Identifying the Root Problem: What Muschamp Critics are Missing

I had also went through and averaged out the starting position of every single relevant drive the defense has faced this season, and it comes out to the 32 yard line, just a yard over the average of the 31 yard line (at least, according to Football Outsiders). Also, while the defense has given up a few 70+ yard drives, the vast majority of touchdown drives start with pretty good field position against them. Taken together, it seems to support the conclusion that when the other team scores, they by and large do so with good field position rather than via sustained success drive after drive.

I seen many and even the remnant memories come back to haunt you. When things are going great, ever so often there will be a play or series of plays and suddenly a cool chill from the past will mist your vision because you’ve seen it – and felt it – before and hope that it is just a reminder, not a new epoch upon you.

From the back-eddy mid-’60s there was a TCU game at home where Texas had only two plays, both long runs by Chris Gilbert, one for 96-yards (still the record) but those were only two plays of the whole day and the Horns lost, 24-17, one of many in those three years. Great D, bad O.

Remember in the mid-70s when OU had the wishbone revved up to levels Texas never reached, and I found myself gazing in wonder at the speed and efficiency, only to realize we were getting slaughtered and would continue to do so until we matched their team speed and skills.

In the mid and late ’80s watching teams like Baylor whip us like ragdolls and the early 90s with the aggies making what offense we had look totally pathetic. It seemed like we could only put half a team on the field, one unit stronger, one much more flawed and doomed to failure.

Now I see this season. One side valiantly trying to staunch the bleeding despite shortcomings of their own at DL and safety, while the other quite possibly the most pathetic offense in modern Texas history…and that’s saying one hell of a lot. The psychology of the whole team goes into the dumpster after a while with the all-consuming emotional tsunami.

At least the defense gets to take it out on somebody, to vent their anger, they get to hit and hit and hit…but the offense just becomes a scabbed-over wound reopened every game.

I thought about including them but I felt the post would get too long, and overall it didn’t really change the point. The offense stinks to high heaven.

We’ve scored 1/4 of our TD’s in the 4th quarter; from a purely statistical perspective just what one would expect. Not sure how this supports your garbage time theory (and the 4th quarter points % even less so). Are you sure these numbers are correct? I seem to recall four 4th quarter TD’s against ISU and KSU alone…

When I say a score “off an offensive turnover” I mean that the Texas offense turned over the ball, leading to an opponent drive which ultimately resulted in an opponent score. Ditto with scores “off punt return turnovers”…

The point of the post, again, was not to deflect blame from Muschamp’s unit, but to show what the root cause of our team’s implosion. Put it this way: If we replaced our defense with any of the other top defenses in college football, how much different do you think this Horns’ team is? Now let’s replace our offense with just an average offense. How much different is it? I would disagree strongly that the defense is the “tallest midget.” Maybe it’s not a pure giant like we wanted, but the difference between it and the offense is vast.

First off, the statistics cited are very misleading. Aside from the fact that the only time fans start digging deep in stats like these is when they’re grasping for something to ease the pain of losing, many of the offenses we’ve faced have dropped into conservative play when they’ve grabbed big leads, and when they absolutely needed to move the ball to score when we’ve rallied our opponents have consistently executed dominant scoring drives to seal the deal. When an opposing offense pulls back the horses for half the game it’s easy to end up with deceptive stats.

Two points here: As far as raw totals, I would argue this applies to the offense way more than the defense. The offense has been the beneficiary of several garbage points, while the approach of many teams in “clock-killing” mode is roughly the same: Namely, they’re running the ball. More importantly, the S&P ratings from FO only count those stats within what they believe is a “close” game, which they define as a game within 24 points in the first quarter, 21 points in the second quarter, and 16 points in the second half. Those alleged clock-killing drives that inflate the defense’s numbers when we’re down a lot are simply discounted.

That is without question the case. But the difference is we all knew that our offense would be the weak link going into the season. There was a reasonable expectation by fans and coaches alike that the defense would be so strong they’d keep us in games, maybe even win a few by themselves when the offense faltered. Excepting NU that hasn’t happened this season.

We knew the offense would be the weaker of the units, but nobody expected it to be this bad, and that is utterly inexcusable. Are you really saying that you thought the offense would be this self-destructive? We expected an offense that would struggle a bit early in the season and steadily improve, not this complete mess 9 games into the season.

The example I and many others had in mind for Coach Boom’s defense was Alabama last season, so stout that it could sustain a dreadful offense. It didn’t happen, not even close. The D doesn’t even have a faint whiff of what that level of play is this year.

I think you need to look at film of Alabama last year. They didn’t have a great offense because McElroy is a mediocre QB, but they had two stud RB’s and never even came close to being as bad as this Texas offense. I guarantee you this Texas defense looks better if we had Alabama’s offense from last year, but we do not by a long shot.

Despite what I said about this not being about whether or not Muschamp is perfect (he isn’t).

I don’t see the logic of you and other Muschamp apologists conceding a TD to the opposition just because they get the ball at our 40. There is no reason whatsoever that a great defense or even a very good defense could not stop a one-dimensional offense cold at that point on the field.

How about holding them to only 20 yards or so and perhaps a field goal? Is even that too much to ask?

Apparently so.

I have a feeling you didn’t read my post in full. I say this very clearly:

This does not totally absolve our defense, as we, of course, would hope that they would give up far less touchdowns and force more field goals in such circumstances. Still, it is difficult to keep the opponent off the scoreboard when they get such advantageous field position.

It’s a legit criticism, one that I myself made, but that doesn’t address the root problem (which was what this whole post was about). WHY is the defense continually put in such positions? It is pretty telling, statistically, that the vast majority of the scores given up come off of very short fields. I ask you what I asked in my post: If our defense holds to field goals in most of those drives, are our fortunes that much different? Does our offense magically start scoring points to win these games?

Did you actually watch the game? Did you see the play that gave KState its first score? The KState RB would have taken that baby to the house whether the play was run from our 40 or from their 20! The ONLY reason Muschamp’s defense didn’t give up an 80-yard scoring drive the first time KState got the ball is because KState didn’t have to go that far.

The fact that opposing offenses have often had short fields to work with has actually been a blessing in disguise for our defense’s misleading total yards allowed stat.

UCLA, Iowa State, and KState all could have easily run up over 400 yards of offense on our "all-time best" defense had they been required to do so.

I did, and I think you are incorrect in your observations. For sure, our defense has given up big plays, most notably against Baylor, but that is often the product of starting with a short field. From what I’m seeing, they’re often trying too hard to make the big play because they want to stem the tide, which includes unsound tackling in an effort to dislodge the football. Also, while Gideon isn’t known to be a track star by any means, if Daniel Thomas was required to go farther Gideon would have caught him because he was forced to shorten his angle to accommodate for the goalline.

Also, those teams you listed above had every opportunity to put up 400 yards of offense. They didn’t, because their successes were sporadic. They’ve hit big plays, which are unfortunate, but by and large their other drives were quick ones that didn’t travel far. So I think you’re contention that they’d just run up and down the field is simply wrong.

I don’t buy the "our sensitive little defense’s psyche has been perturbed by the offense and special teams poor play" crap for one second.

Then you should watch some more football and keep in mind that these are college kids, because these units don’t exist in a vacuum, isolated from each other.

It’s Muschamp’s job to motivate the defense to play lights out WHATEVER else is going on in the world. It’s Muschamp’s job and it’s a job Muschamp is not doing very well at the moment whether or not you and the other Muschamp ass kissers out there realize it.

It’s not only Muschamp’s job. It falls on Mack too, and with such widely different standards it is easy to see how 18-22 year old kids could get frustrated. Muschamp could be doing some things as better, as I and other posters have noted, but again, this post is about identifying ROOT problems. Muschamp is far from the root cause of our issues.

Yes our offense is god-awful. Everyone (with the exception of the strawmen that you create to deflect any criticism of Muschamp) sees that. Yes our offensive players seem to have quit on Davis. Everyone sees that, as well.

When exactly did I say I wanted to deflect criticism? In fact, I specifically said that was not the point of the post. The point, again, was to show what the root cause of our team’s failure is. You don’t seem to understand that. Also, I did not create any strawmen, because nowhere did I insinuate that those who made such comments (and the comments are real, you can skim our open threads for a few of them) were unaware of our offense’s failures. I am saying that they seem unaware that the defense’s struggles are largely caused by a historic ineptitude on offense. I find it ironic that you accuse me of creating straw-men, when if fact you’re throwing the accusation that those making such points are just “Muschamp ass kissers” when my post and others, such as GhostofBigRoy’s post on Gideon, have been very clear that Muschamp has made mistakes. Who’s creating the straw-men here?

But some of us also see that the defense, which coming in was billed as the best in the Mack Brown era, is, right now, well, pretty bad. What’s worse, we also see that the defensive players appear to have quit on Muschamp.

Billed by Mack, not Muschamp, as you said. And you believed him when we were losing Houston and Thomas? Besides, as I responded to another poster, Mack was only talking about “potential,” which I also doubted. Do I think the defense could have performed better in our games? Definitely; I noted on my post on Oklahoma that Muschamp had no excuse for being unprepared for the no huddle, and many others have criticized Muschamp for putting Gideon in positions to fail. This is again a problem with a vast difference in expectation, expectations that I feel were largely unreasonable. If we were fielding our 2008 offense, I’d say we’d have a couple more wins but we would still not be where we want to be, which is competing for the Big 12. The main problem? Again, the offense. This defense with a better offense would give us a chance to compete this year. This offense would torpedo any team without the ’85 Bears.

So you tell me which is a worse sign for the future of the Texas program: players quitting on a guy who will be watching football games in his own living room in five years (or sooner) or players quitting on a guy who will be leading the Texas program at some point in the near future?

It’s bad sign when the head coach seems to have lost the players because of his persistent blind spot towards the offense. The players play for Muschamp, but ultimately they all play for Mack.

Let me repeat what I asked for in the post: Please explain these statistics without resorting to the untrue accusation of me being a Muschamp apologist, when I specifically say that’s not what I’m doing. Tell us why the great divide in S&P numbers are wrong (the FEI numbers from another poster too). Tell us how a different top defense this year would change our fortunes significantly, if our defense is so horrible. And most importantly, tell us how my argument that the offense is the ROOT problem is wrong. Again, the ROOT problem, not the only problem, which in no way do I argue for.

This defense is flawed, and OSU was well built to exploit those better than anyone we’ve faced these years. Nowhere does this article deny that.

The article is about the ROOT, or MAIN, problem with this team. As much as the defense struggled against the Pokes, the offense was still worse.