Fumbles

Uh huh. What are his NIL requirements? What kind of guarantees does he want? Is he actually willing to earn his starting spot or does he expect it to be handed to him? How does he handle it if Matthew Golden, Johntay Cook, or Ryan Wingo get more targets than him? If you want to dedicate the NIL money necessary to pull him here despite those risks for the potential of 800 yards next year, I’m really glad you’re not in the position to make that decision.

Stewart hasn’t been productive enough to justify the character risk. Keep the powder dry and aim higher.

Not shedding a tear over the Hampton flip. Our recruitment of him never made sense to me. His primary recruiter was Gideon and everything I saw and read indicated we were recruiting him as a defensive back. His film does not show much to be excited about as a defensive back. He always made more sense to me as a WR take. But he made the most sense to me as a head-case to be avoided.

I assumed we were talking about future rosters when these players will be hitting the field, 2026-2027. Obviously, Worthy and Blue are insanely fast players. Bijan also jukes people out of their socks and avoids taking a bunch of direct hits. Jerrick Gibson runs right at dudes and takes a lot of contact with his running style. I'd prefer if he had more of a Tahj Boyd build with that style.

I'm just going by the tape on Gibson and to my eye he looks smaller than most of the guys on the field. Now, that's junior tape, he may have gotten bigger since then. He's listed as 5'10" and 200 pounds on 247sports, which seems about right for what I see on the tape. On3 has Gibson listed at 5'9.5", 215 pounds, which may be a more accurate measurement for where he is now. Regardless, I didn't mean to call the dude Deuce Vaughn or Darren Sproles, I just meant his size makes me worry about him toting the rock 25-30 times a game with his violent running style over the course of a season. I think he's going to be a really good player and I agree, I think he does work on inside zone. You think Livingstone is a 4.4 guy? I dunno man. He's roasting the dudes on his film, but they don't look like D1 athletes. But I do like his catch radius, he has quite a few circus catches in his junior film, along with that crazy one along the sideline at 00:26 in his senior tape. If he can give us that 2-3 times a game, then yeah, I don't care how fast he is or how well he runs routes. I think Baker and Cruz are both better than anyone we've recruited on the offensive line other than Kelvin Banks in the last 20 years. It would surprise me if both aren't in the two-deep next year. Agree on burners. Harlem Berry and Ryan Williams, come on down.

Well, the offensive class of 2024 looks pretty settled and I've got nothing to do at work until the new year, so it's time to binge some prospect tape. Here are my thoughts on the offensive prospects in the 2024 class along with their latest film, spoilered for people who hate long posts discussing recruiting in their recruiting threads:

For the first question, I think it comes down to two factors: 1. Sark has had a half to get an idea of how the defense is working agains the Longhorns and he makes good adjustments to whatever he’s seeing out there. 2 - Quinn has matured since last season and no longer spirals after he makes mistakes. You put those two factors together, you get a better second half QB rating. For the second question, an “audible” is an outdated concept. In modern football, coaches try to directly control everything as much as possible. Consequently, most coaches run a sort of “check with me” process pre-snap where you line up, look at the defense’s alignment, then check with the sideline about what play to run. So the coach is effectively “calling audibles” by calling a play based on how the defense is aligned. Also, most passing plays have some measure of flexibility built in based on how the defense plays. If zone, I break off the route and turn around in the soft spot. If man, I go deep post. No matter what the defense does, the QB and WR should be on the same page about how to handle it without needing to change the play pre-snap.

The stats say Washington is 51st in the nation in yards per carry, and that’s with opposing defenses keeping safeties back to deal with Penix and pals. That’s just not impressive, I don’t care what you’ve seen.

Overshown didn’t play, which meant there was a smoking crater at linebacker next to Ford. We also had a rotation of freshmen + Ovie Oghoufu at one edge position. As I recall, we rotated heavily throughout the game on defense because Sark wanted tape on all the developmental players. Here’s a link to the game highlights: Their longest run of the day comes at about 2:45. They get a huge combo block on sophomore Vernon Broughton, David Gbenda takes false steps to the outside and ends up outside of his lane, and Ford can’t cover the hole from his position on the backside. Ryan Watts is manned up playside on Odunze, realizes very late that it’s a run, and tries to make an off-balance tackle but can’t bring his weight to hit and gets stiff-armed. In short, it’s a player failure. Broughton couldn’t anchor, Gbenda let his eyes take him out of the play, and Watts was so focused on Odunze he was slow to react to the run call. Take out that 42 yard run and we held them to 116 yards on 27 carries for about 4.2 YPC. Still a decent YPC, but we were clearly selling out to stop the pass. We have considerably improved our personnel and I think we will do much better against their rushing attack even without safety help.

I appreciate Catalon’s aggression in filling a lane, but he’s missed as many of those killshots as he’s hit this year. The coaches don’t trust him in deep coverage, whenever he’s in he plays flat-footed within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage. And even in that short coverage area, it’s not like he’s been Earl Thomas, I don’t think he’s even sniffed a pick this year. He’s just not the same player that won freshman AA honors at Arkansas. If we could deploy him for 10-20 snaps a game in critical situations to give the defense a tangible boost, sure, but that’s not the effect he’s having. His reps should go to a player who can develop into a solution at safety, rather than a limited band-aid.

This. There’s the potential for addition by subtraction with Crawford graduating, and we need to clean out some dregs. BJ Allen couldn’t get snaps against Crawford and Taaffe, and has already been recruited over with Derek Williams. Portal time for him. And honestly, I hope Catalon moves on. If his body can’t hold up for more than 10-20 snaps per game, his reps should go toward developing a successor.

Win the Big 12 and this is a great season regardless of what comes after. It’d be cool to sneak into the playoffs, it’d be cool to dismantle some hapless opponent in the Sugar Bowl, but if we don’t make the playoffs or we lose the bow game, whatever.

Alan Bowman is the worst QB we’ll have seen this year. He has an abysmally low QB rating (119.54, worst in the Big 12 among starting QBs), he’s thrown more interceptions than touchdowns on the season, and the OSU wide receivers are trash (Pressley, their top WR, averages less than 10 yards a catch). Roll out the Texas Tech defensive game plan and I have no idea how Okie State scores. If they hand it off to Ollie Gordon 30 times, he’ll end up with 107 yards and we’ll beat them by 21. If Alan Bowman throws it 50 times, we get 4 picks and beat them by whatever number Sark wants. 42-7, Texas. 340 total rushing yards.

You want to engage with the actual data I presented or just continue being an ignorant cunt?

I don’t care about the subjective stuff, you believe whatever you want, but the idea that Quinn hasn’t improved since last year is ridiculous. Completion percentage up 14%, yards per attempt up by a yard and a half, more touchdowns, less interceptions, and he’s 8-1 as a starter this year. You are objectively wrong here. Also, regarding your crying about how you’re treated by the board: Everyone has a right to their opinions. The problem is, some of the things you’re talking about are not opinions. They are verifiable facts and you’re acting like your subjective opinion trumps objective data. Spoiler: You are wrong. And people are going to dumpster you when you are wrong, especially when you double and triple down.