC title contention.
If Cole Hutson has a million haters, I am one of them.
If Cole Hutson has only one hater, it is me.
If Cole Hutson has no haters, I have left this world.
I don't think we can even compete with the most obnoxiously whiney fanbases on the whole, just don't have the depth, but I'll be goddamned if I wouldn't but our best up against anyone. Bravo.
Don't disagree about Michigan but a lot of the same criticisms/issues they have can be levied against the Texas offense too. To the extent there's concern, I think it's that the Texas offense could be overmatched, make some bad mistakes, and set OU up for easy, cheap points.
I'm not really buying that this OU offense threatens the Texas defense too much though. Texas has the horses to spy Matteer and defend the conventional run game with a light box. Points are going to be hard to come by for them too and they're just as liable to gift Texas points.
I'm increasingly expecting a complete rock fight in Dallas.
SJSU is bad and Texas will thoroughly dominate.
Predicting the score and stat lines in games like these is always tricky because 1.) They are going to get lots of young guys run, especially on defense, and 2.) Sark often calls games he knows he's going to win like they're practice scrimmages, focusing on specific things he wants to work on or prove a point about. We've seen him do this in conference games and I expect he's going to have a pass heavy game plan to maximize the live reps for Arch. That could inflate the score line or it could lead to offensive stalls.
Texas: 55 (Sark kicks a couple FGs - kicker needs reps too)
SJSU: 0
Texas rushing yards: 196 - fewer than you'd maybe expect because of said focus on pass game reps.
I do expect the Texas offense to struggle vs OU, to be frank. Venables generally does a good job with his defensive game plan vs Sark. But the second part is just dumb. The Texas pass defense was awful in 2023. Horrible in the secondary and a mediocre pass rush, and only that good because of two freaks on the interior. OU used the same game plan Texas used on Michigan, get Murphy and Sweat moving laterally and at tempo to neutralize them. Then they let their NFL QB go to work. That OU offense would be handled by the 2024 or 2025 Texas defense and the OU offense we'll see this year will not be as good at any level. First offense to 21 likely wins the RRS.
I do agree that the box score is a bit misleading but Texas would not have produced like that on the ground against even the exact same game plan last year. Arch was not constantly running for his life. In the context of it being the unit's first start, Goosby's injury, Stroh's first meaningful action, and Baker's first game as a starter, the unit exceeded my expectations, though I admit they were low.
Oh please. Sark almost punked a better OU team in 2021 and has delivered two beatdowns. I do hold a lot of the 2023 loss on him for late game coaching decisions but the team wasn't overwhelmed and came back from deficits at multiple points. 2025 OU is going to struggle to score on Texas. It could be a rock fight, and the game can go either way on one play in that scenario, but I'm not concerned about this defense getting flattened by anybody, certainly not OU.
I think he was slow to process, late to arrive at most of his decisions, and often rushed/sloppy in getting the ball out. Whether that was to compensate for being late, feeling pressure, pressing, all of the above... Only Arch knows that.
Though there are some suboptimal decisions, I see very few straight up bad decisions (the incomplete deep ball into double coverage stands out) which I guess is a silver lining. If he makes most of these throws a half second to second earlier and is composed enough to stand in and deliver a playable throw, he has a big day.
Big "if's" obviously and a long way to go for that to be a reality against top tier defenses, but that stuff tends to come with time. I think the reality is that Arch is just not as far along as even the more measured among us expected.