My buddy Earl calls it the peanut butter effect. It’s reserved for the woman whom you should think is beautiful, the movie that everyone says you’ll like. Or the football team whose winning record should impress you. But instead there’s that stick-to-the-top-of-your-mouth sensation that isn’t quite right. Can you say Texas Longhorns?
The Burnt Orange crew dispatched Baylor with yet another peanut butter win. Uh, 31-10, bleh, bleh. Sure, Colt McCoy put on a fine performance, but doesn’t he remind you of Major Applewhite without the anger? Don’t get me wrong, he’s the brightest star on the team thus far, and he has Applewhite’s will to win. It’s something Applewhite’s competition, Chris Simms, never had, and probably why Simms will be a small asterisk next to his Daddy’s Hall of Fame NFL career. OK, McCoy is a winner and the only reason the Horns are currently 6-2.
And Mack Brown and company clearly thought I was being sarcastic when I said to just go ahead and dump the ground game. The offensive gurus thought this was the week to pound it up the middle. It was a pathetic failure. For the second week in a row, McCoy was one of the top rushers. He was third with 44 yards on 10 carries behind Vondrell McGee with 50 on nine carries and the increasingly insignificant Jamaal Charles with 56 yards on 16 carries. If you don’t consider the sacks he suffered, McCoy would have been the ground game. This against a Baylor team that stinks. They came close to losing to Texas State a few weeks back and are a pitiful 0-4 in the Big 12. Texas is now, yawn, 2-2. They’ve beaten one team with a winning record all season.
Baylor apparently watched a lot of game film. They knew Texas gives up the short pass easily — the Bears had 32 completions for 284 yards — and Charles likes to run away from tacklers, not through them. One week after the Horns walloped Iowa State, we’re back to reality. This is a young Texas team with a lot of growing up to do. Luckily they’ll get a wounded Nebraska team this weekend at home. But that’s not a gimme. Nothing is the rest of the season for the Horns, who could conceivably drop two more and finish 8-4. And it could be worse. How does 6-6 sound? It’s not inconceivable. Nebraska is a wounded dog ready to rear up and bite someone. Texas might look very tasty. Follow that with a pretty decent Oklahoma State team playing at home, pass-happy Texas Tech in Austin and the Aggies in College Station with their inferiority complex and a desperate coach Fran on the verge of being fired. My guess is Texas will lose only one of the four, probably in an embarrassing fashion to Tech. But, again, it may be a lot worse.
Look for a bloodletting in Austin if this scenario comes to pass. Mack will survive, but he might have to shed his offensive coordinator and few other coaches. Call me Chicken Little, but I’m afraid the sky shows every sign of falling, and it tastes a lot like peanut butter.
This article appears in October 19 • 2007.