What almost was...

Yes, that's Colt down there in Solomon Gundy's wake.  This was a game that everyone thought we'd have to give away to lose, and we nearly did, though not by the mechanism in which we were worried about, exactly.  I'm sorry, Mack, but you don't get to say you told us so, because if you had really thought that OSU was going to be one of the best teams we'd face all year, then we would have come into the game with something approaching the creativity and preparation that we saw for OU.  Instead, our game plan was to completely abandon the run game and put as much pressure on Colt as possible in a scheme with two big weeks of film out on it.  If we had a mortal at QB, we'd have scored about ten points in this game while OSU named their score against our ragged-tired defense that had to play 40 minutes of possession.  Look again at PB's third down chart, and then take a look at the play-by-play.  Notice a trend?  Colt McCoy (and Jordan Shipley) dragged our butts through this game.  It's decision time for Davis:  Gamble that Colt continues to out-perform almost every quarterback in history for the remainder of the season, or figure out a way to get him some help.

The rest is after the jump...

The crowd was restless.  The students were horribly late to arrive, and this was the first game that I've ever heard the west side of the stadium yelling "FIGHT!" before I heard anyone yelling "TEXAS!" on my side.  Until the fourth quarter, I heard little besides violent swearing directed at our defense.  The thing is, they may have had a point.  The biggest groans were caused when OSU was bouncing through our arm tackles in threes and fours.  Behind the offensive game-plan, that's the second biggest indicator that we didn't have an A game.

The fourth quarter brought a better attitude, though.  Just before the quarter started, the defense was walking back onto the field for the rest of OSU's field goal drive (right after the INT), and Eddie Jones and some others started riling up the crowd.  For whatever reason, this time it worked.  The crowd started roaring, and two plays later Kindle sacked Robinson on third down to force the field goal.  Later, right before Houston dropped Dez Bryant behind the line on fourth down, I could feel the stadium shaking from the noise. 

Mental timeout:  As I type this, some guys are sitting next to me saying that our schedule is easy from here on out.  One of them asked what about Tech, and another replied by twirling his finger in the air, whoopty-doo, style.  What the hell is wrong with you people?

One problem that I've noticed at the games lately is that the cheerleaders seem to be busy doing nothing while my section tries to start Texas Fight.  We'll go through Texas alone for about fifteen iterations before they even reach for their signs, and by the time they try and help out, it's already died off, and then they give up, too.  Whatever, I hope we don't find ourselves in a dogfight at home for the rest of the season anyway, but if we do, it would be nice to get the crowd involved.

There will be no lazy crowd Saturday night in Lubbock for Mack to blame for his team overlooking the Raiders, so you can bet that he'll make an attempt to have them ready.  Even now the Techsters are bottling their rage for game night.  The crime rate there will drop by 30-40% over this week as the populace discovers that they have something to talk about for once.  They'll blame the Longhorns for everything from falling through a parched crack in the ground on their way across a field to their yellow yards blowing away as they sit in their lawn furniture and inhale a few Natties.  Hatred and boredom are their distinct advantages, and they're something we'll have to overcome as we've done in our past two trips to the desert.  For my part, I'm going to spread this rumor in an effort to even the playing field of hate:  Does anyone know what happened to Colt's girlfriend that went to Tech?  I heard Graham Harrell stole her.

Yeah, I bet that's true...