In September of 1995, I was a 21-year-old Petty Officer Third Class working as an aviation ordnanceman with VFA-15, an F-18 squadron assigned to the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt. That month we wrapped up a six-month Mediterranean cruise and were pulling into Norfolk. The day we pulled in was one of the luckier days in my life. Everything seemed to go right.
Somehow, I was granted leave as soon as we pulled up to the dock. I didn’t have to travel back to Florida with the squadron. I got to walk right off the boat and go straight to the airport to catch a flight to Dallas to see my friends and family.
My luck continued as I got to the airport. The airline personnel saw me in my dress whites and upgraded my seat to first class.
Then, as luck would have it, a beautiful young lady came walking down the aisle and sat right next to me.
This was my day.
She and I hit it off instantly. The conversation flowed freely and easily. She was flying home to San Diego where she went to college thanks to scholarships she had won in beauty pageants. I regaled her with stories about my time in the Navy and how I would be getting out in the next year with plans to go to school and become a journalist or a lawyer.
Everything just clicked … until the very end.
As we landed in Dallas, I was going to be getting off while she was staying on to continue her flight back to San Diego. I could tell she didn’t want the conversation to end and obviously, I didn’t either. But I didn’t know how to end it smoothly. So, being the idiot I am, just said something like, have a good flight and walked right off … without getting her phone number.
This is not a story of regret. I met another beautiful lady later in life and we celebrate our 15th anniversary next week. I definitely outkicked my coverage with Mindy and I am a blessed man. This is a story about execution.
I failed to execute. I didn’t get her number and had no way of finding her. I consoled myself by saying that it wasn’t truly a loss because she lived in San Diego and I was stationed in Jacksonville for another year. But the failure to execute really stung me when a few months later, I was sent on a detachment to San Diego to provide support for one of our pilots who would be going through Top Gun.
This girl was beautiful, smart and funny. In other words, she was way out of my league. I was lucky just to stay in the game with her right up until the very end.
The Texas Longhorns don’t need a bottle of Felix Felicis to pull off the upset against Alabama this week, but they do need to execute.
KEYS TO VICTORY ON DEFENSE
It should come as no surprise that one of the biggest keys to beating Alabama will be to try to limit the damage that quarterback Bryce Young can inflict on you. All the reigning Heisman Trophy winner did last week was throw five first-half touchdown passes while putting up a stat line of 18/28 for 195 yards.
What makes Young special is his ability to consistently hit the right read. Three different Tide receivers caught at least five passes in week one, and ten Tide players caught a pass last week.
“He’s got a natural instinct of passing the football,” said Texas Head Coach Steve Sarkisian. “He can feel things happen and has a natural understanding of route combinations based on coverages and then he’s willing to cut it loose.”
In order to keep Young from absolutely torching them, the Longhorns are going to need to get pressure on Young, while also containing him in the pocket. As if his passing ability wasn’t enough, Young ran for 100 yards on five carries. His scrambling ability is a new wrinkle to his game.
“The thing last week that was a little different was he was running,” Sarkisian said. “When things broke down, he took off and ran, which had not really been his MO.”
In an ideal world, that pressure would come from the front four, allowing the defense not to have to resort to blitzes and schemes (which Young can read and beat).
That is exactly what Texas was able to do against Louisiana-Monroe last week. The defensive line accounted for all three sacks Saturday. Barryn Sorrell had a sack and a half, Keondre Coburn had a sack and Moro Ojomo added half of a sack.
I know Alabama is much, much, much more talented than ULM, but it was encouraging nonetheless that UT’s defensive line, which was such a disappointment last season, shined brightly in week one.
“(Texas) played much better last week on defense than maybe some of the times last year when people scored points on them,” said Alabama head coach Nick Saban. “So this is a very improved defensive team to me.”
If there is one weakness on the Alabama team, it’s on the offensive line. The Utah State Aggies were able to collect only one sack last week, but the Aggies put Young under a lot of pressure.
“They did a lot of stunting and moving up front, which we sort of expected,” Saban said. “Sometimes we didn’t always pick it up exactly right and they were able to create some negative plays with it.”
This could be Barryn Sorrell’s time to shine. The second-year defensive end had a sack and a half against ULM.
“He showcased what he’s been doing this whole fall camp,” said nose tackle Keondre Coburn. “I think having him on the edge is going to help us a lot. He can show that he can pass rush and get to the quarterback.”
OTHER THOUGHTS ON BAMA’S OFFENSE AND TEXAS’ RESPONSE:
- One thing that limits sacks is that Bama doesn’t take many shots downfield, preferring to get the ball out quickly and let their receivers do the work. As well as Young played last week, he still averaged only seven yards per pass. However, he distributed the ball very well with five different receivers all having at least five catches.
"They are a pass first offense,” Sarkisian said. “They want to throw the ball, they want to put the ball in his hands and they want to let him cut it loose, and he’s earned their trust to go and do that.”
- Texas is going to have to contain Jahmyr Gibbs. The junior transfer from Georgia Tech carried the ball only nine times last week and still averaged more than 10 yards per carry.
- During my re-watch of the ULM game, I couldn’t help but notice Ovie Oghuofo kept getting swallowed up inside during run plays. He’s going to have to be better setting the edge in the run game.
- I did see one run play for ULM that caught my eye and if I was a Bama coach I would copy it for this week. The Warhawks sent their tight end in motion then sprinted out to the flat as soon as the ball was snapped. DeMarvion Overshown, playing the edge, followed the TE out to the flat. The ULM running back then took the handoff and hit the newly vacated hole on the edge for a nice pickup.
- Jase McClellan is a weapon for Bama catching the ball out of the backfield. Texas’s linebackers are going to need to keep their eyes on the running back when he is in the game, while not letting him draw them out of position so that other players can beat them instead.
- Jermain Burton and Traeshon Holden are two very talented wide receivers. This should be a good challenge for Texas’s DBs, who I thought played very well this week.
- D'Shawn Jamison’s light has turned on. I predicted a few weeks ago that Jamison would have as many interceptions this year as he’s had his entire career so far (four). Well he has one pick already. He also became the first Longhorn in history to have both a blocked punt and a punt return for a touchdown.
KEYS TO VICTORY ON OFFENSE
Nobody can deny that Quinn Ewers’ had a shaky start as QB1 of the Texas Longhorns. Ewers’ first complete pass of his college career was to the other team. But Ewers shook that off and actually had a good rest of the game.
It is tempting to write that off as he was just playing against ULM and none of that will carry over to what happens this Saturday against Alabama. But that’s not entirely true.
In thinking about this game and how Sark will attack his old team, I decided to rewatch the video of him teaching his Alabama offense at a coaches’ clinic in January 2020, and it was quite illuminating.
“We don’t change week to week,” Sarkisian said. “We don’t go into the game saying ‘this week, we’re going to do it this way.’ No. It is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 football (talking about progression reads). That is how we play. We don’t vary. We don’t say, ‘Hey, we want to do it this way this week.’ I don’t see how kids can learn like that.”
In other words, we will see the same concepts and plays against Alabama as what we saw against ULM. That should, conceivably, help calm any jitters Ewers may have going into what will be the biggest game of his young career.
I talked last week about how luckily for Ewers, he doesn’t have to do it all on his own. With Bijan Robinson, Xavier Worthy, Jordan Whittington and Ja’Tavion Sanders, defenses have plenty of options they need to worry about.
Robinson touched the ball only 13 times last week and still collected 111 yards and two touchdowns. You can expect him to see the ball much more this week.
“This guy’s as good of an all-around back as there is in the country,” Saban said about Robinson this week.
Sarkisian prides himself on establishing a run game. Saban knows that and will surely be scheming to take Robinson out of the game and shut down Texas' run game.
But again, Sark himself tells us in the old coaches clinic video how he is likely to respond if that happens.
“The moment you say we’re going to take away the run, our system is built to throw RPOs,” Sarkisian said. “So now, what do we do? We have to make you defend throws down the field. We are going to hard play pass you and take our shots down the field. Now you’ve got to block them a little longer, you’ve got to do those things a little longer, do you have options for the quarterback to let the ball get out of his hands and play a little quicker? Now we’re going to run crossers at you. Everybody is catching the ball on the move over and over and over.”
“The whole idea to me is having an offense that you have layers to,” Sarkisian continued. “We have to build the layers, even as the game goes, we have to build the layers as we go.”
In order to build those layers, Ewers is going to need to connect on those deep balls he missed last week. Without the threat of the deep ball, the safeties can come down and help stop the run and still be in position to take out all of the crossing routes.
Sark didn’t seem concerned about Ewers missing on those throws.
“I think ultimately, for his growth and our growth as an offense, our vertical passing game has got to come to life,” Sarkisian said. “I believe it will. It never hasn’t in our system.”
Ewers’ ability to been “even-keeled” during games paid off last week when he bounced back from his opening drive where he missed on the deep ball and followed that up with his first career interception (which came before his first career completion).
“I didn’t feel for a second where he got flustered or was out of whack by any means,” Sarkisian said after the game Saturday. “I thought he was very composed.”
Ewers is going to need to keep his composure against Alabama this week. The entire defensive is stacked with playmakers.
THE OFFENSIVE LINE’S BIGGEST TEST
I thought the freshmen offensive linemen held their own pretty well last week. But as I talked about with @Ketchum in the postgame show late Saturday night, the transition from ULM to Alabama is the equivalent of doing fourth grade math versus trigonometry.
“They’re big, especially on the interior,” said Sarkisian when asked about Alabama’s front seven on defense. “They’ve got a lot of people they can play on the interior. So a lot of time, the balls, the run game, kind of gets pushed to the perimeter because they do a good job internally. On the edge, they’ve got two really good players. When you start thinking about Will Anderson, Dallas Turner and Chris Braswell, all three are very athletic, play with great effort, great motor and have the skill sets to win one-on-one pass rush opportunities.”
I don’t believe it’s hyperbole to say that if Banks can hold up well against Will Anderson and Dallas Turner, that he’ll put himself in position this week to begin to be talked about as a first-round offensive tackle in three years time. This will be the game which a lot of scouts pull up the tape to see how he did against an NFL quality player.
The area of the offensive line that concerns me the most remains Christian Jones at right tackle. He gave up a pressure and a sack against ULM. He continues to struggle with speed rushes because he just doesn’t have quick enough feet to position himself to win those battles. The problem is, I don’t foresee offensive coordinator and offensive line coach Kyle Flood making the call this week to supplant Jones with Cam Williams, who didn’t see many snaps at all. In fact, Flood kept Jones and freshman right guard Cole Hutson on the field against ULM long after he pulled the rest of the starters in order to give them more reps. I just don’t see how a lack of reps is what’s holding Jones back, considering he’s a senior who has already graduated from school. He’s had plenty of reps. He is who he is.
OTHER THOUGHTS ON TEXAS’ OFFENSE AND ALABAMA’S DEFENSE:
- Ja'Tavion Sanders looked like a star Saturday night. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he finished with more receiving yards (85) than any tight end since Jermichael Finley. What I know Sarkisian said Bama has probably had its game plan in place for a couple of months now, but what Sanders was able to do Saturday will probably force Saban to rethink some of his plans for this week.
- Casey Cain continues to flash. The redshirt freshman reportedly pulled in multiple touchdowns during fall camp and he came up with a 43-yard catch against ULM Saturday. It should be interesting to watch his development this season.
- The Longhorns ran a lot of 12-personnel Saturday (one running back, two tight ends). I expect to see a lot more of it this Saturday, but with more wrinkles thrown in. I think we’ll see one or two trick plays.
THE FINAL KEY…DON’T BEAT YOURSELVES
It is easy to let the circumstances of this game overwhelm you. Sark keeps talking about all of the new faces on the team this year. Well this will be their first really big game with the number one team in the country coming in as well as the ESPN and Fox pregame shows. Every college football fan in the country will be paying attention. But the Longhorns have to set all of that aside and focus on themselves.
“To play well on Saturday, you need to have really good Monday that a really good Tuesday and then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, so on and so forth,” Sarkisian said. “I think they really understand it. As youthful as we are at some spots, I think we've got some really key veteran players that understand it. And that have really bought into the messaging from us.”
Yes, Alabama will be 20-plus point favorites at kickoff, but Sarkisian isn’t worried about the betting spread.
“Culture a lot of times can have the opportunity to beat talent when the culture is really strong when the chemistry is really strong,” Sarkisian said. “We’ve got to make sure our chemistry is right Saturday as well that we're playing as a team and not just talented individuals.”
If the Horns need any motivation, they need look no further than Momma Finkley … she ain’t scared.
Last edited:
