‘Tis the season … for the old holiday blues.
While many are being merry and festive, many more people are suffering through the holidays with the doldrums.
The Texas offense has been suffering through the doldrums over the second half of the season as well … but it has nothing to do with the holidays.
The Horns have failed to score 30 or more points in five of their last seven games.
19 against Georgia in the SEC Championship game
17 against Texas A&M
31 against Kentucky
20 against Arkansas
49 against Florida
27 against Vanderbilt
15 against Georgia
We all know how good the Texas defense has been this year. It is a national championship quality unit. But as we’re now on the verge of the start of the playoffs, it’s fair to ask the question, do the Longhorns have enough offensive firepower to win a national championship?
“We all have to be better,” Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian said Monday. “If we want to go achieve what we're trying to achieve, which is go win a national championship, we've all got to take our game to another level.”
That comment from Sarkisian came in response to a question about his trust and belief in Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers and whether he is ready for this moment.
For Sark, the answer is quite simple, Ewers is the leader of this team.
“Quinn kind of embodies a lot that this team has embodied, and that's resiliency,” Sarkisian said. “This guy's going to be ready to go, and he's going to find a way to put us in position to be successful.”
Quinn Ewers is a fighter. There’s no denying that. Texas was his dream school growing up and he was asked about whether being the Texas quarterback has lived up to those dreams, for good and for bad.
“You only think about the good whenever you're a kid, but that's just life though,” Ewers said philosophically. “ I mean, stuff's going to come your way, you’ve just got to keep moving forward, but it's been fun for sure.”
Ewers kept the answer positive but he has certainly experienced his share of troubles in Austin, especially with injuries.
And there is no denying that he just hasn’t been the same since coming back from an oblique strain (and later an ankle sprain). His deep balls float on him, resulting in him relying on far more checkdown passes. His pocket movement has also suffered resulting in more sacks. He has also been more turnover-prone.
Of course, Ewers isn’t the only one to blame with turnovers. The running backs have struggled to hold on to the ball all season. In fact, the Longhorns rank 121st in the country (out of 133 D1 teams) having lost 20 fumbles this season.
“The biggest thing for us offensively, the thing that stands out is one, turnovers have been a problem, and that doesn't mean we can't fix it, but that's been an issue,” said Sarkisian. “It has not been one guy or two guys. It's just been a little bit of a rash each year
“You guys heard me say it numerous times, ‘You get what you emphasize.’ And so we've been hammering home the football here for the past few weeks and we've seen some benefits of that.”
Clemson is a team that can force turnovers. They are tied for 15th in the country with 15 interceptions on the year. They are also tied for 11th in the country having forced 14 fumbles.
“You can tell they practice attacking the ball,” said Sarkisian. “You have to practice creating turnovers, you have to work at it. And you can tell they work at it. You can see the intent in which they go after the ball. And so our intent has to really be of protecting that ball.”
Conversely, Clemson has been very good at not turning the ball over themselves. They’ve only lost three fumbles and six interceptions and are third in the country in turnover margin with a +16.
The Texas defense, which has certainly carried its share of the load for this team (and then some) all season long, will need to be on their game Saturday in order to avoid the upset.
It helps that Texas safety Andrew Mukuba, who transferred from Clemson, spent the previous two seasons going up against the Tigers quarterback Cade Klubnik in practice every day.
Houston Chronicle reporter Kirk Bohls asked Mukuba if he “owned” Klubnik in practice.
“Yeah, a lot of times,” replied Mukuba with a laugh.
Bohls followed up, “Does he know that?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure,” said Mukuba.
Side note: for a game where the two programs have never squared off against each other, there will be plenty of familiarity between the two sides with Mukuba now donning the burnt orange instead of Clemson orange. And of course, there is the well-documented connections that Austin native Klubnik has with several members of the Longhorn team, including Ewers.
Sarkisian said the other problem that has plagued the Texas offense that needs to be fixed is being balanced between the run game and passing game.
That’s code for the run game has to be better.
“I want to run the ball on first down, but I definitely don't want to be second and 11 either,” Sarkisian said. “So sometimes you try to find a ball control passing game to augment or to offset a lack of having the ability to run it.”
The third big issue that has been plaguing this team is penalties.
I dare not, for fear of falling into doldrums of my own, go through the game logs counting the number of times holding penalties and false starts have killed off drives.
“I think we just need to clean up the penalties,” said tight end Gunnar Helm. “We’ve got to establish a run game. We can't play behind the chains, especially in this game and every game going forward, if we get the opportunity to play in it. We can't hurt ourselves as soon as we cross the 50 (yard line). We can't jump on a field goal, which we made and then and then miss the next one. So, you know, it's everyone, it starts with everyone to clean up the penalties.”
Turnovers, sacks, penalties and an inconsistent run game. It’s no wonder the offense has sputtered over the second half of the season. Each and every one of those problem areas are enough to kill a drive.
The Horns absolutely have enough firepower to win a national championship. But as Sark himself said, if they’re going to do that, they need to play better … or else we’ll all be feeling the blues this holiday season.
TWEETS OF INTEREST:
The Longhorns are getting ready to embark on what they hope is a stretch of four more games. It’s something Sark has been preparing for all season.
Also, this segment just further shows Sark is all-in on Ewers and apportions a lot of the blame for the offensive woes on the team as a whole, not just Ewers.
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Can Texas win it all? Absolutely. And I’m not alone in believing that.
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I spent a lot of time in this week’s column outlining what is not going right with Texas’ offense right now. But here is something that is going right. This quote is from this summer so we’re going to have to follow up and ask Sark if he has a team GPA for this past fall.
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Want to know why I’m not picking Penn State to win it all despite the easier CFP path?
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Looks like Baker Mayfield stepped in to save the Sooner’s QB situation for next season.
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In case you missed out on Gronk’s LA Bowl, UNLV had an absolutely sick fake punt. Hopefully Jeff Banks didn’t miss it.
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You think the college football portal is crazy? Can you imagine the chaos in Texas high school football if this bill passes? Especially if Texas ever changes the law to allow high school kids to profit off NIL (which many states already do).
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Dollar bills, y’all.
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Finally … just because it makes me so damn happy that so many people watched Navy beat Army.
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