Hello darkness, my old friend.
Seven games deep into a season that suddenly feels lost inside the abyss that often leads to either Houston or San Antonio in late December, the Texas football program is bro-hugging uncertainty at the most important position in college football.
Perhaps winning a Big 12 title was too much to expect this season. Perhaps competing for a Big 12 Championship spot when November rolls around was expecting too much as well.
If someone wants to point out that everyone is making too big of a fuss out of the Longhorns being 4-3 in the circumstances that currently exist because this team always had some personnel limitations, I might not completely agree with you, but I certainly understand the point being made.
Sill, for all of the hedging of bets over what represents a fair set of first-year expectations, there's no getting around the fact that identifying the correct quarterback choice between Casey Thompson and Hudson Card was a non-negotiable one. It has to happen.
Heading into a two-week break before heading to Waco, I can't say that I fully know what the call should be. After Hudson Card blinked against Arkansas, the obvious call was to turn to Thompson. After Thompson has somewhat blinked in the last three weeks, I'm not sure an obvious call exists.
When it comes to Thompson, there are multiple ways of viewing his current performance.
On one hand, Thompson is currently the Big 12's leading passer in efficiency and is one game removed from posting the single-best half of football that any quarterback in the history of the program has ever had against its No. 1 rival.
On the other hand, take a look at this quarter-by-quarter breakdown of the last 12 quarters of football that Thompson has played:
1st quarter vs. OSU - 7 of 11 for 119 yards, 0 TD, 0 INT, 154.0 rating
2nd quarter vs. OSU - 4 of 8 for 34 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT, 104.1 rating
3rd quarter vs. OSU - 3 of 7 for 26 yards, 0 TD, 0 INT, 75.3 rating
4th quarter vs. OSU - 1 of 2 for 0 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT, 50.0 rating
1st quarter vs. OU - 6 of 8 for 176 yards, 3 TD, 0 INT, 383.6 rating
2nd quarter vs. OU - 4 of 8 for 68 yards, 1 TD, 0 INT, 162.7 rating
3rd quarter vs. OU - 4 of 6 for 30 yards, 0 TD, 0 INT, 108.7 rating
4th quarter vs. OU - 6 of 12 for 114 yards, 1 TD, 0 INT, 155.9 rating
1st quarter vs. TCU - 4 of 7 for 36 yards, 0 TD, 0 INT, 100.3 rating
2nd quarter vs. TCU - 2 of 7 for 9 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT, 10.8 rating
3rd quarter vs. TCU - 3 of 4 for 57 yards, 0 TD, 0 INT, 194.7 rating
4th quarter vs. TCU - 3 of 4 for 40 yards, 1 TD, 0 INT, 241.5 rating
When you dig into the numbers just a little bit, you'll find that ...
a. His completion percentage from the first four games (77.7%) has dropped by more than 20 points (56.7%) since the end of the Texas Tech game.
b. There's too much inconsistency. In six of the 12 quarters of football, Thompson has posted a quarterback efficiency below 110, which represents awfulness. Three of his quarters featured ratings of better than 194.7. Three others were in the rock-solid territory.
c. He's played at least one half of football in each game that ranged from beyond terrible vs. OSU in the second half to not really all that good vs. Oklahoma in the second half and back to pretty awful in the first half against TCU.
The purpose of this column isn't to make a public cry for Thompson to be replaced. As I stated directly following the game, I'd stick with Thompson going into Baylor. Instead, the purpose of this piece of the column is to simply address one of many elephants in the room with regards to this football team.
We're kind of back into the territory where folks are going to wonder if the right quarterback is starting, which isn't where you want to be eight weeks into the season.
As for Card, I haven't heard a lot of loud whispers about discontent from Lakeway since he got the hook in the third quarter against Arkansas. He's kept his head down and seemingly been a pretty good soldier. Still, if I'm Card I'd personally have some questions about the following:
a. When Thompson had a statistically worse half of football vs. TCU than Card had in the first half against Arkansas, Card didn't sniff the field, which would have been an eye-opener for a player likely being told that he needs to prepare like he's a starter because you'll never know when he might be needed ... except apparently really poor play by Thompson isn't when he's needed.
b. Why was Sarkisian so vocally supportive of Thompson when he named Card the starter at quarterback, even to the extent of mostly talking Thompson up and publicly selling him on staying (and not transferring) instead of talking about Card on the day Card actually won the job, but hasn't done the same for Card since the job switched hands?
Right or wrong, I would absolutely feel like I'm in the process of being treated wildly different than Thompson was when the shoe was on the other foot. It would put me in a position where I'd be wondering if I truly have a future in Austin playing football.
So, here we are.
You've got one quarterback that is having an awful quarter of football once out of every two quarters in the last 12 quarters of football and another quarterback that likely wonders why he never had a chance to have 12 quarters.
Whatever happens from here on out through December, the Texas quarterback position can't look like this when we get there.
No. 2 - Improving the offensive line for the 2022 season ...
I think everyone has come to grips with the fact that the Texas offensive line is going to be a group that this program just kind of gets by with what it can from week to week.
There's no magic potion or a genie that can fix what ails this group with five games to go in the season.
On some level, the attention turns to 2022 when this group loses Derek Kerstetter (maybe the team's most important offensive lineman because of his versatility), along with guards Denzel Okafor and Tope Imade.
It leaves a core group of Christian Jones and Andrej Karic at tackle, Junior Angilau and Hayden Conner at guards and Jake Majors at center. I'm not sure there's a single player behind them that remains on the roster that looks like a major contributor for a good offensive line ... ever.
While recruiting is currently slated to add Connor Robertson and Cole Hutson from the 2022 recruiting class, neither should be expected to contribute immediately, especially for a staff that has seemed hesitant to play young players over older players up-front on offense. Even if the Longhorns find a way to land five-star lineman Devon Campbell to top off the 2022 class, the reality is that the Longhorns won't have enough up-front on paper going into the season with this group.
Texas has to achieve some level of success in the transfer portal this off-season. Simple as that. Even if it's just to improve the depth like it did at linebacker this season through the portal, the program can't afford to drop down to the level of current reserves when an injury or two demands on a next man showing up.
In fact, I'd argue that it's so important to find improvement this off-season through transfers that Steve Sarkisian can't afford to sit back and wait for whatever falls from the transfer tree. He needs to shake the tree.
The Longhorns need to have a team of analysts dedicated to the transfer market and part of their daily tasks needs to be following the success and failure of every prospect from the state of Texas that doesn't sign with the Longhorns. If there's a kid playing for UTSA, Utah, USC ... you name it .... and he hails from the Lone Star State, the Longhorns need to be letting people behind the scenes connected to those players know that they have a home if they enter the portal.
All of the schools that sign players from Texas and achieve levels of success with those players need to be treated as farm system prospects. Few states can generate hundreds of developmental prospects like the state of Texas can and the Longhorns have to be ready to take advantage of it. If that means slightly stretching the rules of the grey area into the greeeeeeey area, so be it.
Failure in the transfer market might doom the 2022 season before it ever lifts off if the offensive line issues remain unsolved.
If luck is what happens when opportunity meets preparation, then the Longhorns need to start preparing right now to make their luck.
