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Remembering What Mack Did Well

MaybeACoordinator

By MaybeACoordinator
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MaybeACoordinator

MaybeACoordinator 8350

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Inherited a pretty stacked roster from Mackovic, but also hit the ground running with recruiting and didn't let up for the better part of a decade -- solid evals, relatively few outright busts, players coached up pretty well. Persuaded Ricky to stay that one final year. Persuaded a shit-ton of players to stay until their eligibility was exhausted, somehow, which is probably not possible these days. After early disasters (NC State game), made special teams a strength most years. Before he got here, we hadn't had kick returns for TDs in a really long time, and he brought some of those, but also lots of blocked punts and successful fakes. We haven't had much of that since he left. 

And of course the obvious: recruited VY and Colt. It took too long, but he and GDGD were eventually able to set aside their egos and let Vince be Vince. 

And he kept the olds among the boosters happy with his aw shucks ingratiating personality....

What else? What else does a Texas coach need to know about how to succeed in Austin? 

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ImissWallyPryor

ImissWallyPryor 9046

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One of these days, I’m going to spend a day analyzing the 4th quarter of every game in the FUPM years... okay, not the blowout losses to OU, but every other game.

I know I will find that Mack had an unmatched record of winning games on Texas’ last possession, be it the final minutes or final seconds. Tech 08 is one of the very few losses, and it would have been yet another late win if Colt could manage the clock, Gideon could catch or if Earl Thomas didn’t decide to become a spectator  

i don’t even have to look at other coaches to know that he has the best record of last chance victories of any coach in his era.

I am repeating myself, but it’s true. Every one of you knew we would win if we trailed by less than a touchdown, had the ball and a minute on the clock. 

Edited by ImissWallyPryor
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MaybeACoordinator

MaybeACoordinator 8350

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3 minutes ago, PRONG HORN said:

 

qi_YTi.gif

He was good at clapping, but I kind of think it worked in games like OSU 2005 to retain the appearance of calm on the sideline. Of course it looked like shit when blowU was beating us 91-3 in the second quarter, but...whattayagonnado, as the gangsters say. 

 

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MaybeACoordinator

MaybeACoordinator 8350

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11 minutes ago, Tex Pete said:

Unless you consider Kansas State to be like Maryland. 

 

Fuck y’all for wishing to go back to 9-win purgatory. Teams don’t set winning 9 games as a goal. Mack quit recruiting in 2005. He quit coaching at the end of 2009. He fucked us good. 

Just trying to give our current coach and all those going forward a road map. We need one. Our cellphone has no service and one of the kids blew chunks on the old Rand McNally in the glovebox and we are driving around in circles now somewhere between Pecos and Iraan. 

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Mole

Mole 4345

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Hungry Mack understood that the easiest way to win is with an overwhelming talent advantage.  VY and Jamaal behind an NFL offensive line makes any playcall the touchdown play. He changed the recruiting game. We talk about recent classes as being highly rated but VY's class lapped the field. The difference between the #1 & #2 rated classes that year was like the difference between #2 & #10. We tend to assume that Texas will recruit itself, but it takes some special mojo achieve those early 2000s classes.

The things that were so annoying at the end - the misplaced loyalty and awkward positivity - probably contributed to his close game success. Feeling supported and trusted can be empowering. It also helps having great and clutch players.

He was a kicker whisperer. Sure  we had some great ones but we never seemed to have bad ones and they always made the big kick. I think the "family atmosphere" kept everyone loose in tense situations. I'm not sure why things were so different against OU.

Speaking of family atmosphere, we take for granted that VY would have been VY anywhere. Despite having  on the field success in the NFL, he didn't adapt to NFL life under the hard nosed 7-9 Fisher. VY thrived under a loving, supporting  father figure, but struggled under a more antagonistic approach. Under a coach like Nick Saban, I'm not sure if VY doesn't flame out. Mack was actually the perfect fit for VY.

While he underachieved for the insane talent he brought in, he had the best team in the country 3 times in 5 years, had a few other almost great teams, and was always in the hunt. 

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SpiralOut

SpiralOut 1965

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Mack was great at winning games we were supposed to win.  College football is full of gimmie games if you're a top tier program.  We rarely dropped those games until post '09.  He couldn't figure out how to get the team ready for OU every year, but outside of that he was great at smashing the ants and getting to 10 wins.

Somehow, these chuckleheads we've been hiring since him can't seem to even figure out how to do that.  You've got the best facilities in the state.  You've got the best recruits in the state.  You should be able to line up, not do anything fancy, and smash everyone not named OU on your schedule.  Instead we're somehow losing games to Kansas and Maryland because the players can't stop tripping over their own dicks and they seem to lack basic football skills like tackling, blocking, throwing the ball out of bounds, etc. 

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Hooky Hornstein

Hooky Hornstein 35

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When Mack arrived in 1998 he made insightful personnel changes like moving DD Lewis from FB to MLB and Leonard Davis from DT to LT.

And say what you will about Greg Davis (God know I did) when he was unfettered by Mack’s ocasional visions, he pretty much adapted his offense to fit the stregths of his personnel.

Mack’s undoing was his loyalty to people who did not bring the best level of value to the program.

Then of course becoming thinskinned and defensive didn’t help.

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Mossyhorn

Mossyhorn 143

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Mack's road record was excellent. Stormtroopers on the road, went 58-15 under Mack (no bowls, neutral sites, or Dallas included). 79.4%. The University of Texas may never again achieve this kind of road domination.

There's no going back, but give the man his due. Also, the last guy to beat Okie State, at any venue.  

 

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South Austin

South Austin 53325

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18 minutes ago, Mossyhorn said:

Mack's road record was excellent. Stormtroopers on the road, went 58-15 under Mack (no bowls, neutral sites, or Dallas included). 79.4%. The University of Texas may never again achieve this kind of road domination.

There's no going back, but give the man his due. Also, the last guy to beat Okie State, at any venue.  

 

Charlie beat Oklahoma State in Stillwater in 2014.

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Tex Pete

Tex Pete 21542

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2 hours ago, markstanco said:


 

 


In a coma during 08 and 09 I take it?

 

No. I recall exactly what was going on. Mack threw shit at the wall post-championship. He coasted, and it carried him that far.

Garrett Gilbert was a huge, program-killing mistake. And I’ve said multiple times over the years that I talked with some of his assistants in those years, and they couldn’t even get that fatass to watch film on guys they wanted to recruit. He was too lazy to even push buttons on his remote. 

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South Austin

South Austin 53325

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2 minutes ago, Wally Pryor said:

Recruited well, especially and, shockingly, in very timely fashion in Florida, in December 2013.  Right around December 10 to be specific. 

Brown was working so hard in doing so, give him credit, almost "killing himself" on the recruiting trail.  He was that hard at it. 

Ugh. 

 

1181077.jpg?fit=bounds&crop=620:320,offs

 

Yeah, I remember that one.  I can't recall the name of the running back, but I believe it was a highly--rated player with Texas having a very low chance of landing, and it was a situation that otherwise would not have brought Mack all the way to Florida, making his presence there all the more of a colossal "fuck you" move. 

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Liquor and Poker

Liquor and Poker 3659

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8 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

Inherited a pretty stacked roster from Mackovic, but also hit the ground running with recruiting and didn't let up for the better part of a decade

Persuaded Ricky to stay that one final year. Persuaded a shit-ton of players to stay until their eligibility was exhausted, somehow, which is probably not possible these days. 

And of course the obvious: recruited VY and Colt. 

And he kept the olds among the boosters happy with his aw shucks ingratiating personality....

His true talents in bold. Mack was a world-class salesman.  It was when he decided from time to time that he was a world-class talent evaluator, tactician, or playcaller that we got into trouble. 

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Wally Pryor

Wally Pryor 5413

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3 minutes ago, South Austin said:

Yeah, I remember that one.  I can't recall the name of the running back, but I believe it was a highly--rated player with Texas having a very low chance of landing, and it was a situation that otherwise would not have brought Mack all the way to Florida, making his presence there all the more of a colossal "fuck you" move. 

At that point given how committed Brown was, what "situations" would have taken him anywhere to (genuinely) recruit?   

Except, of course, ones that were conveniently 1000+ miles from Austin. 

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MaybeACoordinator

MaybeACoordinator 8350

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8 minutes ago, n64ra said:

Winning close games is the one I took for granted. Charlie and Tom make that look hard.

Much of that came down to solid kickers. We haven't had a great kicker since he left. Nick Rose has an NFL leg but an emo kid's mind and haircut, and he was the best we've had since Brown departed. 

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MaybeACoordinator

MaybeACoordinator 8350

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8 hours ago, David Dennison said:

Hell, I'd love to have his last four years after suffering through the last four.

10-5 in bowl games.

Now I'm sad because I wanted him gone, too.

You shouldn't be. As bad as things have been the last few years, they would have been even worse with him still here. On the old board, the recruiting junkies tracked the classes he was in the process of reeling in and they were absolute and total garbage. We'd have been lucky to win three or four per year with them. 

Just to cite one example: it was Strong who brought in Poona in his first few weeks as HC. Poona had probably never even crossed Mack's mind. 

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JBJ

JBJ 3830

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He recruited really really well (like this stellar 2018 haul would be ho-hum for the Mack years).

He won at football.

I think his downfall had nothing to do with complacency.  I think he failed to adjust his football culture for the millenials.  The word "entitled" got thrown around a lot back then, but I don't think at the time we realized it was a generational shift.

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