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Colt McCoy has proven you wrong.

Yes, you - Fan who called for Chiles to split time with McCoy at the beginning of 2008.  And you - guy who complained about Colt not being athletic enough to draw attention in the zone read game - wow were you wrong!

But don't blush, we've all been wrong when it comes to Colt, even his fervent supporters.  Even as I've always rooted for McCoy to pull through and prove the doubters wrong, I don't think even the most optimistic among us (limiting our scope, of course, to those capable of predicting anything other than three straight Heismans and National Championships for every player) expected anything even approximating what Colt has become.  I thought it would have made a nice story if he could just be a part of a great season - drive the bus, so to speak.

Now?  Hell, I don't even think Uncle Rico's self-perception could have done some of the things Colt's pulled off.

The fact is: There isn't a person on the planet who's expectations weren't absolutely obliterated by what Colt McCoy has become.  Don't be that guy and try and explain how you saw this in him all along, watched him dominate 2A football and you could just tell he was going to be one of the best ever - Bull crap.  Even the most legitimately optimistic among us would have laughed if I told them that Colt would break the all-time season completion percentage record (with a high probability of breaking the career mark after this season), or if I told them that Colt would need only 11 wins in 2009 to become the winningest QB in college football history.  The whole situation here is just unreal.

So on the eve of Colt's next "Shock the Nation" campaign, follow the jump as I look back on everything I ever said Colt couldn't do...

Colt McCoy Can't Work in Our Running Game

Pocket Passer.  Pro-Style.  Statue.  White.

Everyone had their own way of saying it, but it all meant the same thing:  Not Vince.  Vince's mere presence was enough to delay the arrival of the gap defenders as they held back a split second to double check that #10 wasn't on his way to the end zone before killing the options for the tailback, but Colt was a liability.  Colt would never get backer or an end to so much as turn his head on their way to flooding the available gaps for the running back.  Something was going to have to change, we all thought.  The love affairs with the I-formation and a John Chiles spread option game began soon after Texas fans realized that there would be no 1,000 yard rusher in 2006.  Colt would serve well, many thought, as a compliment to the featured running game.

Wrong: Colt McCoy shows some wheels in the midst of his ridiculous streak of excellent games to start 2008, finishing the season as the top rusher, all while delivering gems like the Truck Stick against Rice, the Don't Mind Me quick snap and race around the corner for a score against Arkansas, and - coolest of all - the Pirouette in the Fiesta Bowl.  While we didn't have a banner year for running the ball as a team, Colt was hardly to blame (replacing a TE with Jordan Shipley or our worst blocking offensive lineman didn't help, and much of the rest is just inconsistent line play).  If the line play improves satisfactorily, I don't think there will be much whining about the running game this year (except, ironically, about the fact that our running game now relies too heavily on Colt.  Ha!).

 

Colt McCoy Can't "Start" Our Offense

This was actually one of my favorite opinions.  Thought it up all by myself.  It came about after a few games in 2007, when it became clear that something was very wrong with the team.  Forgetting the defense and special teams disasters, the offense was just ugly to watch.  It looked like Greg Davis had decided that Colt McCoy was going to be the featured player in our offense.  The problem was, Colt didn't appear to have superior athleticism, arm strength, accuracy, or really anything special about him that was going to give us an advantage.  The result was a mediocre offense that worked in fits and starts, but was wholly unreliable and (to put it in coachspeak) inconsistent.  The idea that Colt couldn't be the featured player in our offensive scheme arose from my attempt to build a schema encompassing Colt's stellar freshman campaign with his sophomore season that was... well... sophomoric.  Hear me out:

In comparing the 2007 offense with an approximate ideal (say, 2005), it seemed like what 2007 lacked (early on) was an elite component that could almost impose its will on the defense.  Vince Young and the running game were going to be successful against your defense until you threw just about everything into stopping him, and when you did that, VY was going to throw a touchdown to Limas Sweed in the corner of your end zone for the winning score.  That's the simplest way to put pressure on the defense:  Be so ridiculously good at one thing that the defense can't worry about anything else.  Once the defense shows its hand, then you know exactly what the corresponding best strategy is.  You get in a rhythm, and before you know, it's 50-0 at halftime.

2007, however, lacked an identity.  Davis thought that he could give Colt enough options on every play that he would always have something open, something available, and that would create the ability for the offense to impose its will on the defense.  It's kind of the opposite of 2005, in that instead of being ridiculous good, Colt needed to be ridiculously smart.  The defense wouldn't be able to take away the one thing we did so well, because we would do just about everything well.  This is when the announcers started talking about "playing the accordion" with the defense - sucking the defense in close with the short game, then bombing them long when they forgot about Limas Sweed.  Then the bad news: Big Sweed was injured before the season and Colt, while a highly intelligent quarterback, was overwhelmed with his options, it didn't help that the line picked up the blitz like a group of freshmen at Notre Dame and no major adjustment was found for these shortcomings until the near disaster against Nebraska.  Colt failed as the identity of our offense and we floundered somewhat until we figured out that Jamaal Charles was faster than he was fumble-prone (and just about everyone else, too).  Then our offensive identity reverted to the 2005 plan:  JC got ten yards a carry no matter what, and when they put eight or nine men in the box to stop him, we let Colt do his thing.

So the conclusion from 2007 was:  Colt McCoy cannot "start" our offense.  2005 was started by VY, 2006 was started by an epic offensive line, and 2007 should have been all about Jamaal Charles all year long.  Colt can't be the guy that the defense gameplans for all week, and then can't stop anyway.  He's not going to get the defense to run dime while we still have a TE and a RB on the field so that we can run the ball.  He's just going to have to mop up after Jamaal Charles.  Oh great, JC went pro, now we're going to lose 5 games in 2008!

Wrong:  Colt McCoy plays essentially a series of perfect games in 2008 from FAU all the way to Missourri.  We're still on the 2005 side of the offensive spectrum, but this time, the thing we do ridiculously well is the short passing game.  Colt completes 80% of his passes while leading 15-play drive after 15-play drive, despite being by far the main concern of every defense he faces.  Not only does Colt McCoy start our offense, he is our offense.  He leads the team in rushing to go along with setting just about every serious passing record in the history of Texas football.  He comes within one of any number of plays in Lubbock from playing in the National Championship game.  Colt McCoy completely reinvented himself and destroyed any notion that he couldn't be the "star" quarterback at the University of Texas.

The best example of this is probably the Oklahoma State game.  Gundy (or more correctly, his defensive coordinator) developed an immensely complex and well-conceived gameplan for shutting down Colt McCoy.  We won't go into details here, but suffice it to say that the Cowboy defense used more disguised coverages than a pedophile wearing an Optimus Prime costume.  Incredibly Unsurprisingly, Colt rose to the challenge and again shattered any doubts, completing 38 of 45 pass attempts (84%) for 391 yards, 2 touchdowns and an interception, with 22 of those 38 completions resulting in first downs.

For my money, that's one of the most dominant performances by a single facet of our offense ever, especially considering just how bad we were at running the ball (3.5 ypc for just over 100 yards that game, Colt led the team with 41 on 10 carries) even when the defense was wholly focused on McCoy.  Sure the 2005 offense as a whole was better, but that's mostly a product of Vince's improved passing ability.  Vince was a good college passer, and any defense that sold out to stop the run as much as OSU sold out to stop McCoy would have found out the hard way that Texas had a solid left jab to compliment that monster right.  McCoy then, by the same metaphor, barely had a left arm to speak of.  Despite having almost no threat to keep OSU honest, the Texas passing attack rolled up almost 400 yards on better than 80% completions.  That's just sick.  Texas' rushing offense in 2005, complimented by a successful passing attack, may have been more dominant, but I don't think it ever needed to show it like McCoy did against OSU.

So, yeah.  Can't start the offense?

Who needs a left?

Colt McCoy Can't be the Leader of this Team

This one goes back to a comment made by PB in a Morning Coffee before the Holiday Bowl.  We found out somehow that Colt's favorite workout song was "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy", and while Peter was partly kidding, he raised a valid point that Colt may have trouble connecting with the team if he thinks Kenny Chesney is a testosterone boost (check the comments in the MC post for better suggestions).  I completely agreed.  The song choice had little to do with it, really, but it highlighted the perception of McCoy at the time.  Was Colt viewed by his teammates as a leader after such an inconsistent season in the backfield?  Was he the kind of guy who gets ticked off and dedicates himself?  Or was he content to remain in a comfortable little world listening to pretty men in cowboy hats croon about their perceived plowing prowess while he chucked INTs?  Some of us feared the latter.

Wrong:  Colt probably improved as much as anyone ever has in one offseason.  Not only did the mistakes disappear, but Colt had become a creepy-good, bordering on perfect robo-QB.  The team has rallied around him, adopting him as Colt "MyBoy", while he reciprocated the respect by passing every bit of praise he received to his line, his receivers, the running backs, the defense, and the coaches.  He's even got Mack Brown telling the team to appreciate McCoy as the most accurate passer in the history of college football.  Now Vince got a lot... a lot of praise from Brown while he was here, but I can't recall Brown telling the team anything like: Listen, you've got to play your ass off for Vince, 'cause it damn sure won't be his fault if we don't win the National Championship.  (Yes that's what he said in coachspeak)

Colt's proven us wrong here twice:  He's proven that he can become a leader on the team, sure, but he's also done something that no one ever considered:  Colt means as much to this team as Vince meant in 2005.  The team (and Mack Brown) knows that Colt can take them as far as they're willing to go.  They're going to fight for him every step of the way, and they won't stop until they've given Colt his ultimate dream:

A sexy tractor ride in the Rose Bowl Parade.

What?

I meant a championship.  Because the one thing that has been thrown around about Colt that he hasn't yet proven wrong is that he can't win a championship.  If you're still in that camp, then I'd like to offer you one last chance to change your mind before you are proven wrong, once again, by one of the greatest players in college football history.

Whether you think he is or not.