Wednesday Scrimmage Report, Part 2

by Peter Bean on Aug 23, 2007 10:48 PM CDT in Football Comment 4 comments

We continue with part two of Chip Brown's Wednesday scrimmage notes.

Brown still has not yet named a punter between sophomore Trevor Gerland and junior walk-on Justin Moore.

We've sort of come to take special teams for granted during Mack Brown's tenure, which is one reason why we don't talk about it as much as we could. As far as punting, Greg Johnson was middle of the pack last season, averaging just under 41 yards per punt. Gerland, who doubles as a track star for Texas, was the presumptive starter heading into camps, but Moore is making a battle of things. Though Gerland has the more explosive leg, he also hits more duds.

Brown continues to say freshmen WRs Brandon Collins, James Kirkendoll and Malcolm Williams will all play this season. He said redshirt freshman Phillip Payne has had a sore leg that has set him back. He said redshirt freshman Montre Webber has done well. What Brown didn't say is that Webber has obviously not done as well as the true freshmen.

They'll all play? This year? Really? And Gatewood is moving to receiver? What the hell is going on here? Either the injuries to Pittman, Shipley, and Cosby are serious or Texas is going to rotate - what - nine, ten receivers on the field?

This doesn't add up.

Brown still sounds torn about what he wants to be on offense this season. But he says Jamaal Charles has had a phenomenal camp.

"Jamaal has really done well. He deserves to have a great year. He’s done everything right," Brown said. "And Chris (Ogbannaya) and Vondrell (McGee) are competing every snap for the backup job.

"We’ve got to decide. We’ve talked about do you throw to set up the run with Colt's accuracy. And part of that might depend on how many of those receivers are full speed. But we feel like we can run the ball. We’ve gone back and looked at every snap since we’ve been here to see the years that we’ve run and why did well or didn’t do well and some of the passes.

"It’s more important to score points than it is to run the ball. I’m personally a guy who likes to run the ball and be physical and finish games and run on short-yardage and goal-line. But scoring points is more important, and we averaged 36 points a game last year. And maybe never less than 34. The other part that may sound foolish is scoring defense. Last year, we gave up more points than we have in some years and had the third-best run defense. So we have to be smart. We’ve got to look at what’s effective, but not back away from running the ball."

This is the big one. Two weeks ago, I noted that I was encouraged about Mack Brown asking the right questions about improvement in rushing. And on Tuesday, I talked a bit about Mack Brown's preference to be a power running team. And now, we get this quote, which is the third public statement from Brown suggesting he wants to be a pass-first team that guns it with Colt.

I can sympathize, to some degree, with Mack's preference to run a pound 'em into submission football team. That was The Way of football for decades and decades. And that was Darrell Royal's way. Royal used to say, "There are three things that can happen when you pass the ball and two of them are bad." (Royal attributed the quote to Woody Hayes, but he was clearly fond of it.)

Frankly, if you can win the game pounding it away and out-muscling your opponent in the trenches, you probably should. The issue, then, is not that Mack's preference is inherently flawed. The issue is that Texas probably can't win all its games playing that kind of football. Moreover, Texas seems ideally geared to a spread-'em-out, pass first, run-off-the-pass attack.

All told, I'm rather encouraged by what we're hearing from Brown. He knows Texas must improve its performance rushing the football this season, but he's talking publicly about how badly he wants to throw the ball constantly with McCoy. Maybe it's the optimist in me, but I think he understands what needs to be done.

We'll start to find out in just eight days.

--PB--

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receivers

All these receivers supposedly getting playing time is confusing me, too. Is it possible that Brown is thinking about the future? That he wants the young guys to play in order to prepare for a time without Sweed, Pittman, Jones, and Cosby? Otherwise, like you said, I don't know why we're using all these players, and I'm trying to believe right now that the injuries aren't serious.

by hornbone on Aug 24, 2007 9:16 AM CDT reply actions 0 recs

special teams

Is anyone else a little frightened with our kicking and punting teams this year? Obviously Bailey will continue to due well for field goals, but I've heard we're weak in every other regard. This latest news doesn't sound like we have two great punters to choose between but more like we must make a choice between two sub-par players (see OU QB situtation this year)

I'd love to hear some more on this to atleast assuage my fears.

by sharkbait101 on Aug 24, 2007 10:16 AM CDT reply actions 0 recs

Let's do the math

Let's say MB is intent on a spread offense with 3-4 wide receivers on every play. The goal is make the defense stay in a 4-2-5 defense (4 L, 2 LB, 5 DB) with two safeties deep, so you have one blocker for every defender in "the box" and you have lots of potential gaps in which to run. If you want the safeties to stay back you need to run 1 or 2 receivers deep (> 30 yards) on almost every play. That's 60-70 plays per game of sprinting 30 or more yards. To do that you need to rotate 6-8 receivers so the receivers are always fresher and faster than the defensive backs, especially in the fourth quarter. Right now we have Cosby and Jones healthy and likely Sweed by the Arkansas State game. That leaves the team 3-5 receivers short, which would have to be the freshmen. Even if Shipley and Pittman heal up quickly, we're still 1-3 receivers short. If the freshman play even 10-15 snaps each game, that might be the difference that allows some long passes or a fourth quarter comeback.
Besides, the freshmen might just be athletically just as good as our top 6, based on comments from MB-TF, and allow UT to run more types of pass patterns than we can now.

by burnt in ny on Aug 24, 2007 10:33 AM CDT reply actions 0 recs

Also,

with the Sweed, Pittman and Shipley injuries, Quan Cosby becomes much more important to the offense. Consequently, it's an additional injury risk to get him out there on punt/kick returns. Combine that with the loss of Aaron Ross, and we have some holes in our return game that Kirkendoll and co. could capably fill.

As for Gatewood, me thinks Mack is just throwing the senior a bone. He obviously didn't beat out Kelson/Jackson/Griffin at the starting safety spots. He's still a good ST player, and that's where I'm envisoning him most of the games.

by jc25 on Aug 24, 2007 11:26 AM CDT reply actions 0 recs