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As always, we'll give analysis along with the tiered rankings (now final, and updated to account for the entire regular season) which are derived via a proprietary scoring formula, and based on the following advanced charting statistics (please note the distinctions in how tackles, etc. are counted and why there these stats will always differ from the official university stats):
Click Images to Enlarge
Defensive Snap Counts By Week and Percentage of Total Defensive Snaps Played (Regular Season - FINAL)
Defensive Productivity Market-Share Percentages and Snaps per Production Caused Metrics (Regular Season - FINAL)
Just like that, it's the end of the Texas regular season.
We have to remember one thing here at the Deep Dig: this means that the market-share rankings on defense have now come to an end, despite the fact that Texas still has two more games to play between the Big 12 Championship and the bowl game TBD. Sure, we'll continue to do the analysis in the same way for the remaining games, but each of those breakdowns will go into its own template and spreadsheet as The Deep Dig process is a regular-season process.
The reason why? Well, to be quite honest, it wasn't by design. Simply, Texas hasn't been in a position to make us think much about how to handle postseason charting and analysis of the games in recent years. They've been a shitty football team that doesn't usually make bowl games, much less conference championships during the Deep Dig era. In order to keep the records of each historical season stable and consistent, we can't just go adding on more games into the wood pile this year. Because that would make us unable to go back and compare players' respective seasons to one another in a longitudinal manner comparing apples to apples.
With this said, how good does it feel to have a Big 12 Championship game before us? The Deep Dig was originally started to channel "the anticipation of a future Texas monster," and, while we haven't reached quite that level yet, this is certainly the clearest sign thus far that we are truly on the road back to any sort of monstrous dominance. Not only is Texas playing the Big 12 Championship, it is playing in the Big 12 Championship against a fellow Top 10 team in its hated opponent, Oklahoma. The big boys are back atop the conference. Texas is firmly in the national mix. Things are right in the world, regardless of the game's outcome, because this is how seasons should come to and end around here.
So, we'll have time to break down the season totals and what means what once things start to wind down and we shift into bowl-preparation mode, but for now, we look ahead to the biggest game in many, many years for the Longhorns program, and we discuss why this Texas defense will need to play much better versus OU than it did versus Kansas (despite keeping KU to a low score) to stay competitive against a high-powered Sooners outfit looking for revenge:
On the defensive line, Texas needs to play better all around. It needs a better pass rush, it needs to anchor and get its run fits more sound and it need to play sound and strong with gap integrity against a rejuvenated run-game of the Sooners that was not yet hitting on all cylinders in the first meeting as OU was reeling in the wake of losing star runner Rodney Anderson. On the season, the three "starting" members of the unit have not been terrible, and in the case of Chris Nelson and Charles Omenihu, have actually been pleasant surprises.
Omenihu clearly made the biggest strides, finishing 2018 with an almost 10% market-share of the defense's total productivity. Compared to his junior season (3.92%), it was a huge leap. Yes, you can say that he benefitted from playing more snaps in 2018 (551 as a junior versus 645 as a senior), but his snaps per production caused number fell from 15.1 in 2017 to 8.1 in 2018, meaning he was almost double as effective on a per-snap basis.
If you look at Omenihu's sacks + QB hits + QB pressures + TFLs from 2018, here's how he's stacked up against some of the better Texas defenders dating back to the 2015 campaign, which spans the now four years our records on the defensive side have been kept in the same way:
Charles Omenihu (2018): 37.5
Charles Omenihu (2017): 18
Malik Jefferson (2017 team-lead): 30.5
Malcolm Roach (2016 team-lead): 37
Hassan Ridgeway (2015 team-lead): 30.5
Charles was the best disruptor behind the line of scrimmage that Texas has seen over the course of the last four seasons, but his running mate on the other side of the football struggled. Breckyn Hager has had a disappointing season on the traditional stat lines, but it's not been a disaster if looking a little deeper. He actually finished the season with a sub-10 snap per production efficiency metric, which means he's been (in an overall manner) just fine if we're looking at things over the course of the sample at hand. The problem is, the sample at hand has spanned bad defenses for the most part.
Still, Omenihu, Hager and Nelson (who yesterday accepted an invite to play in the East-West Shrine Game) are solid enough up front to get the job done versus OU if they play at their best. Texas played its worst game disruption-wise behind the line of scrimmage the last time it played OU and needs much more from these three to make it a two-fer, because the depth behind them has been largely ineffective. This is worrisome for 2019 as all three leave, but it is a worry for another day.
At the linebacker position, Texas simply needs its most productive player back in Gary Johnson. Even having missed the KU game and at least a half of another due to a targeting penalty, he ran away with the market-share race seemingly before it ever got started. Anthony Wheeler is not fast enough to handle OU's speed, and is stiff in engaging good offensive linemen at the second level, so an interesting decision should be made as to whether to start Jeffrey McCulloch at the mike next to Johnson in his return, as McCulloch has speed for days. This would mean more Joseph Ossai at McCulloch's typical B-Backer spot, who, based on the eyeballs and the snaps per production on a limited (but decent enough) sample of snaps.
With all this said, we don't see the Horns staff benching a senior leader like Wheeler in his final non-bowl game at Texas. The way they can get out of playing him for a ton of snaps is by using the personnel grouping we saw three times versus Kansas (in something of an OU preview?) where a very fast and cat-like Anthony Cook, who is a freshman cornerback, came in and aligned himself at the mac position in dime packages. Fans saw how his speed can elevate the pass rush on the final defensive play versus KU. It's something we'll be watching most closely is how Texas handles Wheeler in and out of dime and if unleashing Cook on an unsuspecting Kyler Murray may be something of a secret weapon.
In the secondary, Texas needs Brandon Jones back and it needs to not get burned by Hollywood Brown and CeeDee Lamb. Davante Davis and Kris Boyd were each burned once in the first iteration of this matchup and another burn-free game like Texas played versus KU would certainly be an item on the winning menu for the Horns. With this said, Kansas really sucks and no one should be burned by those offensive weapons. The real key is missed tackles, though. Texas has mostly cleaned up its missed tackle issues in recent weeks (mostly ...), allowing only 4 versus Iowa State and 14 this week versus Kansas. That's a total of 18 missed tackles over the last two weeks which is one less than it generated in its game versus Oklahoma (19).
We say (mostly ...) because nickel corner PJ Locke continues to be brutal in this department. He had missed four tackles against a bad KU team before we were even halfway through the second quarter and his five on the day really inflated what was otherwise a decent tackling performance by the unit as a whole. He's missed 28 tackles this season, which is an astounding 12 tackles worse than the previous record for most whiffs on a given year dating back to 2015 (Peter Jinkens, 2015, 16 missed tackles).
Locke will not be benched for his continued struggles for the same reason Wheeler will not; seniority and a spilled-blood mentality that even the most progressive and open-minded coaches will always struggle to get away from. It is simply not in the cards.
In his final game versus Oklahoma, P.J. Locke, who missed three tackles himself against the Sooner earlier this season and was severely burned once in coverage, will need to play his best game of the season in order to help Texas secure a victory.
And who's to say he can't?
As we said in the open, we're just happy to be here. Now for the offense ...
The Absolute BEST in family and cosmetic dentistry for the Houston-Memorial Area
Now Accepting New Patients --- 281-293-9140
As always, we'll give analysis along with the tiered rankings (now final, and updated to account for the entire regular season) which are derived via a proprietary scoring formula, and based on the following advanced charting statistics (please note the distinctions in how tackles, etc. are counted and why there these stats will always differ from the official university stats):
Click Images to Enlarge
Defensive Snap Counts By Week and Percentage of Total Defensive Snaps Played (Regular Season - FINAL)
Defensive Productivity Market-Share Percentages and Snaps per Production Caused Metrics (Regular Season - FINAL)
Just like that, it's the end of the Texas regular season.
We have to remember one thing here at the Deep Dig: this means that the market-share rankings on defense have now come to an end, despite the fact that Texas still has two more games to play between the Big 12 Championship and the bowl game TBD. Sure, we'll continue to do the analysis in the same way for the remaining games, but each of those breakdowns will go into its own template and spreadsheet as The Deep Dig process is a regular-season process.
The reason why? Well, to be quite honest, it wasn't by design. Simply, Texas hasn't been in a position to make us think much about how to handle postseason charting and analysis of the games in recent years. They've been a shitty football team that doesn't usually make bowl games, much less conference championships during the Deep Dig era. In order to keep the records of each historical season stable and consistent, we can't just go adding on more games into the wood pile this year. Because that would make us unable to go back and compare players' respective seasons to one another in a longitudinal manner comparing apples to apples.
With this said, how good does it feel to have a Big 12 Championship game before us? The Deep Dig was originally started to channel "the anticipation of a future Texas monster," and, while we haven't reached quite that level yet, this is certainly the clearest sign thus far that we are truly on the road back to any sort of monstrous dominance. Not only is Texas playing the Big 12 Championship, it is playing in the Big 12 Championship against a fellow Top 10 team in its hated opponent, Oklahoma. The big boys are back atop the conference. Texas is firmly in the national mix. Things are right in the world, regardless of the game's outcome, because this is how seasons should come to and end around here.
So, we'll have time to break down the season totals and what means what once things start to wind down and we shift into bowl-preparation mode, but for now, we look ahead to the biggest game in many, many years for the Longhorns program, and we discuss why this Texas defense will need to play much better versus OU than it did versus Kansas (despite keeping KU to a low score) to stay competitive against a high-powered Sooners outfit looking for revenge:
On the defensive line, Texas needs to play better all around. It needs a better pass rush, it needs to anchor and get its run fits more sound and it need to play sound and strong with gap integrity against a rejuvenated run-game of the Sooners that was not yet hitting on all cylinders in the first meeting as OU was reeling in the wake of losing star runner Rodney Anderson. On the season, the three "starting" members of the unit have not been terrible, and in the case of Chris Nelson and Charles Omenihu, have actually been pleasant surprises.
Omenihu clearly made the biggest strides, finishing 2018 with an almost 10% market-share of the defense's total productivity. Compared to his junior season (3.92%), it was a huge leap. Yes, you can say that he benefitted from playing more snaps in 2018 (551 as a junior versus 645 as a senior), but his snaps per production caused number fell from 15.1 in 2017 to 8.1 in 2018, meaning he was almost double as effective on a per-snap basis.
If you look at Omenihu's sacks + QB hits + QB pressures + TFLs from 2018, here's how he's stacked up against some of the better Texas defenders dating back to the 2015 campaign, which spans the now four years our records on the defensive side have been kept in the same way:
Charles Omenihu (2018): 37.5
Charles Omenihu (2017): 18
Malik Jefferson (2017 team-lead): 30.5
Malcolm Roach (2016 team-lead): 37
Hassan Ridgeway (2015 team-lead): 30.5
Charles was the best disruptor behind the line of scrimmage that Texas has seen over the course of the last four seasons, but his running mate on the other side of the football struggled. Breckyn Hager has had a disappointing season on the traditional stat lines, but it's not been a disaster if looking a little deeper. He actually finished the season with a sub-10 snap per production efficiency metric, which means he's been (in an overall manner) just fine if we're looking at things over the course of the sample at hand. The problem is, the sample at hand has spanned bad defenses for the most part.
Still, Omenihu, Hager and Nelson (who yesterday accepted an invite to play in the East-West Shrine Game) are solid enough up front to get the job done versus OU if they play at their best. Texas played its worst game disruption-wise behind the line of scrimmage the last time it played OU and needs much more from these three to make it a two-fer, because the depth behind them has been largely ineffective. This is worrisome for 2019 as all three leave, but it is a worry for another day.
At the linebacker position, Texas simply needs its most productive player back in Gary Johnson. Even having missed the KU game and at least a half of another due to a targeting penalty, he ran away with the market-share race seemingly before it ever got started. Anthony Wheeler is not fast enough to handle OU's speed, and is stiff in engaging good offensive linemen at the second level, so an interesting decision should be made as to whether to start Jeffrey McCulloch at the mike next to Johnson in his return, as McCulloch has speed for days. This would mean more Joseph Ossai at McCulloch's typical B-Backer spot, who, based on the eyeballs and the snaps per production on a limited (but decent enough) sample of snaps.
With all this said, we don't see the Horns staff benching a senior leader like Wheeler in his final non-bowl game at Texas. The way they can get out of playing him for a ton of snaps is by using the personnel grouping we saw three times versus Kansas (in something of an OU preview?) where a very fast and cat-like Anthony Cook, who is a freshman cornerback, came in and aligned himself at the mac position in dime packages. Fans saw how his speed can elevate the pass rush on the final defensive play versus KU. It's something we'll be watching most closely is how Texas handles Wheeler in and out of dime and if unleashing Cook on an unsuspecting Kyler Murray may be something of a secret weapon.
In the secondary, Texas needs Brandon Jones back and it needs to not get burned by Hollywood Brown and CeeDee Lamb. Davante Davis and Kris Boyd were each burned once in the first iteration of this matchup and another burn-free game like Texas played versus KU would certainly be an item on the winning menu for the Horns. With this said, Kansas really sucks and no one should be burned by those offensive weapons. The real key is missed tackles, though. Texas has mostly cleaned up its missed tackle issues in recent weeks (mostly ...), allowing only 4 versus Iowa State and 14 this week versus Kansas. That's a total of 18 missed tackles over the last two weeks which is one less than it generated in its game versus Oklahoma (19).
We say (mostly ...) because nickel corner PJ Locke continues to be brutal in this department. He had missed four tackles against a bad KU team before we were even halfway through the second quarter and his five on the day really inflated what was otherwise a decent tackling performance by the unit as a whole. He's missed 28 tackles this season, which is an astounding 12 tackles worse than the previous record for most whiffs on a given year dating back to 2015 (Peter Jinkens, 2015, 16 missed tackles).
Locke will not be benched for his continued struggles for the same reason Wheeler will not; seniority and a spilled-blood mentality that even the most progressive and open-minded coaches will always struggle to get away from. It is simply not in the cards.
In his final game versus Oklahoma, P.J. Locke, who missed three tackles himself against the Sooner earlier this season and was severely burned once in coverage, will need to play his best game of the season in order to help Texas secure a victory.
And who's to say he can't?
As we said in the open, we're just happy to be here. Now for the offense ...
