Confession time.
I think I know less about cars than any male over the age of 12 from any first-world country in the entire world. Don't get me wrong, I know where the steering wheel is and how to put gas in my car, but when my car needed a new battery a year ago, I literally didn't know how to pop the hood of the car when I took it to Auto Zone.
Cars just aren't my thing and I freely acknowledge my limitations.
But, here's the thing, when I'm driving in my car and it's not driving right, I can tell. Just like I don't need to be a doctor to know if I'm sick with the flu. Or a weatherman to know that it's going to be hot outside. Or a chef to know if I'm eating a bad meal.
As Tom Herman has said, none of this is rocket surgery.
Speaking of Herman, he's weirdly a very smart guy, who sometimes hides his smartness whenever someone is pushing one of his buttons and as it turns out, one of his buttons is being asked about football things by people who aren't football people. In his first year on the job, he responded to football questions on numerous occasions by questioning the football acumen of the person asking the questions. If you'll remember all the way back to the spring game, there was a memorable exchange with the Statesman's Brian Davis in which Herman was absolutely perplexed about Davis asking about the offense's ability to run the ball inside the red zone. It's the moment when he asked Anwar Richardson for his opinion on the matter and Anwar gave that look someone gives a person when you know they don't want your real answer.
He's not above asking someone if they can break something down on a chalkboard or explain a coverage if they have inquired about an offensive issue. Just yesterday, someone asked about players like Collin Johnson and Lil'Jordan Humphrey not getting touches for long stretches of the game and whether there was anything that can be tweaked to make that not happen. Herman's response?
"What coverage were (Maryland) in when (the Texas players) went invisible?"
Did someone need to attend a coaching clinic under Herman to have the mental capacity to know that Johnson, who made two monster plays in the game, didn't have a target until the second quarter or catch a ball until the last offensive play of the half or a follow-up target after his huge catch that set up a third quarter touchdown until 2:12 was left in the game?
Understand, I don't really care if Herman gets a little smarmy with the media after the game. What I'm pointing out is a pattern of behavior, which I think extends to the general consensus when it comes to discussion about his offense. In fact, I argued all off-season that I believe he thinks anyone that believes his coaches are the problem, including Tim Beck, simply doesn't know what the hell they're talking about. None of this is rocket surgery, unless failures on the field from his team is being discussed, apparently.
Herman's problem at this very moment is that people with incredibly low football IQs, which on any given day might involve any number of us, can point out the following.
a. The offense, which is his area of extreme expertise and the very thing that led to his hiring, continues to look like a pop-gun caliber unit in an era of offenses looking like bazookas at every turn.
b. In the area of quarterback development, which is another supposed area of extreme expertise, there's been seemingly very little of it.
c. He's literally repeated Charlie Strong's Shawn Watson fiasco.
d. His team was ill-prepared for the start of the game, an issue that Herman admitted after the game he didn't quite know how to solve.
e. His defense played poorly.
f. The opponent was nothing special.
g. The $5 million-per year man going into his second year as head coach in his program was out-coached by a 600K-per year head coach, despite the 600K-per year guy having no head coaching experience and only three weeks of preparation as the guy in charge.
Herman better figure out really quickly that you don't need to know the various layers of the passing tree to understand with certainty he's failing at his job after 14 games as head coach.
Just like this fan base did with Charlie Strong back in week one of the 2015 season, Texas fans are asking questions today about what they have on their hands in the way of their second-year head coach. At some point, all of the confirmation bias one has in his or her body will dissolve away when the bias is stretched beyond its limits. The blind hope, which hadn't been rewarded in any real way on the field in the first year, lasted as long as it took for Herman's team to trail 24-7 after less than a quarter and a half of football on Saturday.
The task in front of Herman moving forward is immense and emphatic.
Make this football team better ... now.
Make the offense better ... now.
Start finding some damn answers ... now.
Because if he doesn't, the person who eventually removes him as head coach, almost certainly won't be able to explain the difference between a flag route and the basics of a zone blitz, although they'll probably have a number for a fantastic realtor.
No. 2 - "We went with the hot hand"...
It was less than two weeks ago when Tom Herman outlined that coming out of training camp, the top three backs on his roster going into the opener were Daniel Young, Tre Watson and Keontay Ingram. In fact, of the 27 carries taken by Texas running backs on Saturday, those three were responsible for 26 of them.
Yet, with the team needing to go 67 yards for the game-winning touchdown with 2:12 remaining in the game, the Texas coaches leaned on a player who hadn't been used virtually all day.
Why?
According to Herman, the coaches went with the hot hand. If by hot hand, he meant one carry for a two-yard touchdown and one reception for six yards through three quarters, I suppose he's right.
What really happened is that the moment Tre Watson fumbled in the fourth quarter at a critical moment in the game, the coaches went safe and retreated to their binkys (the thing my daughter sleeps with every night), as opposed to leaning on their best players.
All of this matters because as the final Texas offensive drive began to take shape, Porter played a critical role in the eventual final downfall, despite the fact that he's not really the back that needs to be on the field when this team goes to five wides in a hurry-up drill. After catching two passes for a net of four yards to open the drive, Porter was involved in one of the most important plays of the game.
Facing a second and 10 from the Maryland 33 yard line, Sam Ehlinger hit Porter in the hands as he was about to run out of bounds for what would have been a gain of about six yards, thus setting up a very manageable third and four from the Maryland 27 yard line. Except Porter dropped the ball. As a byproduct, the Longhorns went from a manageable third down situation to one where Sam Ehlinger felt like he needed to throw a ball up for grabs because of the game situation.
Play your best players. Period. The problem with playing your fourth best players in critical moments is that sometimes they play like fourth-best players.
Very thin margins are the difference between wins and losses. This staff keeps learning this lesson the hard way.
No. 3 - Discussing Sam ...
Going into the fourth quarter on Saturday, Sam Ehlinger had completed 12 of 22 passes for 191 yards and two touchdowns, while leading the team to 29 points on offense.
There were some misses and there were some ducks, but there hadn't been any turnovers, which means that the sophomore starter from Austin Westlake had put together a quarterback rating of 157.5 through three quarters, a number that would have ranked 13th in the nation in national quarterback efficiency in 2017. Coming into the season, if you'd have told me Ehlinger would post a 157.5 ranking over 12 games, I'd have told you Texas might have a chance to win the Big 12.
Unfortunately for Ehlinger, they do play four quarters in a football game. Over those final 15 minutes, Ehlinger completed 9 of 17 passes for 72 yards and two interceptions ... or a 64.99 rating if you're scoring at home.
The byproduct was a final passer rating (117.6) that was actually worse than his final season numbers from a year ago.
Honestly, I'm not sure what to say. I have doubts about Sam. I have doubts about Shane. I have doubts about Tom and Tim. During a podcast a couple of weeks ago, I said that everyone probably needed to wait until the end of week three before making any firm declarations about the quarterback position and that still feels like the smart move to make. However, it might also be the slow move because if Ehlinger’s play leads to a 1-2 record, what kind of season is the team really looking at?
If I'm Herman, I think I'm very seriously considering getting Cameron Rising playing time next week with the idea that he might need to be ready by the TCU game.
Ehlinger will almost certainly start this week against Tulsa, but I have to have to believe his leash will be very short.
No. 4 - Ominous truth ...
On a day when we left game one with more questions about the Texas quarterbacks than we entered the game with, the fortunes of TCU and Oklahoma at the position took on a completely different look.
Down in Norman, Kyler Murray looked like an all-Big 12 quarterback in the making, as he posted a quarterback efficiency number that I didn't think was actually possible ... 301.4.
I'm not making that number up.
Meanwhile, down in Ft. Worth, Shawn Robinson threw for three touchdowns, rushed for two more and generally looked exactly like the Touchdown Jesus at quarterback that TCU fans have dreamed him to be.
It's just one game worth of a sample size for both, but that was the last thing Texas needed on a day when its own situation went sideways and then backwards.
No. 5 - Story-time with Uncle Ketch ...
Disclaimer: I fully acknowledge that this isn't a story that reflects well on me in any way, however I feel like the statute of limitations on detailing these types of things last about a decade. If anyone who was present for any of this story believes confirmation bias has impact the details of the story, feel free to correct me. I know you're out there. I'll give zero names because I remember so very few of them after more than 14 years of separation.
Per
@Grey_Gordon's request, I'm going to tell my Washington D.C. story from August of 2004, which just happens to be one of the nights when I was probably most out of line as the owner/publisher of the website.
Anyway, the Washington D.C. Texas Exes invited me to do a speaking event that summer. At the time, I was 28, single and about as full of shit as I'll probably ever be in my entire life, which is clearly saying something considering I stay in a constant state of full of shit-ness. I didn't know a single person in D.C., but everyone I communicated with leading up to the event promised me that we would rave on this particular Thursday night. So, I showed up with the mindset of getting a little crazy.
As I arrived in D.C., I was met at the airport by the fiancé of the dude that had set up the entire event. It turned out that her fiancé, a member of Orangebloods (at the time), was going to be out of town, but he was so committed to making sure I got to the event with no issues, he sent the woman that was going to be his future wife.
Let me tell you, she was an absolute fox. Generally speaking, I'm not the kind of guy that makes moves on another man's woman, especially when it's a man that has nothing but a good dude to you from the very get-go, however ... from the moment I met this particular woman, I was absolutely spellbound. As she dropped me off at my hotel from the airport, I think I was smitten enough to commit my entire life to her if she would have asked. She freaking had me at hello and she didn't even mean to say the word.
More about her in a little while.
So, a few hours after I arrive in town, I show up at the official Longhorns watch party bar for this speaking event, and it was both a riot of a good time and an absolute booze-fest. More than any group of Texas Exes I have ever partied with, the Longhorns in our nation's capital know how to throw down. Everywhere I turned, people were handing me shots. By the time I was done speaking, I'd had just enough of a buzz that I felt like I might as well step on the gas.
Therefore, a small group of us stayed at the bar for hours. Man, we drank. And drank. And drank. Five-star generals for everyone.
If I remember correctly, by about 1 a.m., there was just four of us remaining ... the foxy fiancé, a male Orangebloods member (great dude!) and another female Texas Ex (who just happened to be an officer within D.C. Exes and later a girlfriend of mine). In addition to the drinking, there turned out to be a lot of flirting between myself and both of the women that were still hanging out.
When it was creeping up to about 1 a.m. and we were at a point where the foxy fiancé was talking about going home, I did the opposite thing I should have done, which is respect the fact that she was the fiancé of an Orangebloods member and never so much as think twice about her in the ways that I was. Instead, I turned on the sweet-talking routine in an effort to take her once and for all. There was actually a point in the conversation when I thought I my sweet-talking was going to succeed, but in the end she went home alone. I might have told her I would have moved her to Austin if she wanted me to. The details are fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure I didn't try to sleep with her as much as I tried to make her my future fiancé.
(Note: A movie metaphor for this moment might be in
A Time to Kill when a married, but trashed Matthew McConaughey flirts with Sandra Bullock but never cheats on his wife even if he thinks about it, except I played Bullock's role with much more direct pleading.)
Anyway, it turned out to be no dice on the foxy fiancé, so the rest of us ended up going to yet another bar for even more drinks. I've never been as drunk as I was at 2 a.m. By the time I stumbled alone back to my hotel, I puked in an outdoor plant for about three consecutive minutes in front of a handful of hotel doormen.
The next morning, I suffered from the worst nausea of my life, so I attempted to murder the nausea with a plate of the worst Mexican food in America. Twenty dollars worth. To my surprise, the D.C. Mexican food (if I can call it that) did actually murder the nausea. Or maybe they murdered each other. All I know is that the food was awful, yet I felt remarkably better by noon.
After I returned to Austin, an email arrived a few days later from guy who had sent his fiancé to pick me up. The sober version of myself had figured his fiancé wouldn't say much to him about my coming onto her because she had played a big role in that situation with some mutual flirting over the course of about 20 shots and six hours of chaperoning. Well, it turns out that she told him about my behavior that night, but completely omitted any role she might have had in the situation.
I felt so horrible about the whole thing that I just fell on the grenade and accepted all responsibility for what happened. While he was incredibly pissed at me, he was a really decent dude about the whole thing. There's not much you can say in your defense to a dude when you try to steal his girl from him, so I just let him give me the business and took the L. If he's out there reading this right now, my man, I'm still incredibly sorry. Absolute dirtbag behavior.
For the record, I believe they never married and I've never once had another drop of alcohol on an out of town trip when I'm scheduled to speak to Texas Exes.
No. 6 - Compare and contrast ...
Full disclosure: I stole this idea from an Orangebloods poster. The idea is to take a couple of names from recruiting yesteryear and look at how things evolved once they stop being prospects and started being players.
We're looking at 2015 wide receivers from the state of prospect this week, partly because one of them had a big week this weekend.
Ex Cedar Hill wide receiver DaMarkus Lodge was a key target for the Longhorns that year as the state's top-rated prospect, but he looked like a potential bust coming into his senior year in 2018 before starting the season yesterday with six catches for 96 yards in a win over Texas Tech. It was the breakout performance he's been waiting for and I thought it would be interesting to see how he stacks up against the other four-star receivers in that class.
So, here we go ...
Lodge (Rivals' No. 7 prospect in Texas): After catching 41 passes for 698 yards as a junior, his performance yesterday has him potentially headed for an NFL future.
Dallas Skyline's Carlos Strickland (Rivals' No. 17 prospect in Texas): Caught the first pass of his career for Kansas State yesterday. Completely flamed out at California.
Gilmer's Blake Lynch (Rivals' No. 26 prospect in Texas): Currently a contributor on defense for Baylor as he enters his junior season, after starting games on both sides of the ball with so-so success a year ago.
South Oak Cliff's J.F. Thomas (Rivals' No. 33 prospect in Texas): As far as I can tell, he never even made it to Texas Tech and got lost in the JUCO circuit.
Those were the only four-star wide receiver prospects in the state that year.
Of the 18 receivers that were ranked in the Rivals Texas Top 100 that year, the only players that have really made big dents as college player outside of Lodge are Texas Tech's Keke Coutee and Arizona State's John Humphrey, who transferred from Oklahoma to Arizona State and caught 12 passes for 177 yards on Saturday.
It's a reminder that there's not much you can do if you recruit from mostly one state and that state turns out a class a players that don't pan out. Even with 20-20 hindsight, there's not much to salvage from that class, even if Lodge has a monster senior season.
No. 7 – Buy or Sell …
BUY or SELL: My season tickets?
(Sell) Oh boy ...
BUY or SELL: Tom Herman is a snake oil salesman whose meteoric rise in the coaching ranks can be attributed to his ability to win in the interview room, masking his significant deficiencies as a coach?
(Sell) He's the head coach at Texas right now because of what he did in the 2015 season at Houston, plain and simple. There wasn't a back-up plan to Herman, not when the Cougars struggled at times in his second season, not when concerns about his profile popped up in the vetting process and not when they bumped Charlie Strong out the door. The concern I've had coming into the season is that it's possible that he just isn't ready for a job like this and that for all of the talent he possesses, perhaps he needed more seasoning. We knew at the time that his track record was limited and this risk you run by going with a young guy is that sometimes they're young. The fact of the matter is that Texas has a coach learning on the job and if he doesn't learn the things he needs to learn quickly, it'll be over.
BUY or SELL: We still have a realistic shot of breaking .500 by season’s end?
(Buy) I still believe this team has a chance to get a little fire in the second half of the season, but the first six games will test the character of this team, as it could easily be 2-4 in a little more than a month from now. Contrary to many reading this column, I thought for the last nine months that Saturday was going to be tricky, so much so that I expected a lot of what happened on Saturday. I'll still go with 7-5 at this point.
BUY or SELL: Tom Herman is still the Texas head coach in 2020?
(Sell) Not unless it gets a lot better, very soon.
BUY or SELL: Shane will start on Saturday against Tulsa?
(Sell) Herman will view a change after one game as a show of panic. I do believe Sam's leash will be short.
BUY or SELL: Despite rhetoric to the contrary, there is not 100 percent buy-in and a division still exists between Strong's players and Herman's players
(Sell) I don't think division in the locker room is an issue at all.
BUY or SELL: In 16 months, Maryland 2.0 will be a popular response to: When did you know Herman was not the guy to be the HC at UT?
(Buy) If the brand of football doesn't change around here in a hurry, he won't make it beyond 16 months and everyone will look at Saturday like they looked at Charlie Strong after the season-opener in South Bend in 2015.
BUY or SELL: You said during the off-season you would take Herman over Jimbo to lead the program moving forward. Do you still believe that?
(Sell) I went with youth and upside during the off-season. I don't know what I believe at this point.
BUY or SELL: Tom Herman has not been telling the truth about the progress of the Texas football team prior to the start of the season, or he just got his coaching butt handed to him by the Maryland staff.
(Sell) I think he has believed every word that has come out of his mouth, which brings to mind a completely different set of questions.
BUY or SELL: Texas is closer to Texas Tech as a program, than we are to OU?
(Buy) What about the last eight seasons is telling you otherwise?
No. 8 – Eternal Randomness of the Spotty Sports Mind …
... Texas was the only ranked team to lose on the opening weekend to an unranked team. Yup, Texas was THAT team.
... Surprise! Alabama is going to **** up a lot of teams this year.
... USC's J.T. Daniels completed 22 of 35 passes for 282 yards, a touchdown and no interceptions in his true freshman debut, while the Trojans racked up more than 500 yards of offense against UNLV.
... Will Grier is better than I thought he was.
... Attaboy, Holton Hill and Poona Ford.
... Garrett Gilbert lost the back-up quarterback job in Carolina to some dude named Taylor Heinicke, which means he's out of a job completely.
... With the release of Dan Bailey this weekend, I reached the point with the Cowboys where I just feel like Sean Lee is wasting his time and I kind of wish he could go somewhere where he could have a chance to play meaningful football. It's the same way I felt about Everson Walls in 1990 when he signed with the Giants.
... Jon Gruden is going to be a disaster in Oakland
... Hard Knocks is going to be sad this week. I won't provide the spoilers.
No. 9 - The List: Top 10 Acting Performances of All-Time ...
This is based only on movies I've seen, which excludes all of the acting in The Princess Bride.
10. Vivien Leigh - Gone With The Wind
9. Denzel Washington - Training Day
8. Robert Deniro - Taxi Driver
7. Angela Bassett - What's Love Got to Do With It
6. Heath Ledger - The Dark Knight
5. Meryl Streep - Sophie's Choice
4. Daniel Day-Lewis - Gangs of New York
3. Jack Nicholson - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
2. Al Pacino - The Godfather II
1. Daniel Day-Lewis - My Left Foot
No. 10 – And Finally...
Dads across the world rejoice!
