What Are You Most Interested In Seeing in the Texas Spring Game?

Ahhhh, the refreshing and brisk smell of Spring. April is just around the corner and cold weather is finally beginning to become an afterthought in Texas (although presently the temperature is a completely unacceptable 56 degrees). With only three games left, March Madness is wrapping up, leaving college sports fans in a general state of depression and constantly pining for that first college football Saturday (or Thursday depending on just how intense you are) when the entirety of both college football and college basketball's seasons were in front of you.

Texas fans are lucky enough to be able to annually latch on to a highly-ranked college baseball team led by HOF coach Augie Garrido, while others jump into the start of MLB or pay more attention to the imminent NBA playoffs.

But some just can't escape the calling of college football, especially in the most desolate of times for the sports fan. Undeniably, Spring football is a tantalizing off-season treat for college football fans. Tantalizing in that it comes in a dry time for sports, as well as that it's almost impossible to actually glean anything relevant or assured from what you read in the papers or online, hear on the radio, or even see during the Spring Game itself. And yet still the allure of college football, even in its most unrefined and basic form, is simply too much for us to ignore.

Texas football is at a crossroads. More than half the coaching staff, including both coordinators has been replaced from a group that won the National Championship in 2006 and came within a hair's width of winning it again in 2009. There are more topics to talk about in Texas football than, well, possibly in a very long time.

Is 5-7 a simple outlier in a continued run of dominance or was it a sign of things to come?

Will new QB's coach and co-OC Bryan Harsin's Boise State offense translate to instant and consistent success in a real conference? Hell, will the co-OC relationship between seemingly selfless Harsin and Applewhite work out? Will it even be the same offense Harsin ran at Boise State?

Will new LB's coach and DC Manny Diaz's apparently blitz-happy defense allow players to react quickly enough to interrupt the predominantly-passing offenses in the Big 12-2?

None of these questions will really be answered until next Fall, but the Spring game should provide something of a barometer for what we'll be seeing out of our team schematically in the upcoming seasons.

So, after that long digression, let's finally get back to the question at hand. What are you most interested in seeing in the Spring Game? I'll start you off with a few of my most anticipated points:

• More than anything, ANYTHING, I'm absolutely dying to see what Texas looks like with a complicated scheme on offense. Greg Davis' playcalling was always so focused on simple execution of your own plays as opposed to attacking the weaknesses of the opponent's defense and it drove me nuts. Now, at last, we've got the guy who everybody calls a crazy offensive boy genius and runs the offense that every school in the country wants to run. I think I'm genuinely more interested in seeing how it works than whether it's actually effective, though that would obviously be nice as well.
  
• What is the energy like in the stadium and on the field? Do the players have their swagger back, instead of just cockiness? Are they having fun and ready to put the past behind them, or are do they still have last year's collapse hanging in the back of their minds? Do they have the mindset that we are going to dominate because we are better prepared, in better shape, and have better ability, or just because "We're Texas?" Same questions of the returning coaches. And the fans. 
• Will we see ANYTHING positive out of the offensive line? From everything I've read, the OL will be an even bigger question mark next year than the cornerbacks, and it's the most important position on the team along with quarterback. Depth is terrible, experience is suboptimal, and I've yet to see a single report that has the tackles outplaying Okafor, Wilson, and Jeffcoat. {Cringe}
• Mike freakin' Davis. Reports from everybody say this kid is at such a high level that he's essentially impossible to cover. He's been so good, I swear the reporters just copy and paste the same one-line sentence into a random part of their write-up because it's just getting boring to talk about, but he's so good you still have to at least mention him. Something like, "Mike Davis is uncoverable and shredded whomever was guarding him." Seen similar lines probably a dozen times now.
  

So now, BONizens, let's hear your expectations, desires, worries, etc. for the Orange-White Game. Come Sunday at 2 p.m., your questions will be answered in the vaguest of ways possible.