but your point isn't that crazy.  No matter what Gary Patterson says, his players have heard all the talk about how Texas struggled mightily against Arkansas State.  It's human nature to let that sink in a little bit.  In a game of inches every little psychological edge matters, and I think after the past weekend it's on our side, at least at opening kickoff.  Colt and the boys have to feel like they have something to prove, while TCU's "giant killer" attitude had to be subdued a bit after Texas looked not so giant last weekend.  We'll see on Saturday.

Kahuna, I absolutely LOVE that optimism, but too much can lead to further delusion of an already overly deluded UT fanbase.  We don't need to stoke the fires of Mack as a master of the psychological feint.

I agree that this new/extra game was used at least partially as a tune up for UT much like an NFL team does.  The fact that we didn't get more frosh and 2nd teamers in was evidence of something that went terribly wrong though.  

I commented earlier that I 'felt' like we were running a base defense for much of the first half, and that could have been entirely to see how much the DB's could handle AND to not give away any of our newly adopted 'Desert Swarm' blitz packages, but in the end we gave up almost 400 yards of total offense, including an insane amout of passing yards to a self professed running team.  They were in our red zone 5 or 6 times and only from shooting themselves in the foot (literally seeing as their kicker missed two or three makable FG's) did we escape the way of Michigan.

On offense, I think we saw the difference in different OL sets at times.  Some were very effective and others were not so...Colt's missed passes were largely unforced errors and a few times Charles could have had better field vision in following good blocks from the big uglies up front.  Those sort of things are VERY fixable and I look for the offense to bounce back big.

To close and respect the optimism that you boldly put fourth here I will say that most of the blatant problems we saw on Saturday are fixable.  Whether the coaches are able to 'Get'er done!' is the big question.  If the offense can put together sustained drives and give the D a chance to gel and make some plays we will prevail and build alot on a big Win against a ranked opponent.  I fully expect that, and so will take my take a few of those same Happy Pills and hope a leader rises up in burnt orange country to spark the kind of convincing win we deserve to have.

I think it is a valid argument that the team, both offense and defense were "vanilla" on Saturday.  Let's get real about one thing--did anybody who watched that game really feel that Texas was in any danger of a Michigan-App State--I was there and I sure didn't.  I saw lots of things that concern me but until the end of the 1st or 2nd quarter against TCU, it is just too early to be getting down on our team or drawing any worth-while conclusions. There are, however, 2 exceptions.  It has been said so many times that it is getting old but we all know that Foster and Palmer were exposed for what they really are on Saturday--I'd like to believe that was evident to the coaches as well.  Second, we need to work on the "inside the 5" running game.  I know this sounds overly simplistic but in my humble opinion, it's just too early for most judgments.  If Colt has even an low-average game against ASU the score is MUCH different.  I don't know about ya'll, but I know Colt will be back and in a NASTY way on Saturday.  We'll just have to hope that EARLY in the game we see some of the young DBs in the game and WHEN (not if) we're inside the 5, we see "Ogbonnaya" or "Lokey" on the back of one of the jerseys in the backfield.  Mack Brown, MAKE IT SO!!!  

Are we going to win? We better beat TCU.