UT Football: The Devil’s in the Details

If you’ve held the ball longer, accrued more yardage, and generally outplayed another team, you should expect to win. However, expectation is a funny word sometimes.

Expecting to be competitive and expecting to win are, in reality, mutually exclusive concepts, requiring differing mindsets. The young Longhorns learned this fact on the job, in a competitive, but losing effort, going down to West Virginia, 38-20.

Recap:

The big plays found in the Kansas win reappeared Saturday, with six chunk plays, resulting in first downs or scores. D’Onta Foreman continued to show the often heard about, but hardly seen burst, with another 147 on the ground. Gray, Swoopes, Heard, and true freshman Chris Warren III ran for another combined 130 yards.

In total, the Horns outgained the Mountaineers, 439 to 379, and held the ball five minutes longer. The Longhorns’ offensive line put in serious work against West Virginia’s smallish defensive front, moving the ball for significant stretches.

Taking a step back from claiming outright regression, Heard’s development is ongoing. Ongoing, as in the cake is still being made. As in, the batter is still in the bowl. West Virginia sat solely on the run, waiting for him to make mistakes.

I haven't forgotten about the turnovers and penalties. More on this in a bit.

Defensively, it’s more of the same. There were breakdowns in the run game, on the way to being worked over for 257 yards – mostly by shifty back Wendell Smallwood. Guys were routinely chasing down running backs, missing assignments or missing tackles.

The turnovers (and awful penalties) must be investigated further – not individually, but in where they generally occurred, which was when Texas had chances to take control of the game, their existence as a team. The carelessness is confounding.

This goes beyond being a team finding creative ways to beat themselves. Each fumble and interception felt like lost opportunities, moments to bury football demons, only to have them rear their ugly heads at the worst possible juncture.

Using no excuses – including the fact that 11 of the 22 starters are freshmen or sophomores – the Horns have what it takes to compete. Texas played well enough to win and are a more talented team than the Mountaineers. But, games aren’t played on paper.

Texas’ game planning still needs work, mostly predictable and only buoyed by its occasional explosiveness – though that should be marked in the progress category. This being said, the Longhorns can definitely move the ball on anyone and can stop good teams – when properly motivated.

Coaches can turn up the intensity and competitiveness in practices – pull out the Oklahoma drill, like Miami Dolphins’ head coach Dave Campbell, who managed to make fire out of wet newspaper for a couple weeks.

While typically be a coaching issue, this reeks of something else, something embedded that Strong hasn’t been able to shake from the team. There’s a notable accountability and appreciation issue amongst the players – which can be seen from the television screen.

However, one has to wonder if a significant bulk of this team simply lacks the desire for greatness, because they themselves (individually) know they destined – as the NCAA commercial says – to “go pro in something other than sports.” This isn’t news, or a new concept, but it’s one that requires some investigation.

Let’s be honest about this. Who do they put the burnt orange and white for? It doesn’t seem to be for each other. You notice it in the details.

As one of many similar examples: after Foreman got loose for the 65-yard score – aside from a small bit of head-slapping amongst Foreman and (maybe) 11 of his teammates – there was little celebration on the sideline, relative to most collegiate teams’ congratulatory efforts.

It’s not that they weren’t happy he scored, a number of the players just didn’t care. It’s almost as if they were on a field trip they didn’t ask to attend. Even worse, they seemed resigned to the play being a positive blip on what they knew would be an ultimately negative outcome.

“Hey, we’re going to get on a nice plane, and travel to Morgantown, West Virginia to play football!”

“… Meh. We’re probably going to fuck up anyways. But not me though. I’m talking about one of them.”

It’s smooth, right? It doubles as an appropriate tagline for the 2015 University of Texas football season.

Then, according to some, players were visibly upset about the loss? How is this possible?

Can’t have it both ways.