Occam's take on 2010
by HookTech on May 27, 2011 5:36 PM CDT
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PrintEdit: I guess I need to explain the premise a bit further. The idea, based on the popular although inaccurate synopsis of Occam's law of parsimony, was that the simplest explanation of the miserable showing of the 2010 football season might just be the correct one (i.e. the key to improved results next year). I realize that football is a complicted game and a football team is a complex system, but I was attempting to think like a coach and try to find the one or two key factors in our losses last year that could be worked on over fall camp to produce the most drastic improvement and thus a few more wins.
I seemed to notice a trend last year, when I had a chance to check the box score, that we outgained our opponents pretty regularly, even in our 7 losses. However, it didn't really grab hold of my attention as the season progressed just how often this occurred.
We have all offered a plethora of conjectures on just what exactly caused the crapfest that was Longhorn Football circa 2010. I decided to go back and see in how many of our losses we actually had better offensive production, in terms of total yards, than our opponents. After reviewing (stats after the jump), it seems we can utilize old Mr. Occam's razor to nail down the misery that was 2010 to two major issues: turnovers and red-zone offense. We didn't seem to have a problem getting down the field, it's just that once we marched down the field we gifted the ball to our opponent or did the most depressing thing a football team can do- kicked a field goal. I'll let anyone interested offer their own suggestions of what they glean from this...
(Stats taken from ESPN's box score)
P.S. My analysis that we actually had decent total offense production should be in no way seen as a defense of Greg Davis.
Our 7 losses with total yards for each team followed by our turnover margin for the game and what I think was the key factor in the loss in parentheses (if it was turnovers I just put the TO margin in parentheses). Let me know what you think...
UCLA 291
Texas 349
(Turn over margin: -3)
OU 360
Texas 373
(Turnover margin: -2)
Iowa State 335
Texas 440
(Turnover margin: -3)
Baylor 328
Texas 428
Turnover margin: 0
(Red zone offense)
Kansas St 270
Texas 412
(Turnover margin: -5)
Any debating this one?
Oklahoma State 532
Texas 358
Turnover margin: 0
(Just couldn't keep up)
TAMU 366
Texas 359
(Turnover margin: -2)
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Turnovers are the problem and the answer
Good post. I agree that turnovers cost us (maybe) 4 games. It usually does. I looked back on Mack’s 28? losses before last season and we lost the turnover battle in 24
of those games.
The games at home were so agonizing to watch because in the stands (at least those
that sit around me- 108) you just got the feeling that we WERE going to have those
turnovers and find a way to lose the game. I KNEW we were going to get beat by
UCLA as soon as the second quarter started. Seems Mack knew it too.
Gosh I hate baby blue and yellow.
ut1ou2 for texas-ou weekend
Right on!
Could not agree with you any more….football is really not that complicated….that is why I am NOT down on the 2011 HORNS….TAKE CARE OF THE BALL and BETTER QB PLAY could make this season much more enjoyable!!
Not saying turnovers were the only problem in these particular games
but the “we had more offensive yards than they did” is such a Techian argument
You might as well have said, “We had a good defense last season”, which was one of the reasons for those stats, along with those turnovers causing short fields, meaning the opposing offense didn’t have to travel far to score, and since most teams scored more often than texas did, you had more possessions, therefore more offensive yards.
UCLA and Iowa State simply wanted it more than you did, and your players flat out quit against UCLA, especially in the second half. Against Baylor, your defense gave up too many big plays, and those plays went for TDs. Against Kansas State, I think everyone, fans, players, coaches, expected to lose that game, and you did.
The entire point of the post,
as I thought I explained, was to distill the mishaps of the season down to just a couple of factors which could be fixed fairly easily with a concentrated effort by the coaches and players.
As I mentioned, the more complicated, multifactorial analyses of the problems that faced the 2010 Longhorns have already taken place with very ittle consensus among those involved. Therefore, I decided to employ the notion known as Occam’s razor that sometimes in a complicated problem, the most simple answer is the correct answer. If that’s Techian, then touche.
"The only sport that should be cried over is tee ball."
- don't remember who said it, but I like it.
Did you miss that the premise of the post was to keep it simple?
Do you understand the conecept of Occam’s razor?
"The only sport that should be cried over is tee ball."
- don't remember who said it, but I like it.
if you're looking for the simplest explanation
(yes, I am familiar with Occam’s razor) then it is lack of leadership
all those turnovers wouldn’t mean if you had someone dragging the offense, kicking and screaming, to productivity like Shipley would have done
I don’t think any of your defenders would have just given up and quit if Orakpo was on the field. Lamarr Houston would have killed someone before he’d let your team quit against Iowa State.
Lack of leadership.
Thanks, Beergut. That was the kind of response I was looking for.
You might be right. That’s a difficult thing to measure with stats, though, because it can affect so many different statistical measures. Just have to go with qualitative observation and hunch on that one. I agree with you that there was a lack of leadership on the team. Perhaps, there is a connection between the two, in that the turnovers causing disappointing losses early on caused the young players to stop playing their best out of disappointment and a good leader like those you mentioned was needed to pull them out of it.
"The only sport that should be cried over is tee ball."
- don't remember who said it, but I like it.
really
turnovers only matter if they make you quit fighting
you don’t quit if you have a leader who won’t let you quit
for whatever reason, your defense quit in the second half of the UCLA game, and once the team got the message that it was okay to quit, the season was lost
I agree that 1 or 2 turnovers can be made up for with some fight.
5 turnovers, though, not so much, especially if several of them give the other team a short field.
Also, it seemed to me that the team came out to each game playing relatively hard to start with, but after they fell behind to turnovers or what have you and the stands emptied out, that was when they started just going through the motions.
"The only sport that should be cried over is tee ball."
- don't remember who said it, but I like it.
Yeah, I agree
GG made it difficult to get into any of the games. If we weren’t just throwing the ball away, then it was GG making a bad few plays in the red zone which meant field goal after field goal and well, field goals just don’t win you games.
TEXAS FIGHT
Agree TOs were a big part of the problem
The nation leading ints by GG certainly hurt.The fact that we couldn’t run the ball or pass block very well cost us dearly.
I think I saw the defense pleading with the offense to just make some first downs where they wouldn’t be defending a short field all the time.
I don’t know if the D just gave up but it became obvious in tghe UCLA that they couldn’tstop the run.
GDGD is gone and with him his putrid offensive game plan.All we need to get back to a 9 or 10 win season is for the QB to win the field position part of the game and protect the ball if he can’t do that we will be lucky to qualify for the Toliet Bowl.
by TCB Orange Dino on May 28, 2011 3:18 PM CDT reply actions
I agree that protecting the ball has to be THE key push for fall camp.
As much I’d like to see Gilbert live up to the hype that surrounded him, I’d bench him if he doesn’t show marked improvement in his decision making. He looked great when he tucked the ball and ran for what he could get instead of trying to force a pass.
"The only sport that should be cried over is tee ball."
- don't remember who said it, but I like it.
HookTech...good post.
While TOs are an abstraction away, they are the telling sign of a season.
Don’t have a place to send you, but the net yearly turnover differential for the Mack Era, including last season, is +6. That is total offensive turnovers minus total defense forced turnovers over the 13 year era. Texas is a +79 for the era, a +6 average.
There have been only two years when there were negative turnovers for the whole season, 1998 with -3 (21-24=-3) and 2010 with -12 (18-30=-12) which is by far the worst.
Such outliers are seldom replicated regardless of what is done. Of course, things can get worse, so preventative action is better than doing nothing.
Thanks, whills.
It’s very interesting to put this in the context of the total Mack era- actually quite comforting. Seeing as how the TO problem last season does seem to be very much an outlier, one would think it would be very unlikely to repeat itself, even without a concerted effort to prevent a reoccurrence. I do agree, though, that preventative action is better than doing nothing.
"The only sport that should be cried over is tee ball."
- don't remember who said it, but I like it.
TO breakdown?
I’d be interested to know how many turnovers we lost on special teams — punt returns and kick offs. I seem to recall cringing every time we fielded a punt because there was a significant chance that we’d drop it. Those just KILLED us by setting up short fields.
Yeah, I've been saying that smarter decisions in the punt return game alone, with all else being equal, could lead to an extra 1 or 2 wins over last year.
You’re absolutely right, they killed us in crucial, game changing situations. They seemed to always happen when he had rallied and made up some of the deficit with a chance to win the game. Later in the season, when they put Adrian Phillips in at punt return, it seemed like we almost overcompensated and got too conservative. I seem to remember seeing fair catches called for a couple of punts where up to a 20 yard return or maybe more might have been possible.
"The only sport that should be cried over is tee ball."
- don't remember who said it, but I like it.
I saw the same conservatism in the punt return game later in the season ...
… but it was a much better option than all those game-changing mistakes that happened earlier. It was brutal.
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