Edit:  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)