Longhorn fans were already excited about the 2009 season even before 2008; after an unexpected 2008 run that nearly got us the national title a year earlier than we dared to hope, expectations are incredibly high for this fall.  Add to the fact that there are supposed parallels between 2004 and 2008, it's pretty much national championship or bust this season, in many people's eyes.

And the parallels are many and fun to talk about.  Like 2004, we had a one-loss season, losing in a close game to a rival.  We have a great quarterback who is a Heisman frontrunner for next season.  We defeated a Big 10 school in clutch fashion at a BCS bowl.  Next season, the national championship will be played at the Rose Bowl.  A team that has already been crowned the best is coming back to try to repeat as champions and they are beloved by the media.  We have many starters returning.  We have an exciting new defensive coordinator (although in his second year now) that comes from Auburn.  Greg Davis seems to have figured out an offense to fit the skills of our quarterback.  And so on and so forth.  It seems the stars are aligned for the Longhorns to hold the crystal ball again.

However, I want to look more at the two teams themselves rather than the circumstances.  I want to see where 2004 had question marks and how they answered them en route to that legendary finish at the Rose Bowl, and I want to compare that to where our current team has question marks.  I also want to compare their strengths and the roadblocks along the way.  This is not going to be some super in-depth football analysis, which is probably beyond me anyway; I am just curious to see how each team compares both statistically and stylistically.

Small request:  Hopefully somebody less lazy than me can do a statistical analysis using The Boy's (from Rock M Nation) method, which would be way more interesting and useful than this :).

I'll start with the offenses. 

Quarterbacks:

This doesn't really tell us anything new.  Colt is the better passer, Vince is the better runner (duh).  I don't think Vince's numbers are bad except for his TD-Int ratio, which is roughly 1-1 while Colt has an outstanding 4-1 ratio.   Colt does better in every single category and by a large margin, although he did have the luxury of having better receivers. 

The biggest difference between these two situations is the maturity level of each QB.  Vince was still viewed as raw and as possessing a lot of unfulfilled potential at the end of 2004.  Colt, however, is now viewed as a very mature college QB who is not expected to do much more than he did (in fact, many people expect him to do slightly worse, numbers-wise).  The huge question mark for the Horns in 2004 revolved around Vince's arm and if he could improve his passing, while Colt has already seemed to answer his critics.  Vince sure answered his the following year; he upped his comp% to 65%, he improved his TD-Int ratio to better than 2-1, and he became the first and only player to pass for 3000 yards and rush for 1000. 

What does this mean?  On the one hand, we sure feel good that we have one of the best college players in the game quarterbacking our team.  On the other hand, we certainly cannot expect a jump that we saw from Vince from 2004 to 2005, since we, well, arguably just saw it this season for Colt from 2007 to 2008.  It depends on what you want, I guess; before 2005, we were uncertain with Vince's passing but excited with the possibilities, knowing that an other-worldly talent like him would be simply unstoppable if his passing game matured (which it did, and he was).  With Colt, we are very comfortable with him, but we also have a good idea of what he can and can't do.  That's not saying he can't improve; I'm sure he will, particularly in the downfield passing game, but we're not thinking, "If only Colt does this, he'll be an unstoppable freak of nature."

Nonetheless, we have to feel pretty darn good with this position; I'm not expecting Colt to have the numbers he did this season, since I hope a dip in his completion % means our downfield passing game has matured and I hope our RB's can take a load off his shoulders.  But we have one of the best college QB's hands down, and while the situations differ between 2004 and 2005, the strength of this position will similarly give us a great chance to win it all.  Although it would be nice if Colt did not have to be our leading rusher next season...

Runningbacks

This is a difficult comparison because, like we all know, we had no feature back this past season.  So it's pretty much four against Cedric Benson... and Benson still wins.  He gained nearly 500 yards more than all of them combined, took 25 more carries, averaged over a yard more per carry, and nearly scored as many touchdowns.  At the very least, we know Chris O. was a much better receiver than Benson ever was.  However, add Vince Young to the equation, and we can see that 2004 had a very potent rushing offense, as it would continue to be in 2005.

The obvious question mark from '04 to '05 was that Benson was one of the key departures from that 2004 team.  We lose only Ogbonnaya this season, and while his contributions were unique and much appreciated, it's not like his production as a runner is hard to replace.  In that regard, we do not have as big of a departure to deal with, but neither do we have a monster like Vince Young or gamebreakers like Ramonce Taylor returning.

Interestingly enough, 2005 solved the lack of a feature back problem with a similar runningback by committee, but it was far more successful than what we saw this past season.  While our rush offense was more spread out, it didn't miss much of a beat with Vince Young leading and Charles would have had over 1000 yards had he not hurt his ankle.

Despite us not losing anyone of the caliber of Cedric Benson, 2009's rushing attack if far more of a question mark than 2005's.  I think we will have to continue this committee approach, and it will be interesting to see if we can have more success.  Like 2005, we have a freshmen RB coming in that we are curious about, and we are hopeful Whaley can do what Charles did his freshman season.  If not, while I do not believe it is realistic to expect a rush offense anything like 2005's, I am cautiously optimistic that we will see significant improvement here.  I'm putting my money on McGee (sorry, not the mythical Fozzy creature) to earn most of the carries unless Whaley comes in and surprises everyone.

Of course, many people will point to the offensive line as the big reason why these rushing attacks are so different.  I'll look briefly at them.

Offensive Line

I won't say much here, but like 2004, we will be returning most of our offensive line.  Unlike that team, our offensive line is not as decorated.  We have a good pass-blocking line but our problems in the run game are well-documented.

I don't remember any major questions concerning our offensive line going into the 2005 season; our OL was always talked about as a great strength of our team.  This season, while we are comfortable with our O-line, we also have a lot of reservations.  In this regard, we unfortunately don't seem to be on the level of 2004, as Benson's superior numbers above obviously have to be partially credited to the offensive line.  BUT, we are returning everyone except Dockery, which hopefully counts for something.  We have some guys who haven't had the success we expected of them thus far, and hopefully we will see a big jump there.

Wide Receivers/TE

2004

2008

As the rushing stats are lopsided to favor 2004, so are the receiving stats.  Quan Cosby nearly outdoes the top 4 receivers in 2004 by himself, and his stats are basically matched by Shipley's.  It's similar to the RB situation in 2004 in that we lose a great player in Quan Cosby but nonetheless have less of a question mark than 2005 did in this area.  The '05 team lost only Tony Jeffery, but nobody knew who would step up.  We just lost Quan Cosby but we have Collins and Kirkendoll to go along with the obvious return of Jordan Shipley.

There is one similar situation, and that is Malcolm Williams and Limas Sweed.  Neither did a whole lot in their first season despite showing flashes of potential.  Both are big, tall receivers who can leap after the ball and beat defenders deep.  If Williams can progress as Sweed did, I'll be happy.  I know many people (strangely, to me) are very critical of Sweed, but when the guy was healthy, I don't think anyone can doubt he was a very dangerous deep threat that was very productive.  Williams progression can mean wonders for this offense and maybe even help out our run game as he stretches the field.

However, while this past year's team had far superior receiver production, we have to unfortunately take a look at the tight ends.  The 2004 team had both Thomas and Scaife, and while Scaife was to leave, Thomas came back and had a great year in 2005.  With the loss of Irby, we had atrocious TE play and we still have no idea who is going to step into that role since Irby is unlikely to come back until much later.  For a coordinator who loves to use his TE like Davis, this is a BIG difference between our team going into 2009 and 2004 going into 2005.

Conclusion

Let's break it down like this:

2004 to 2005 strengths:

Great O-line
Freak of nature QB
Good tight end
Big play threats (like Ramonce)

2008 to 2009 strengths

Strong pass blocking
Robo QB
Strong receiving corps.

2004 to 2005 question marks:

WR production:  Answered; Billy Pittman and Limas Sweed stepped up, and we even had Ramonce Taylor.
Vince Young's passing:  Answered; led the NCAA in passing efficiency up until the bowl season
Replacing Cedric Benson:  Answered; VY was VY, and Charles had a great freshman year and Taylor also contributed here

2008 to 2009 question marks:

RB production:  We have experienced backs and a talented freshmen coming in.  I'm hopeful.  Finding a 3rd down back to replace Chris O. will be tough, but I think that is less important than finding more consistent rushing production.
OL run-blocking:  Again, experienced guys coming back and an emphasis on the run game in the spring.  Hopeful again.
TE:  Uh... troubled.  We'll see on this one; hopefully Matthews is ready to step in.
Replacing Cosby:  I'm very optimistic about Malcolm Williams, and Shipley and the others have the quickness to sometimes go deep or turn a short pass into a long gain.

We are different animals; one was primarily a rush offense that was more opportunistic in the passing game in looking for big plays, while the other is a controlled passing offense.  However, I like how our team looks; any championship team needs to answer its critics and fill the holes in its game.  Sometimes, Longhorn fans look back on that 2005 team like it was just perfect and made that way, but it too had legitimate question marks going into that season that it had to find ways to answer.  When I look at the uncertainties on this team, I'm mostly optimistic that we have the tools to deal with them.  And that's why my departing wisdom to my younger peers as I graduate is that they need to go get season tickets and prepare for an exciting fall. 

Because of Superman wearing #10, it seems the potential for that 2005 team was far greater than what we have now, but I like our #12 and the steadiness he brings, and if he has anywhere near the season he had in 2008, we will be right in the thick of things.  I think the offenses are actually pretty different, but we have enough similarities in returning starters and in quarterback leadership that I am comfortable with the comparisons going beyond the amusing circumstantial ones listed at the beginning.

I'll try to look at defenses later, which will probably have less to do with numbers.