I wanted to write a long fanpost about the offense but I just want to enjoy my favorite week of the college football season! The lead up to the Red River Shootout!

I don’t know what is wrong with our O-Line. They are not playing well at all. Colt McCoy didn’t look great. I’m tired of throws between 3-5 yds. Do we always want 3rd and short? How about getting the first down on 2nd down?

Anyways, this is about explosive plays and we lacked all but one on offense. Urban Meyer (stolen from ESPN mag) said that there’s a 20% the offense will score on a drive when there are 0 plays above 15 yards. The number jumps to 50% when there is at least one play on the drive above 15 yards. And the number jumps to 80% when there are 2 or more. The only long play I can remember is the TD pass to Shipley. It’s not like we have slow WRs, why are we not taking more shots down the field? I wish I could jump really deep into the analysis, but we should be a team that takes what the defense gives us. They held our offense in check ALL GAME. Oh well, a win is a W.

im stunned that our playcalling was so wack! we started the game with 5wide and never once utilized the i-form or motion playaction passes, someone needs to send greg davis the playbook that texas uses on ncaa football 10 video game…at least we wouldnt be so freakin predictable!

I’m pretty sure this is the first response I have ever heard criticizing us for not going deep all the time…. ok, obviously I’m being really facetious, and the truth is that even when we had a superior receiving corps to this one (sweed, pittman, nate jones, and sometimes shipley) we didn’t strike deep because of the G. Davis offensive philosophy (which, I sometimes hate, but has proven to pretty much be a winner).

We run a “2 man” offense or a “stick” offense which is designed to create an open man based on the coverage decisions of only one or two defenders, giving Colt McCoy the ability to make a quick read, and get the ball to the open man with a high-percentage throw. CU played us deep (you heard them keep saying that one of their goals was to remove the explosive plays), so there were better options down low. Honestly, usually this works out pretty well because we have the athletes to make big plays, but our guys just weren’t picking up the YAC that they usually do.
The real issues were
1: we turned over the ball down by our own goal line and had really crappy punts, giving them ridiculous field position.
2: and perhaps more importantly, OUR RUNNING GAME IS NONEXISTENT. This cannot be explained as we have the talent at every position to make this work (worse teams do more with less… see Toledo, who went off for 305 rushing yds vs. CU), but we manage to flop. What makes it worse, is that they were jamming up our running game while dropping 7 into coverage… not good.

Hate week begins. F*ck OU.

1) The running game. Sweet Jesus, can GD use some common sense? CU was playing in nickel the whole game (4 linemen, 2 linebackers). When we ran out of our standard 4 wide set, we had 5 O-linemen blocking six in the box. Six is more than five. And when we ran with an EBS in (hello Greg Smith!) it is so obvious that we are going to run the ball that there is really no chance of it succeeding. Match that with poor zone blocking by the offensive linemen, and you have a nonexistant running game.

2) We really need to go downfield more. I know that this has been said to death, but I just can’t stand watching defenses leave so many guys underneath because they know that we rarely (maybe once or twice a game) make passes that go more than 10 yards downfield. That is the reason that our short game is no longer working, because we are no longer using the short game to set up the deep pass, we are just moving the ball completely with the short game. Colt can still hit receivers, but there is never any room at all for YAC.

Stunned at the amount of touches McGee continued to get, including going out of the way to include him in the passing game

totally ineffective, predictable, etc. etc.

sounds bad but I secretly hope whatever injury Vondrell suffered lasts at least 7 days…get out of the way and let someone else get their chance

…the Horns intentionally kept the game close so that the crowd would be more into it and Hicks would enjoy the atmosphere more! : ) Ha ha….Seriously, my little bro came with me to his first Horns game, and I told him one of the good things about the game being competitive early was that the crowd would be into it more, and no one would be leaving early. Sad, but true….