Postgame React: Texas Defeats Texas Tech 24-14

Already unhealthy. Watching Jeffcoat and Jones battering back hapless tackles is just plain beautiful.

as I was way too anxious to pay attention to details the first time through, and without the constant emotional baggage of having to beg the football gods for a win, the narrative of the game emerged a bit more clearly: basically Will Muschamp had his guys well-coached, well-disciplined, and well-prepared, and he had a gameplan, while Greg Davis did none of the above.

For most of the game, the ebb and flow was as follows:

Muschamp would miraculously shut down Tech’s offense [in Lubbock, no less] in just 3 or 4 plays…then our offense has a false start on first down, and then a dropped pass on the next play.

Then…Muschamp would miraculously shut down Tech’s offense [in Lubbock, no less] in just 3 or 4 plays…then our offense has a holding call on the first play, and then a dropped pass on the next.

Then…Muschamp would miraculously shut down Tech’s offense [in Lubbock, no less] in just 3 or 4 plays….and our offense would call an unnecessary reverse on 1st down, and drop a ball on the next play.

You get the idea.

I’ve been pissed at Greg Davis for years, but Will Muschamp should want to punch him in the face. Will actually does his job; his gameplans and adjustments rarely miss, and his players play with emotion. Meanwhile Davis, who has just as many blue-chip recruits at his disposal, continually misses with his scheming, instills no sense of purpose in his players, and can’t adjust to the game. His players are undisciplined, they have no identity, and they never seem to improve.

Its harder and harder to justify GD’s presence here with Muschamp standing as a foil on the other side of the locker room. Here you have a true and equal test: two coordinators are each given top-Texas talent, and one produces consistently, in spades, and the other disappoints…continuously. And if anything, a great defense is more difficult to craft these days than is a great offense. And considering Tech’s defense is not one of the better we’ll face this year, this offensive preparation was particularly embarrassing.

Otherwise, the other thing that stood out to me upon second viewing was Gilbert’s play. The kid is great. Although he hasn’t hit that intangible gear PB’s describing, I think he’s only a step away from playing as well as Ryan Mallet is playing right now. None of the picks was due to a bad decision; he’s made almost no really bad decisions this season. The balls the receivers were dropping were not being thrown too hard, and he made a couple of absolutely spectacular throws. If Gilbert is muffled, I’d say its because the staff is bringing him along too slowly and too conservatively. Rather than use his talent, he seems to be throwing the ball away or taking sacks more often than he needs to so as to avoid catastrophe, which seems more like Mack and Greg talking than it does GG.

 I think he’s a year away from being one of the top QB’s in college football.

Those two positions are our offensive coordinator and our offensive line coach. Mcwhorter hasn’t had a good and consistent line in the last three years.
Greg Davis appears to be unable to scheme new things anymore or to make proper use of some of the talents at his disposal.

It frankly pisses me off to watch the offense a lot of the time. Tonight especially with the drops turning into interceptions and the 100+ minimum yard drive including the two holding calls and the false start. We looked pathetic out there tonight and if it weren’t for the defense, we would have our first loss of the season.

It’s hard to feel great about this team because of our current offensive production. However, thanks to our defense, it would be foolish to count us out in either (or any, if you buy into UCLA/A&M) of the remaining high-profile showdowns this season.

At this point, I just hope we can throw down a solid offensive game next week against UCLA before the OU game. Need to get the offense—and especially GG—some momentum heading into Dallas.

as a team, let’s just abandon the run totally. If I have to watch another running play where our back disappears into a pile of players (where there is, for whatever reason, absolutely nothing resembling a running “lane”) and emerges for a 1-2 yard gain, I’m going to lose it. This is getting comical. How does a team with such highly ranked incoming talent not just run over the opposition? I mean, fine, Tech is talented, but we looked pretty incompetent against Rice and Wyoming too. My brain fails to understand.

Muschamp could be the absolute pinnacle when it comes to half time adjustments.

Comes in and plays one down? Didn’t get a first down? He must me in a major doghouse. Or Greg Davis should is an idiot!

All in all it’s a win. Ugly but it was a win. I think we are going to struggle against stronger Big 12 comp. We will roll UCLA.

I just can’t seem to figure out what the hell Davis is thinking with this offense. It’s official we are not a running team. The O line can pass block but the run blocking is not there.

I do not share your optimism from the linebacker crew. Keenan Robinson showed his (excellent) speed chasing down rushing plays on the outside that gained a large chunk of yadage.

Emanuel acho was constantly out of position on plays that needed to be made. I gues i am guilty of projecting his older brother’s talent onto him regardlesss, e. acho has to hold down the center of the field better. im not a coach :), but i like to think that i have some semblence of whats going on!

Your thoughts align perfectly with what we are seeing. While I don’t prescribe to the “lipstick on a pig” euphemism, our offense is mired in hog slop. The outcome tastes good on a BLT, you just don’t want to know how it’s made, what it eats, or where it sleeps. Pee-yew.

The blame is equally shared between coaches and players. However, players have to execute. You can draw up all the plays and schemes in the world but you can’t do anything about the continued NOS penalties, missed assignments, dropped passes, etc, etc. When your team is backed up due to these mistakes, what else is a coordinator to do? For one thing, I say, the players need a do over. A mulligan. There’s no need to abandon a perfectly sound schematic if a particular play does not work here or there. I say keep going back to it because its repetition we need on our basic downfield plays.

Funny you should mention coach Muschamp is middle initial worthy. I had that same thought in the first half. Although your angle is better than mine, the fact is one could argue his schemes and use of personnel are every bit as revolutionary as coach Bellard’s wishbone. Sexy.

And a big shout out to our special teams play. Only one mistake all night, Kenny’s aggressive punt roughing penalty. Other than that, our kickoff and punting defense was consistent, and Justin Tucker pinned their ears back. Not a big fan of the non-traditional rugby punting, but he really rose to the occasion with 3 out of his 4 punts nailed inside their 20.

Seems to take pride in his “targetingt” penalties. IMO, get over it, at and play football

I agree with your assessment that he’s not there yet. It would be hard not to. However, early in the game, I really thought the light was about to come on, and then the two tipped picks happened. And the dropped pick by Malcolm. I really think that sucked his confidence. You could almost see his feet get happier and happier. Now you could easily say if the light had come on he moves past that and injects confidence in his teammates and makes plays, and to a certain extent he sill made some plays, but it’s hard to throw a kid out there in his first road start with a line he doesn’t trust, receivers dropping balls, and no running game to speak of and expect him to make “The Leap.”

That said he does have a ways to go, but as you mentioned the potential is exciting.

I know this topic has been debated tirelessly, however, as has been said before I think it comes down to recruiting, and for a different reason. As everyone knows, we rely almost solely on in-state players for recruiting, for good reason, and its been greatly successful. However, if you watch high school football around the state, almost everyone (especially the elite teams) runs a version of the spread or zone running scheme and that creates linemen who are used to pass blocking and finesse running. Now, if we’re planning on changing to a pro-style running attack and drive blocking, we are going to have to be very selective on who we select in state and go out of state at a little higher rate.

Now, it does look like Mack is coming to this conclusion (Westerman, Hegarty) so I’m not too worried. It does look like its starting to carry over to the defense too, as we are starting to go a little more out of state for linebackers (Hicks, 2012 target Kwon Alexander) because of the lack of true linebackers in state because of the spread phenomenon. It will be interesting to see if high schools start to change their styles as Texas changes.

What really infuriated me were the half-assed “trick” plays. Are we really spending precious practice time on this crap?

so I say you stick with the T.

William “Stonewall” Muschamp. Works for me.

The defense was tremendous in this game. Tech had one successful drive. One. Holy s***, I didn’t see that coming. Chykie not being Chykie, and Britt Mitchell cutting Justin Smith and this one was a shut out.

Boom continues to show just how valuable he is to Texas. Best coach on the staff, and it’s not even close. Georgia is now 0-2 in the SEC and I am very worried. The Dawgs get Green back after Mississippi State, but in a year where Richt is coaching for his job, 0-2 in conference is not the way to get started. I think Boom gets a Georgia booster phone call this afternoon. Be leery.

The offense would be wise to use Roberson at fullback much, much more often. He’s a good lead blocker and our backs need somebody to open up holes for them. Getting hit at the line of scrimmage and then fitting for 2 yards is not getting it done.

Any win in the Tech Tards’ hamlet is a good win. Tech will not ruin our season this year and it feels good.

I become more and more concerned that we won’t be able to hold on to Muschamp until Mack retires. With Georgia (his alma mater) struggling I think the likelihood that Richt gets fired escalates each week. On top of that, I can tell you that LSU fans are very frustrated with Les Miles and would love to bring Muschamp on board as his replacement. Et’s hope his love of Austin and desire to take over in a few years is enough to override all that temptation.

Good grief. Is this what your King and Savior GD has been saving up for, guys? That MESS we call an offense on show in Lubbock last night? Frankly, the sooner we accept this year as a rebuilding year and lose that #6 ranking the better. This is NOT a national championship caliber team. I don’t even think it’s a Big 12 champ team.

Last I checked we are in the South. I will not refer to Boom as William T.

than others. By that I mean I have resisted the urge to crown him anything solely on his pedigree or his accomplishments in high school or by how many blue stars came attached to his name. I prefer the qb earn his team and his fans’ confidence and respect with his play on the field. Coming in to last night, there wasn’t much to go on because of our offensive game plans and the fact that we had played home games (Rice was a home game) against inferior opponents. But last night he went a long way in winning me over. I was really impressed. His arm strength and accuracy were fantastic and when he misses he misses in the right places. “3 Int’s” in his stat line couldn’t be more deceiving. More importantly, he looked confident and in charge of his team. That was the one factor that i have been most concerned about. Skills are great and necessary, but as McCoy showed, they are not everything. He was undersized and had average arm strength but made up for it in so many other facets. And i disagree with anyone (including Greg Davis) who thinks he lost confidence after those picks. He realized the “flukey” nature of those just like he should and seemed to get more defiant following the picks and I love that. As for the running game, we just don’t have the personnel to do what we want to. We are trying to transition the game plan and now we are going to have to wait for the types of players we are recruiting to catch up. PB has said a number of times that this is gonna be a damn good football team next year and the year after. And for me, GG went a long way towards cementing that statement last night.

p.s. Mark Richt is going to be fired at the end of this year and yes, I fear the worst.

I notice an obvious improvement. They finally can scored on the 1st quarter. No more “slow start” . But our OL need to improve. If Tech can block down the pass and get the interception. We can do that from our OL as well. The receivers core need to build up more chemistry with GG(hope they’ll grow as season forward) Stop dropping the pass from him.

OT: So excited about the UCLA game. We haven’t play against UCLA since 98. I can’t believe it was that long ago. We had back to back lost to them on 97 and 98. Oh my I still can’t forget that humiliation experience on 97. We lost to them (3-66). Was that the worst lost we had in school history? I dunno but it’s our payback time next week.

with CJ to left side on 3rd and 2 on the 1st drive of the game. If I can look to my father and tell him what’s coming don’t you think the MLB can tell his comrades where the play is going as well?

Later in the game, another 3rd and 2 we’re in the shotgun with Fozzy in the backfield and once again I look to my father and tell him “draw play.” I was right and Fozzy was stopped short and fumbled on the play. I hate our playcalling! I hate that we think we can do what we want, when we want, cause we’re Texas.

I would love next time we have a 3rd and 2 to see a direct snap to Fozzy with Gilbert lined up at wide receiver or even on the sideline for the play. Get creative! Alabama used that play calling for an entire series last year in the game with Auburn. Direct snap to Ingram, run to the left. Direct snap, run to the right.

With this playcalling and inability to open up running lanes, we are looking at a two or three loss season.

I watched Duke DUKE move the ball on the ground pretty well against ’Bama’s defense (100 first half yards!). The Duke O-Line was creating holes against that all-american defense. We can’t get 2 yards on a jumbo package against Tech? It’s so clearly coaching, and it’s maddening.

Some of the play calling, and tipped passes.

The jumbo package was terrible. The play calling was actually better than I thought, with some extremely disappointing exceptions, and you could tell Gilbert is a true soph when he allows them to tip a pass at the line of scrimmage while only rushing 2.

Offense has to get better than this right?

The D was absolutely stellar. even after losing those turnovers when the momentum swings and their O is inspired and pumped, we responded. In the middle of the 4th they had <110 yards of offense. Awesome.

Okay, who in the hell is voting us #1 every week? That has to be a joke, right?

I get the point in spades about the evolution of the Texas Defense under Muschamp. We are still working under Vince’s shadow and Colt’s as well with the offense. Our defense is gonna win us some games this year… just like last night. The offense just needs to keep improving, run blocking especially. But remember the old adage, “Defense win Championships”… Cause its true.

Mike Davis was good once again, and continued to impress with the skills he possesses.

He was alright yesterday. I’m pretty sure he led the team in dropped passes.

…balls. You suck ’em. Lots.

Texas shouldn’t be allowed to have him play football for two more years. Fortunately, he has to :-)

Gilbert and the running game started off great, we were on the verge of going up 21-0 (could have been the “moment” for Gilbert) and then a Tech lineman makes a great play a long with Brit Mitchell not cutting his man down and the ball bounced the wrong way. And then another tipped ball is intercepted and returned and you could tell that Gilbert was just not as confident as he was prior to those two events.

You feel he is close, and once he gets it things will be great!

While it was frustrating on both sides of the ball, you came out on top.