Ketch's 10 Thoughts From The Weekend (Time to stop braking)
- Thread starter Ketchum
- Start date
100%. Was yelling this at the TV on Saturday. When they bring the defense into the box to try and stop the run and clog the short and intermediate passing game AND your QB is struggling to complete a pass deeper than 15 yards, you have to get creative to get the ball in the hands of playmakers in space. Gundy made this transistor in 2Q / 3Q and it opened up their offense and running game.
There's no question the program has to keep improving.
- Jan 14, 2011
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@Ketchum wby you gotta make me tear up in front of my wife with that last item?
She cannot stop laughing at her “protector” crying at a happy dog.
She cannot stop laughing at her “protector” crying at a happy dog.
Ketch I think playing a qb who doesn’t give you the best chance to win that game for long term education threatens losing the team. I feel like this staff doesn’t put winning first. Other coaches change their strategies to suit players. Do whatever it takes to win. Feels like sark knows one way to win and if it doesn’t work oh well.
Number-5 said:
B/S - Sark is acutely aware that the entire universe is questioning why we’ve lost double digit leads to lose games, but is unaware of how to fix it?
(Buy) He's a smart dude.
A guy who has the juice to take Texas to the playoff and compete weekly and well in the SEC, doesn't fail at the same thing over and over and over...
He is actively working himself back to an OC job.
It's maddening to watch him shrivel and slowly, painfully and surely give up leads in 2nd half.
B/S - Sark is acutely aware that the entire universe is questioning why we’ve lost double digit leads to lose games, but is unaware of how to fix it?
(Buy) He's a smart dude.
A guy who has the juice to take Texas to the playoff and compete weekly and well in the SEC, doesn't fail at the same thing over and over and over...
He is actively working himself back to an OC job.
It's maddening to watch him shrivel and slowly, painfully and surely give up leads in 2nd half.
This. Ewers was so far off in every way. Passes were way off, any potential pressure, he would throw it away, and even on majority of passes he went with his first read. Later, couldnt handle the snap.
I hear what you are saying about developing your young qb, but this was over the top poor performance that he needed to be pulled even for himself.
I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere but what was the deal with Savion Red? Why was he so upset?
I’m sorry but those of y’all saying Ewers is automatically going in the first round next year are cra cra. I’ve seen some flashes that he’s got some big time talent, but that’s it. No way in hell I take a gamble on a first round pic with what I’ve seen so far. Would you?
I mean we have the most talented players in the conference so what does that say?
The Ewers/Card decision comp isn't DJ/Klubnik at Clemson. The comp is going back to 2003, when Vince Young was benched late in favor of Chance Mock, who led Texas to a late comeback win over Texas Tech.
That decision didn't ruin Vince or stunt his growth as a young QB. What it did instead is gave Texas a win instead of a loss.
That decision didn't ruin Vince or stunt his growth as a young QB. What it did instead is gave Texas a win instead of a loss.
I could care less whether Ewers gains important information by playing in the fourth quarter. I care that the TEAM wins the game.... not Ewers or Sarkisian. If Ewers is wasting downs by overthrowing his receivers, Sarkisian should have pulled Ewers and put in Card for a series or two.... Sarkisian needs to grow some testicles, Sarkisian needs to be decisive.
None of this is rocket science.
Twenty games into the Steve Sarkisian era in Austin has provided us with a snapshot of what must improve in order for his tenure to ultimately be viewed as a success.
* Texas must play better on the road (1-6 record in true road games).
* Texas must learn how to win close games (3-8 record in games decided by one score).
* Texas must learn how to truly be all gas, no brakes (5 blown double-digit second half leads in 20 games)
Typically, when one of these issues pop up, all three of them pop. At the same time.
Too often under Sarkisian, the Longhorns start extremely fast, build up a multi-score lead and then slowly lose its grip of the game in the second half, before fading off into the sunset.
Teams go into games against Sarkisian's Longhorns knowing that if they can drag them into the deep waters of a fourth quarter game, they'll be able to drown Sarkisian's players. Don't take my word for it. Just look at what Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire told his team after they overcame a 14-point deficit in the second half to beat the Longhorns in overtime.
"I told you they were going to break and they did," McGuire told his team in the locker room immediately following the win over Texas.
It's easy to imagine that Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy offered a similar speech to his players on Saturday in Stillwater when the Cowboys trailed at halftime and were down by 10 points with 2:10 remaining in the third quarter.
Through a very narrow prism, it would be easy to blame the players for what happened on Saturday in allowing the Cowboys to close the game on a 17-3 run in the final 17 minutes of the game. After all, Quinn Ewers did not play well. The defense stopped tackling. The special teams success faded after a fantastic start.
Yet, the further you expand the prism through which we look at these defeats, the more and more that it becomes obvious that this is a trend that falls at the feat of the team's head coach... the likable Sarkisian.
Through the first 20 games of his coaching tenure in Austin, Sarkisian has mostly looked like a Major League starting pitcher that can give you five innings and two trips through the batting order, but if you ask him to go through the line-up a third time... the results are rarely good.
Consider the following trend
2021 Oklahoma: Texas scored 38 points in the first half and held a three-score lead, only to ne held to 10 points in the second half.
2021 Oklahoma State - Texas scored 17 points in the first half and held an 11 point lead in the third quarter, only to be held to seven second-half points.
2021 Baylor - Texas took an 11 point lead with 8:49 left in the third quarter, only to score three points in the final 23:49 of the game, while the Bears closed the game on a 21-3 run.
2022 Texas Tech - The Longhorns scored 24 first half points and held a 31-17 lead with 4:27 left in the third quarter, only to allow Tech to run off a 20-3 run to close out the game.
2022 Oklahoma State - The Longhorns scored 31 points and led my multiple scores on three different occasions, but were held to 3 second half points and were outscored 24-3 over the final 32:41 of game time.
These are the games that have defined Sarkisian's career thus far and the storylines are all the same. How different might last season have looked if the Longhorns had been able to close out any of those three games? How different might this season's run for a spot in the Big 12 championship game look if the Longhorns hadn't been outscored by a combined 54-6 after reaching its zenith in both games.
It's all gas, no breaks for Sarkisian and his teams right up until the moment when a head coach like Lincoln Riley, Mike Gundy, Dave Aranada or McGuire makes an adjustment to what is happening to their teams against the Longhorns and then Sarkisian rarely displayed the ability to make an adjustment to correspond with the opponent's adjustment.
That's where we are right now.
Until Sarkisian can start making second half adjustments after the opposing teams have made its adjustments, this is going to be the story of his tenure.
Closes losses... on the road... after holding big first-half (and sometimes second-half leads). The ability to finish games isn't just a player issue. It starts at the top with Sarkisian.
Of course, you don't have to believe me.
You can listen to McGuire. You can look at the box scores. You can just use your eyes.
Again, none of this is rocket science.
No. 2 - About pulling Ewers for Hudson Card on Saturday ...
This is going to be an unpopular opinion, but I wouldn't have pulled Ewers in favor of Hudson Card on Saturday.
I'm a subscriber to the belief that young quarterbacks learn the most from extreme adversity and if you believe that Ewers is going to be the player that leads the program out of the woods in 2023, you've got to let him weather a few storms, even if it means losing an occasional game.
Yes, I know that Dabo Swinney pulled starting quarterback DJ Uiagalelei on Saturday in the third quarter in favor of my guy Cade Klubnik, a decision that Klubnik rewarded his coach with by helping lead a second-half come back win.
I'm just not sure I view the two decisions that Swinney and Sarkisian were forced to make are apples to apples. Maybe apples to bananas. Two things stand out about comparing the two situations.
1. You can make the case that Klubnik is truly the long-term answer for the Tigers at the quarterback position. As much as I'm a fan of Card, he's not the long-term answer at the quarterback position for the Longhorns. That would be Ewers.
2. Swinney made the call in the third quarter when the Tigers were losing by two scores. Despite Ewers' struggles, the Longhorns had a double-digit lead with 2:41 left in the third quarter. Are you really going to pull your starter in a road game that you're winning when going to the fourth quarter, especially when that player is in the middle of his first career road start?
This isn't the same situation as Card making his first career start at Arkansas last year when the Longhorns were getting run out of the stadium.
I'd argue that when Oklahoma State tied the game with 9:54 remaining in the fourth quarter that it was exactly the moment that you needed Ewers to experience as a young player, regardless of the final outcome.
Michael Jordan once said, "My failure gave me strength, my pain was my motivation."
It won't make the sting of Saturday's loss feel any better, but Ewers will be a better player in the future by learning and growing from this failure and the pain that comes with it. Taking him out of the game would have robbed him of a valuable teaching moment.
How else is he going to thrive in these situations moving forward if you take him out of the very first one he experiences?
No. 3 - Just for the record...
There was quite a bit of hyperbole on the message boards and on social media following last night's 94.7 efficiency rating that Ewers posted over four quarters in Stillwater.
A lot of people seemed to think that Ewers' performance was the worst quarterback performance they had ever seen. Frankly, I'm shocked that some of you have forgotten some of the Mom's-spaghetti-vomit-on-your-shirt performances at the quarterback position for the Longhorns over the years, but in reality the Longhorns have had 18 sub-100 efficiency rating performances (minimum 15 pass attempts) since 2012.
Basically, every quarterback that has started for the Longhorns in the last decade has at least one. Most of them had multiple such performances. Everyone's favorite Longhorn Sam Ehlinger had two... in his junior season.
It happens, especially to young quarterbacks on the road.
Here's the gruesome list:
2019 Sam Ehlinger at Baylor (99.5) - 22 of 37 for 200 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT
2019 Sam Ehlinger at TCU (99.1) - 22 of 38 for 321 hards, 2 TD, 4 INT
2017 Sam Ehlinger at Texas Tech (96.5) - 26 of 47 for 239 yards, 1 TD and 2 INT
2016 Shane Buechele vs TCU (82.9) - 16 of 39 for 218 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT
2015 Tyrone Swoopes at Notre Dame (67.3) - 7 of 22 for 93 yards, 9 TD, 0 INT
2015 Tyrone Swoopes vs. Texas Tech (63.2) - 9 of 18 for 52 yards, 0 TYD, 1 INT
2015 Jerrod Heard at TCU (60.2) - 8 of 20 for for 48 yards, 0 TD, 0 INT
2014 Tyrone Swoopes vs. Baylor (70.9) - 16 of 34 for 144 yards 0 TD, 2 INT
2014 Tyrone Swoopes at Kansas State (87.6) - 13 of 25 for 106 yards, 0 TD, 0 INT
2014 Tyrone Swoopes vs. West Virginia (78.3) - 11 of 29 for 124 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT
2014 Tyrone Swoopes vs. TCU (94.4) - 20 of 34 for 200 yards, 1 TD, 4 INT
2014 Tyrone Swoopes vs. Arkansas (63.2) - 13 of 25 for 57 yards, 0 TS, 1 INT
2013 Case McCoy vs. Oklahoma State (98.9) - 26 of 39 for 221 yards, 0 TD, 3 INT
2013 Case McCoy at Baylor (46.6) - 12 of 34 for 54 yards, 1 TD, 2 INT
2013 Case McCoy vs. Oregon (47.3) - 8 of 17 for 48 yards, 0 TD, 2 INT
2012 David Ash vs. Oklahoma (63.8) - 13 of 29 for 113 yards, 0 TD, 2 INT
2012 David Ash at Kansas (58.1) - 8 of 16 for 63 yards, 0 TD, 2 INT
2012 David Ash vs. TCU (70.2) - 10 of 21 for 104 yards, 0 TD, 2 INT
I know that's not going to make you feel better, but I hope it gives some perspective and context.
Hell, even the best quarterbacks in the history of the sport had some amazingly bad clunkers early in their college careers. Consider the following games as evidence.
2018 Joe Burrow vs. Miami (94.8) - 11 of 24 for 140 yards, 0 TD, 0 INT
2018 Joe Burrow at Florida (91.6) - 19 of 34 for 102 yards, 0 TD, 2 INT
2018 Joe Burrow vs. Mississippi State (88.7) - 16 of 28 for 129 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT
2017 Josh Allen at Iowa (84.0) - 23 of 40 for 174 yards, 0 TD, 2 INT
2017 Josh Allen vs. Oregon (51.6) - 9 of 24 for 64 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT
2017 Josh Allen at Boise State (82.6) - 12 of 27 for 131 yards, 1 TD, 2 INT
2016 Patrick Mahomes at Iowa State (99.2) - 18 of 36 for 219 yards, 1 TD, 2 INT
2016 Josh Allen at Nebraska (78.7) - 16 of 32 for 189 yards, 1 TD, 5 INT
2015 Kyler Murray at Auburn (68.8) - 13 of 23 for 104 yards, 0 TD, 3 INT
2010 Russell Wilson at East Carolina (86.8) - 26 of 52 for 322 yards, 1 TD, 3 INT
2010 Russell Wilson at Central Florida (73.7) - 10 of 30 for 105 yards, 1 TD, 0 INT
2009 Russell Wilson vs. South Carolina (79.2) - 12 of 23 for 74 yards, 0 TD, 0 INT
2009 Russell Wilson vs. Clemson (99.9) - 12 of 32 for 183 yards,, 2 TD, 1 INT
2008 Russell Wilson at Clemson (74.9) - 10 of 21 for 92 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT
2003 Aaron Rodgers vs. Oregon State (33.4) - 9 of 34 for 52 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT
1998 Tom Brady vs. Syracuse (95.9) - 13 of 24 for 104 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT
1994 Peyton Manning vs. Alabama (97.7) - 10 of 18 for 138 yards, 0 TD, 2 INT
No. 4 - Big 12 officiating dumpster fire ...
I'm still kind of at a loss about the one-sided nature of the penalties in Saturday's game more than 24 hours after it all happened.
In my mind, as soon as the officials got back to their locker room at halftime, a conversation like this HAD to occur.
Lead official: "Fellas, I don't think we're doing a bad job at all, but we've called 10 penalties on the Longhorns and none on the Cowboys. The optics of that are pretty terrible."
Official No.2: "Sir, Oklahoma State had committed the fewest penalties in the Big 12. Is it our fault Texas is so undisciplined."
Lead official: "No, it's not your fault, but I don't want to get a phone call from the league office on Monday because of the appearances of bias."
Official No.3: "We understand, boss. What do you want us to do?"
Lead official: You know how it is. You can pretty much call a holding penalty every time Oklahoma State runs the ball or throws it to the boundary. Just make sure and throw a few flags in the second half, so we don't get called out."
Official No.4: " We hear you loud and clear."
Apparently, that conversation did not take place. How do we know? Because the game ended with the Longhorns being called for 14 penalties, while the Cowboys played the cleanest game in the history of college football.
I just don't know how that happens. If there's a one-sided set of fouls in an NBA game at halftime, you better believe the other team is going to be in the bonus three minutes into the third quarter. The last thing that can happen is that the one-sided appearances continue for four quarters to such a degree that the integrity of the contest gets called into question.
The officials in Stillwater scoffed at appearances and integrity, seemingly yelling "YOLO!" while running back onto the field for the third quarter.
We all knew that Big 12 officials would eventually give Texas the old' Grant Teaff screw-job before the Longhorns left the conference for good, but this wasn't something that even the biggest conspiracy theorists could have seen coming.
I said it right after the game and I'll say it again, that was some absolute bullshit.
How important was it to the outcome of the game? Just ask Mike Gundy.
No. 5 - Updating the freshmen participation board ...
You can not add deep snapper Lance St. Louis and wide receiver Savion Red to the list of players that have played in 5+ games this season, thus eliminating any chance at a redshirt season for both.
The current list of freshmen that have played in 5+ games this season includes the following: K Will Stone, DS St. Louis, OL Cole Hutson, OL Kelvin Banks, OL Cam Williams, WR Savion Red, RB Jaydon Blue, CB Jaylon Guilbeau, DE Justice Finkley, CB Austin Jordan and Edge Ethan Burke.
Interestingly enough, cornerback Terrance Brooks wasn't listed in the participation chart for the game in Stillwater and is still stuck on four games, which means that his redshirt option still exists.
Wide receiver Brenen Thompson played on Saturday and is now sitting on four games played.
The only other freshman that is currently sitting on three games played is offensive lineman DJ Campbell, who saw the most playing time on Saturday than he's seen all season.
No. 6 - Texas Football Scattershooting ...
... After the carnage of flags in Stillwater, the Longhorns now led the Big 12 with the most penalties committed in the conference with 51, which is six more than Texas Tech has in second place. Texas is the only team in the conference with 400+ yards of penalties (408).
... Ewers doesn't have enough attempts to qualify for the Big 12 passing leaderboard, but his season passing efficiency of 143.6 would rank fifth if he did. Hudson Card's 158.3 season rating would rank fourth if he had enough action to qualify.
... Bijan Robinson has taken the lead in the Big 12 rushing title race, as his 920 yards in 8 games (115.0 per game) leads Deuce Vaughn (106.3 per game) and TCU's Kendre Miller (104.4). It's crazy to think, but Vaughn might not make first-team All-Big 12 when you consider that Robinson and Miller have 11 and 10 touchdowns on the ground, respectively, while vaughn only has 4.
... Xavier Worthy leads the Big 12 in touchdown receptions (7), but is fifth in receptions (36), fifth in yards (510) and sixth in yards per game (63.8).
... Bert Auburn is 7th in the Big 12 in field goal percentage (72.2).
... This team is really going to miss Anthony Cook, who you'd think will probably miss the final four games of the season after breaking his arm on Saturday. For my money, Cook has been having an all-Big 12 type of season at safety and you can make a case that this team might be 4-4 right now without him. With his omission from the line-up, Kitan Crawford and Michael Taffe are both going to step up their level of play, something that didn't really happen against the Cowboys.
... A year ago, transfer Ben Davis led all Texas defenders with a pretty pathetic 2.5 sacks for the season. Through eight games, the sack leaderboard looks like this:
1. Barryn Sorrey (3)
2T. DeMarvion Overshown (2.5)
2T. Moro Ojomo (2.5)
4. Jaylan Ford (2)
5T. Diamonte Tucker-Dorsey (1.5)
5T. Keondre Coburn (1.5)
7T. Ovie Oghoufo (1)
7T. D'Shawn Jamison (1)
7T. Byron Murphy (1)
... A year ago, Jaylan Ford led the team in tackle for loss with 6. Through eight games, here's what the tackle for loss leaderboard looks like.
1. Jaylan Ford (7.5)
2. DeMarvion Overshown (6)
3. Jahdae Barron (5.5)
4T. Ovier Oghoufo (5)
4T. Moro Ojomo (5)
6. Barryn Sorrell (4)
7T. Byron Murphy (3)
7T. Keondre Coburn (3)
... Ovie Oghoufo has a single sack and five tackles for loss this season as the starting edge player for this team. That's not remotely good enough.
... I still don't understand the Longhorns not using more jet sweeps, end-arounds, shuffle passes, hitches and short pitches to receivers in the name of helping their young quarterback and getting the ball to their best playmakers. It kind of blows my mind that Xavier Worthy averages a touch in the running game once every four games, while no other receiver even has a single carry.
... UTSA is the only team that Texas has beaten this season that received a single vote in either of the two major polls on Sunday.
No. 7 – BUY or SELL …
(Buy) I'm not sure it is all hinging on a 7-5 record. If there's a big public sentiment that a change needs to be made, I think Sarkisian will make the change. He'll have 2024 recruiting that he'll need to really consider.
(Sell) The hire of Kwiatkowski wasn't anything like those hires. He arrived with a rep as being one of the best DCs in the entire country. It's just not fully working out.
(Sell) While I believe Texas might have beaten Alabama, the truth of the matter is that the Tide would have made adjustments before or at halftime and I have very little trust that Sarkisian would have adjusted well to their adjustments. What happened in the first quarter wouldn't have happened over four quarters... IMO.
(Sell) I think he's just going through the kind of growing pains that almost all young quarterbacks go through.
(Sell) There's certainly a chance that it could/would happen, but my instincts say that he plays in the bowl game.
(Buy) Yes.
(Sell) He's in danger of losing momentum he might have been able to bring into the off-season, but I don't believe the 2023 class or the locker room is about to fall apart.
(Sell) I don't know that I've ever viewed him as a generational player, even if I rated him as a five-star. Yes, I do believe his arm talent will see him drafted in the first round, but I had several questions about him as a prospect and making plays in the face of pressure was one of them.
(Buy) It's no small thing that almost the entirety of the interior of the defensive line, along with the likes of Demarvion Overshown, D'Shawn Jamison and Anthony Cook will all need to be replaced.
(Sell) The moment the Mannings decided t commit to Texas was the moment I think they made peace with whatever might happen on the field in 2022.
(Buy) He's a smart dude.
(Sell) I haven't heard any rumblings from Camp Ewers that is suggesting he's dealing with issues related to the injury.
(Buy) No doubt.
(Sell) The plan is the plan and the plan has the entire 2022 season being used as a build-up to what is hoped to be a sensational 2023 season.
No. 8 - Scattershooting on anything and everything ...
... Congrats to the Texas soccer team. Big 12 Champions. It's the first time the Longhorns have had a piece of the regular-season title since 2001. Whoa.
... If I had a vote that mattered ...
1. Georgia
2 Ohio State
3. Tennessee
4. Michigan
5. Clemson
6. TCU
7. Alabama
8. Oregon
9. USC
10. Oklahoma State
... Heisman Ballot: 1. QB Hendon Hooker (Tennessee), 2. QB CJ Stroud (Ohio State), 3. QB Max Duggan (TCU), 4. RB Blake Corum (Michigan) and 5. RB Bijan Robinson (Texas)
... At least the Longhorns have this going for them...
... No deficit seems to be too big for TCU to overcome. For the second straight week, TCU was down by multiple scores, only to flip the script in dominating fashion once the "on" button was pushed.
... Tennessee/Georgia is going to be some kind of game in two weeks.
... Is Brian Kelly getting it going in Baton Rouge?
... Kansas State seemingly had a bad loss to Tulane at home, but Tulane is 7-1 and leading the American Conference. Maybe that wasn't such a bad loss.
... Welcome back, Dak. There was nothing about Sunday that really stood out as significant, but the Cowboys moved to 5-2 and didn't have to strain much to get there, primarily because Detroit was pretty terrible on offense. Just pick up the W and move on.
... Christian McCaffrey, who? All D'Onte Foreman did in his first start as the new RB1 in Carolina was rush for 118 yards on 15 carries, while totaling 145 yards of all-purpose offense. Attaboy.
... Devin Duvernay has emerged into a really good NFL player.
... The Astros are a monster of a team. They deserve the label of World Series favorites. I'm not confused at all about the challenge in front of my Phils.
... It hasn't been easy being a Phillies fan for 39 years, but moments like this are what help you get through the lean years. MV3!
... I can't believe the Padres didn't bring in Josh Hader to face Harper. He had been so dominant in the post-season.
... The Spurs are 2-1 and the Sixers are 0-3. What alternate universe have I entered?
... On a weekend when Chelsea, Man United, Tottenham, Arsenal and Brighton all dropped points, freaking Liverpool lost to Forest. Good grief.
No. 9 - The List: Top 10 Horror Movies ...
It's that time of the year when I end up watching a certain kind of movie (horror) that I rarely watch in the other 11 months out of the year. Just a heads up, I didn't consider Jaws, Silence of the Lambs, Alien, Misery of The Sixth Sense as horror movies. Right or wrong, I chalk these movies up into other movie categories.
10. Friday the 13th
I'm pretty sure this was the first horror movie that I watched as a young kid. I might have been 5. It scared the living crap out of me, especially when the babysitter and her friends left me alone with the movie as a joke.
9. Scream
My favorite horror film from the 90s. A cast that includes Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, David Arquette and Drew Barrymore goes a long way.
8. A Nightmare on Elm Street
Another movie from my childhood where I remember exactly where I was and who I was with when I watched it for the first time. I was at Shane Barnes' house and my bike was stolen while we watched the movie.
7. Poltergeist
I wasn't afraid of anything in the closet or under my bed until I saw this movie when I was probably 7. Thanks, HBO.
6. Rosemary's Baby
One of the all-time classic slots in just outside of the top 5.
5. Halloween
You knew Michael Myers was going to be somewhere in the Top 10.
4. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
I don't know how you make a Horror Top 10 without Leatherface cracking the Top 10.
3. Psycho
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you arguably the best of Alfred Hitchcock.
2. The Exorcist
I will not argue against anyone that believes Pazuzu deserves the No.1 slot.
1. The Shining
I've probably seen this movie more times than the other nine combined. I don't know if it is because it was a cable fixture of my childhood or if I somehow just end up watching it once every couple of years, but it's probably not good that I've seen this movie at least 25 times.
No. 10 - And Finally ...
I leave you with the best thing I saw all weekend.
Ketch - I can’t necessarily disagree with anything you said. Texas needs some dawgs in the 2nd half - more with RoJo’s style. More players need to dig down and step up.
Ewers looked confused. He needs more dawg in him. He’s getting a little jumpy in the pocket and throwing balls away to avoid sacks…too often. he’s an athlete - he can scramble more - like on the play that was called back due to a bogus holding penalty.
I guarantee the officials knew there was a goose egg on the board for OSU before halftime. I’m glad Sark didn’t whine about it but that is unfathomable how that can happen If the crew was unbiased.
Ewers looked confused. He needs more dawg in him. He’s getting a little jumpy in the pocket and throwing balls away to avoid sacks…too often. he’s an athlete - he can scramble more - like on the play that was called back due to a bogus holding penalty.
I guarantee the officials knew there was a goose egg on the board for OSU before halftime. I’m glad Sark didn’t whine about it but that is unfathomable how that can happen If the crew was unbiased.
Man, look at that dog’s tail wag. That poor dog has been through a lot.
This idea that losing begets winning is utter nonsense. Just look at the Texans.
Season two under Sark isn’t about generating a bunch of learning experiences from epic failures. It’s about winning games. You have to play the players who give you the best chance to win in that moment. Winning is all that matters. Players will learn more about how to win from a coach who puts them in a position to win than from a coach who stands by to watch them lose (hoping that maybe the act of losing is somehow not habit forming and demoralizing).
The only reason to leave Ewers in the game is because you thought he gave you the best chance of winning.
It’s hard to believe anyone could’ve watched the first three quarters and thought Ewers was on the verge of turning things around. He couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. It wasn’t his day. It’s fine. That doesn’t mean you have a QB controversy. But Sark accepting continued failure on the field sends the wrong message.
Good stuff, Ketch. I was wondering if Sark would do the switch similar to what Mack did with Vince Young and Chance Mock against Texas Tech back in 2003, but he stuck with Ewers and lost.
Good write up. I was at the game and the wind was a big factor. But Sark was out coached. Why didn’t Sark run shorter passes (like Gundy)? OSU ran that damn WR screen play what seemed like every other play for 4-8 yds per play. This is what concerns me most. Ewers is learning, but make it easier for him! Especially when the OL wasn’t giving Ewers much time.
I think you can make a case that not believing in your players has a chance to just as much damage.
so why doesnt Texas complain to the big 12 this is pathetic and has been going on for years
None of this is rocket science.
Twenty games into the Steve Sarkisian era in Austin has provided us with a snapshot of what must improve in order for his tenure to ultimately be viewed as a success.
* Texas must play better on the road (1-6 record in true road games).
* Texas must learn how to win close games (3-8 record in games decided by one score).
* Texas must learn how to truly be all gas, no brakes (5 blown double-digit second half leads in 20 games)
Typically, when one of these issues pop up, all three of them pop. At the same time.
Too often under Sarkisian, the Longhorns start extremely fast, build up a multi-score lead and then slowly lose its grip of the game in the second half, before fading off into the sunset.
Teams go into games against Sarkisian's Longhorns knowing that if they can drag them into the deep waters of a fourth quarter game, they'll be able to drown Sarkisian's players. Don't take my word for it. Just look at what Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire told his team after they overcame a 14-point deficit in the second half to beat the Longhorns in overtime.
"I told you they were going to break and they did," McGuire told his team in the locker room immediately following the win over Texas.
It's easy to imagine that Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy offered a similar speech to his players on Saturday in Stillwater when the Cowboys trailed at halftime and were down by 10 points with 2:10 remaining in the third quarter.
Through a very narrow prism, it would be easy to blame the players for what happened on Saturday in allowing the Cowboys to close the game on a 17-3 run in the final 17 minutes of the game. After all, Quinn Ewers did not play well. The defense stopped tackling. The special teams success faded after a fantastic start.
Yet, the further you expand the prism through which we look at these defeats, the more and more that it becomes obvious that this is a trend that falls at the feat of the team's head coach... the likable Sarkisian.
Through the first 20 games of his coaching tenure in Austin, Sarkisian has mostly looked like a Major League starting pitcher that can give you five innings and two trips through the batting order, but if you ask him to go through the line-up a third time... the results are rarely good.
Consider the following trend
2021 Oklahoma: Texas scored 38 points in the first half and held a three-score lead, only to ne held to 10 points in the second half.
2021 Oklahoma State - Texas scored 17 points in the first half and held an 11 point lead in the third quarter, only to be held to seven second-half points.
2021 Baylor - Texas took an 11 point lead with 8:49 left in the third quarter, only to score three points in the final 23:49 of the game, while the Bears closed the game on a 21-3 run.
2022 Texas Tech - The Longhorns scored 24 first half points and held a 31-17 lead with 4:27 left in the third quarter, only to allow Tech to run off a 20-3 run to close out the game.
2022 Oklahoma State - The Longhorns scored 31 points and led my multiple scores on three different occasions, but were held to 3 second half points and were outscored 24-3 over the final 32:41 of game time.
These are the games that have defined Sarkisian's career thus far and the storylines are all the same. How different might last season have looked if the Longhorns had been able to close out any of those three games? How different might this season's run for a spot in the Big 12 championship game look if the Longhorns hadn't been outscored by a combined 54-6 after reaching its zenith in both games.
It's all gas, no breaks for Sarkisian and his teams right up until the moment when a head coach like Lincoln Riley, Mike Gundy, Dave Aranada or McGuire makes an adjustment to what is happening to their teams against the Longhorns and then Sarkisian rarely displayed the ability to make an adjustment to correspond with the opponent's adjustment.
That's where we are right now.
Until Sarkisian can start making second half adjustments after the opposing teams have made its adjustments, this is going to be the story of his tenure.
Closes losses... on the road... after holding big first-half (and sometimes second-half leads). The ability to finish games isn't just a player issue. It starts at the top with Sarkisian.
Of course, you don't have to believe me.
You can listen to McGuire. You can look at the box scores. You can just use your eyes.
Again, none of this is rocket science.
No. 2 - About pulling Ewers for Hudson Card on Saturday ...
This is going to be an unpopular opinion, but I wouldn't have pulled Ewers in favor of Hudson Card on Saturday.
I'm a subscriber to the belief that young quarterbacks learn the most from extreme adversity and if you believe that Ewers is going to be the player that leads the program out of the woods in 2023, you've got to let him weather a few storms, even if it means losing an occasional game.
Yes, I know that Dabo Swinney pulled starting quarterback DJ Uiagalelei on Saturday in the third quarter in favor of my guy Cade Klubnik, a decision that Klubnik rewarded his coach with by helping lead a second-half come back win.
I'm just not sure I view the two decisions that Swinney and Sarkisian were forced to make are apples to apples. Maybe apples to bananas. Two things stand out about comparing the two situations.
1. You can make the case that Klubnik is truly the long-term answer for the Tigers at the quarterback position. As much as I'm a fan of Card, he's not the long-term answer at the quarterback position for the Longhorns. That would be Ewers.
2. Swinney made the call in the third quarter when the Tigers were losing by two scores. Despite Ewers' struggles, the Longhorns had a double-digit lead with 2:41 left in the third quarter. Are you really going to pull your starter in a road game that you're winning when going to the fourth quarter, especially when that player is in the middle of his first career road start?
This isn't the same situation as Card making his first career start at Arkansas last year when the Longhorns were getting run out of the stadium.
I'd argue that when Oklahoma State tied the game with 9:54 remaining in the fourth quarter that it was exactly the moment that you needed Ewers to experience as a young player, regardless of the final outcome.
Michael Jordan once said, "My failure gave me strength, my pain was my motivation."
It won't make the sting of Saturday's loss feel any better, but Ewers will be a better player in the future by learning and growing from this failure and the pain that comes with it. Taking him out of the game would have robbed him of a valuable teaching moment.
How else is he going to thrive in these situations moving forward if you take him out of the very first one he experiences?
No. 3 - Just for the record...
There was quite a bit of hyperbole on the message boards and on social media following last night's 94.7 efficiency rating that Ewers posted over four quarters in Stillwater.
A lot of people seemed to think that Ewers' performance was the worst quarterback performance they had ever seen. Frankly, I'm shocked that some of you have forgotten some of the Mom's-spaghetti-vomit-on-your-shirt performances at the quarterback position for the Longhorns over the years, but in reality the Longhorns have had 18 sub-100 efficiency rating performances (minimum 15 pass attempts) since 2012.
Basically, every quarterback that has started for the Longhorns in the last decade has at least one. Most of them had multiple such performances. Everyone's favorite Longhorn Sam Ehlinger had two... in his junior season.
It happens, especially to young quarterbacks on the road.
Here's the gruesome list:
2019 Sam Ehlinger at Baylor (99.5) - 22 of 37 for 200 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT
2019 Sam Ehlinger at TCU (99.1) - 22 of 38 for 321 hards, 2 TD, 4 INT
2017 Sam Ehlinger at Texas Tech (96.5) - 26 of 47 for 239 yards, 1 TD and 2 INT
2016 Shane Buechele vs TCU (82.9) - 16 of 39 for 218 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT
2015 Tyrone Swoopes at Notre Dame (67.3) - 7 of 22 for 93 yards, 9 TD, 0 INT
2015 Tyrone Swoopes vs. Texas Tech (63.2) - 9 of 18 for 52 yards, 0 TYD, 1 INT
2015 Jerrod Heard at TCU (60.2) - 8 of 20 for for 48 yards, 0 TD, 0 INT
2014 Tyrone Swoopes vs. Baylor (70.9) - 16 of 34 for 144 yards 0 TD, 2 INT
2014 Tyrone Swoopes at Kansas State (87.6) - 13 of 25 for 106 yards, 0 TD, 0 INT
2014 Tyrone Swoopes vs. West Virginia (78.3) - 11 of 29 for 124 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT
2014 Tyrone Swoopes vs. TCU (94.4) - 20 of 34 for 200 yards, 1 TD, 4 INT
2014 Tyrone Swoopes vs. Arkansas (63.2) - 13 of 25 for 57 yards, 0 TS, 1 INT
2013 Case McCoy vs. Oklahoma State (98.9) - 26 of 39 for 221 yards, 0 TD, 3 INT
2013 Case McCoy at Baylor (46.6) - 12 of 34 for 54 yards, 1 TD, 2 INT
2013 Case McCoy vs. Oregon (47.3) - 8 of 17 for 48 yards, 0 TD, 2 INT
2012 David Ash vs. Oklahoma (63.8) - 13 of 29 for 113 yards, 0 TD, 2 INT
2012 David Ash at Kansas (58.1) - 8 of 16 for 63 yards, 0 TD, 2 INT
2012 David Ash vs. TCU (70.2) - 10 of 21 for 104 yards, 0 TD, 2 INT
I know that's not going to make you feel better, but I hope it gives some perspective and context.
Hell, even the best quarterbacks in the history of the sport had some amazingly bad clunkers early in their college careers. Consider the following games as evidence.
2018 Joe Burrow vs. Miami (94.8) - 11 of 24 for 140 yards, 0 TD, 0 INT
2018 Joe Burrow at Florida (91.6) - 19 of 34 for 102 yards, 0 TD, 2 INT
2018 Joe Burrow vs. Mississippi State (88.7) - 16 of 28 for 129 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT
2017 Josh Allen at Iowa (84.0) - 23 of 40 for 174 yards, 0 TD, 2 INT
2017 Josh Allen vs. Oregon (51.6) - 9 of 24 for 64 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT
2017 Josh Allen at Boise State (82.6) - 12 of 27 for 131 yards, 1 TD, 2 INT
2016 Patrick Mahomes at Iowa State (99.2) - 18 of 36 for 219 yards, 1 TD, 2 INT
2016 Josh Allen at Nebraska (78.7) - 16 of 32 for 189 yards, 1 TD, 5 INT
2015 Kyler Murray at Auburn (68.8) - 13 of 23 for 104 yards, 0 TD, 3 INT
2010 Russell Wilson at East Carolina (86.8) - 26 of 52 for 322 yards, 1 TD, 3 INT
2010 Russell Wilson at Central Florida (73.7) - 10 of 30 for 105 yards, 1 TD, 0 INT
2009 Russell Wilson vs. South Carolina (79.2) - 12 of 23 for 74 yards, 0 TD, 0 INT
2009 Russell Wilson vs. Clemson (99.9) - 12 of 32 for 183 yards,, 2 TD, 1 INT
2008 Russell Wilson at Clemson (74.9) - 10 of 21 for 92 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT
2003 Aaron Rodgers vs. Oregon State (33.4) - 9 of 34 for 52 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT
1998 Tom Brady vs. Syracuse (95.9) - 13 of 24 for 104 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT
1994 Peyton Manning vs. Alabama (97.7) - 10 of 18 for 138 yards, 0 TD, 2 INT
No. 4 - Big 12 officiating dumpster fire ...
I'm still kind of at a loss about the one-sided nature of the penalties in Saturday's game more than 24 hours after it all happened.
In my mind, as soon as the officials got back to their locker room at halftime, a conversation like this HAD to occur.
Lead official: "Fellas, I don't think we're doing a bad job at all, but we've called 10 penalties on the Longhorns and none on the Cowboys. The optics of that are pretty terrible."
Official No.2: "Sir, Oklahoma State had committed the fewest penalties in the Big 12. Is it our fault Texas is so undisciplined."
Lead official: "No, it's not your fault, but I don't want to get a phone call from the league office on Monday because of the appearances of bias."
Official No.3: "We understand, boss. What do you want us to do?"
Lead official: You know how it is. You can pretty much call a holding penalty every time Oklahoma State runs the ball or throws it to the boundary. Just make sure and throw a few flags in the second half, so we don't get called out."
Official No.4: " We hear you loud and clear."
Apparently, that conversation did not take place. How do we know? Because the game ended with the Longhorns being called for 14 penalties, while the Cowboys played the cleanest game in the history of college football.
I just don't know how that happens. If there's a one-sided set of fouls in an NBA game at halftime, you better believe the other team is going to be in the bonus three minutes into the third quarter. The last thing that can happen is that the one-sided appearances continue for four quarters to such a degree that the integrity of the contest gets called into question.
The officials in Stillwater scoffed at appearances and integrity, seemingly yelling "YOLO!" while running back onto the field for the third quarter.
We all knew that Big 12 officials would eventually give Texas the old' Grant Teaff screw-job before the Longhorns left the conference for good, but this wasn't something that even the biggest conspiracy theorists could have seen coming.
I said it right after the game and I'll say it again, that was some absolute bullshit.
How important was it to the outcome of the game? Just ask Mike Gundy.
No. 5 - Updating the freshmen participation board ...
You can not add deep snapper Lance St. Louis and wide receiver Savion Red to the list of players that have played in 5+ games this season, thus eliminating any chance at a redshirt season for both.
The current list of freshmen that have played in 5+ games this season includes the following: K Will Stone, DS St. Louis, OL Cole Hutson, OL Kelvin Banks, OL Cam Williams, WR Savion Red, RB Jaydon Blue, CB Jaylon Guilbeau, DE Justice Finkley, CB Austin Jordan and Edge Ethan Burke.
Interestingly enough, cornerback Terrance Brooks wasn't listed in the participation chart for the game in Stillwater and is still stuck on four games, which means that his redshirt option still exists.
Wide receiver Brenen Thompson played on Saturday and is now sitting on four games played.
The only other freshman that is currently sitting on three games played is offensive lineman DJ Campbell, who saw the most playing time on Saturday than he's seen all season.
No. 6 - Texas Football Scattershooting ...
... After the carnage of flags in Stillwater, the Longhorns now led the Big 12 with the most penalties committed in the conference with 51, which is six more than Texas Tech has in second place. Texas is the only team in the conference with 400+ yards of penalties (408).
... Ewers doesn't have enough attempts to qualify for the Big 12 passing leaderboard, but his season passing efficiency of 143.6 would rank fifth if he did. Hudson Card's 158.3 season rating would rank fourth if he had enough action to qualify.
... Bijan Robinson has taken the lead in the Big 12 rushing title race, as his 920 yards in 8 games (115.0 per game) leads Deuce Vaughn (106.3 per game) and TCU's Kendre Miller (104.4). It's crazy to think, but Vaughn might not make first-team All-Big 12 when you consider that Robinson and Miller have 11 and 10 touchdowns on the ground, respectively, while vaughn only has 4.
... Xavier Worthy leads the Big 12 in touchdown receptions (7), but is fifth in receptions (36), fifth in yards (510) and sixth in yards per game (63.8).
... Bert Auburn is 7th in the Big 12 in field goal percentage (72.2).
... This team is really going to miss Anthony Cook, who you'd think will probably miss the final four games of the season after breaking his arm on Saturday. For my money, Cook has been having an all-Big 12 type of season at safety and you can make a case that this team might be 4-4 right now without him. With his omission from the line-up, Kitan Crawford and Michael Taffe are both going to step up their level of play, something that didn't really happen against the Cowboys.
... A year ago, transfer Ben Davis led all Texas defenders with a pretty pathetic 2.5 sacks for the season. Through eight games, the sack leaderboard looks like this:
1. Barryn Sorrey (3)
2T. DeMarvion Overshown (2.5)
2T. Moro Ojomo (2.5)
4. Jaylan Ford (2)
5T. Diamonte Tucker-Dorsey (1.5)
5T. Keondre Coburn (1.5)
7T. Ovie Oghoufo (1)
7T. D'Shawn Jamison (1)
7T. Byron Murphy (1)
... A year ago, Jaylan Ford led the team in tackle for loss with 6. Through eight games, here's what the tackle for loss leaderboard looks like.
1. Jaylan Ford (7.5)
2. DeMarvion Overshown (6)
3. Jahdae Barron (5.5)
4T. Ovier Oghoufo (5)
4T. Moro Ojomo (5)
6. Barryn Sorrell (4)
7T. Byron Murphy (3)
7T. Keondre Coburn (3)
... Ovie Oghoufo has a single sack and five tackles for loss this season as the starting edge player for this team. That's not remotely good enough.
... I still don't understand the Longhorns not using more jet sweeps, end-arounds, shuffle passes, hitches and short pitches to receivers in the name of helping their young quarterback and getting the ball to their best playmakers. It kind of blows my mind that Xavier Worthy averages a touch in the running game once every four games, while no other receiver even has a single carry.
... UTSA is the only team that Texas has beaten this season that received a single vote in either of the two major polls on Sunday.
No. 7 – BUY or SELL …
(Buy) I'm not sure it is all hinging on a 7-5 record. If there's a big public sentiment that a change needs to be made, I think Sarkisian will make the change. He'll have 2024 recruiting that he'll need to really consider.
(Sell) The hire of Kwiatkowski wasn't anything like those hires. He arrived with a rep as being one of the best DCs in the entire country. It's just not fully working out.
(Sell) While I believe Texas might have beaten Alabama, the truth of the matter is that the Tide would have made adjustments before or at halftime and I have very little trust that Sarkisian would have adjusted well to their adjustments. What happened in the first quarter wouldn't have happened over four quarters... IMO.
(Sell) I think he's just going through the kind of growing pains that almost all young quarterbacks go through.
(Sell) There's certainly a chance that it could/would happen, but my instincts say that he plays in the bowl game.
(Buy) Yes.
(Sell) He's in danger of losing momentum he might have been able to bring into the off-season, but I don't believe the 2023 class or the locker room is about to fall apart.
(Sell) I don't know that I've ever viewed him as a generational player, even if I rated him as a five-star. Yes, I do believe his arm talent will see him drafted in the first round, but I had several questions about him as a prospect and making plays in the face of pressure was one of them.
(Buy) It's no small thing that almost the entirety of the interior of the defensive line, along with the likes of Demarvion Overshown, D'Shawn Jamison and Anthony Cook will all need to be replaced.
(Sell) The moment the Mannings decided t commit to Texas was the moment I think they made peace with whatever might happen on the field in 2022.
(Buy) He's a smart dude.
(Sell) I haven't heard any rumblings from Camp Ewers that is suggesting he's dealing with issues related to the injury.
(Buy) No doubt.
(Sell) The plan is the plan and the plan has the entire 2022 season being used as a build-up to what is hoped to be a sensational 2023 season.
No. 8 - Scattershooting on anything and everything ...
... Congrats to the Texas soccer team. Big 12 Champions. It's the first time the Longhorns have had a piece of the regular-season title since 2001. Whoa.
... If I had a vote that mattered ...
1. Georgia
2 Ohio State
3. Tennessee
4. Michigan
5. Clemson
6. TCU
7. Alabama
8. Oregon
9. USC
10. Oklahoma State
... Heisman Ballot: 1. QB Hendon Hooker (Tennessee), 2. QB CJ Stroud (Ohio State), 3. QB Max Duggan (TCU), 4. RB Blake Corum (Michigan) and 5. RB Bijan Robinson (Texas)
... At least the Longhorns have this going for them...
... No deficit seems to be too big for TCU to overcome. For the second straight week, TCU was down by multiple scores, only to flip the script in dominating fashion once the "on" button was pushed.
... Tennessee/Georgia is going to be some kind of game in two weeks.
... Is Brian Kelly getting it going in Baton Rouge?
... Kansas State seemingly had a bad loss to Tulane at home, but Tulane is 7-1 and leading the American Conference. Maybe that wasn't such a bad loss.
... Welcome back, Dak. There was nothing about Sunday that really stood out as significant, but the Cowboys moved to 5-2 and didn't have to strain much to get there, primarily because Detroit was pretty terrible on offense. Just pick up the W and move on.
... Christian McCaffrey, who? All D'Onte Foreman did in his first start as the new RB1 in Carolina was rush for 118 yards on 15 carries, while totaling 145 yards of all-purpose offense. Attaboy.
... Devin Duvernay has emerged into a really good NFL player.
... The Astros are a monster of a team. They deserve the label of World Series favorites. I'm not confused at all about the challenge in front of my Phils.
... It hasn't been easy being a Phillies fan for 39 years, but moments like this are what help you get through the lean years. MV3!
... I can't believe the Padres didn't bring in Josh Hader to face Harper. He had been so dominant in the post-season.
... The Spurs are 2-1 and the Sixers are 0-3. What alternate universe have I entered?
... On a weekend when Chelsea, Man United, Tottenham, Arsenal and Brighton all dropped points, freaking Liverpool lost to Forest. Good grief.
No. 9 - The List: Top 10 Horror Movies ...
It's that time of the year when I end up watching a certain kind of movie (horror) that I rarely watch in the other 11 months out of the year. Just a heads up, I didn't consider Jaws, Silence of the Lambs, Alien, Misery of The Sixth Sense as horror movies. Right or wrong, I chalk these movies up into other movie categories.
10. Friday the 13th
I'm pretty sure this was the first horror movie that I watched as a young kid. I might have been 5. It scared the living crap out of me, especially when the babysitter and her friends left me alone with the movie as a joke.
9. Scream
My favorite horror film from the 90s. A cast that includes Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, David Arquette and Drew Barrymore goes a long way.
8. A Nightmare on Elm Street
Another movie from my childhood where I remember exactly where I was and who I was with when I watched it for the first time. I was at Shane Barnes' house and my bike was stolen while we watched the movie.
7. Poltergeist
I wasn't afraid of anything in the closet or under my bed until I saw this movie when I was probably 7. Thanks, HBO.
6. Rosemary's Baby
One of the all-time classic slots in just outside of the top 5.
5. Halloween
You knew Michael Myers was going to be somewhere in the Top 10.
4. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
I don't know how you make a Horror Top 10 without Leatherface cracking the Top 10.
3. Psycho
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you arguably the best of Alfred Hitchcock.
2. The Exorcist
I will not argue against anyone that believes Pazuzu deserves the No.1 slot.
1. The Shining
I've probably seen this movie more times than the other nine combined. I don't know if it is because it was a cable fixture of my childhood or if I somehow just end up watching it once every couple of years, but it's probably not good that I've seen this movie at least 25 times.
No. 10 - And Finally ...
I leave you with the best thing I saw all weekend.
If Worthy doesn't lose his feet or if the refs don't flag Jones for holding, things might have looked quite different.
It's not what you think now that matters as much as what you think in 14 months.
Great write up, and as bad as it felt this morning, I can agree with most of your points. Not a popular opinion, I know.
None of this is rocket science.
Twenty games into the Steve Sarkisian era in Austin has provided us with a snapshot of what must improve in order for his tenure to ultimately be viewed as a success.
* Texas must play better on the road (1-6 record in true road games).
* Texas must learn how to win close games (3-8 record in games decided by one score).
* Texas must learn how to truly be all gas, no brakes (5 blown double-digit second half leads in 20 games)
Typically, when one of these issues pop up, all three of them pop. At the same time.
Too often under Sarkisian, the Longhorns start extremely fast, build up a multi-score lead and then slowly lose its grip of the game in the second half, before fading off into the sunset.
Teams go into games against Sarkisian's Longhorns knowing that if they can drag them into the deep waters of a fourth quarter game, they'll be able to drown Sarkisian's players. Don't take my word for it. Just look at what Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire told his team after they overcame a 14-point deficit in the second half to beat the Longhorns in overtime.
"I told you they were going to break and they did," McGuire told his team in the locker room immediately following the win over Texas.
It's easy to imagine that Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy offered a similar speech to his players on Saturday in Stillwater when the Cowboys trailed at halftime and were down by 10 points with 2:10 remaining in the third quarter.
Through a very narrow prism, it would be easy to blame the players for what happened on Saturday in allowing the Cowboys to close the game on a 17-3 run in the final 17 minutes of the game. After all, Quinn Ewers did not play well. The defense stopped tackling. The special teams success faded after a fantastic start.
Yet, the further you expand the prism through which we look at these defeats, the more and more that it becomes obvious that this is a trend that falls at the feat of the team's head coach... the likable Sarkisian.
Through the first 20 games of his coaching tenure in Austin, Sarkisian has mostly looked like a Major League starting pitcher that can give you five innings and two trips through the batting order, but if you ask him to go through the line-up a third time... the results are rarely good.
Consider the following trend
2021 Oklahoma: Texas scored 38 points in the first half and held a three-score lead, only to ne held to 10 points in the second half.
2021 Oklahoma State - Texas scored 17 points in the first half and held an 11 point lead in the third quarter, only to be held to seven second-half points.
2021 Baylor - Texas took an 11 point lead with 8:49 left in the third quarter, only to score three points in the final 23:49 of the game, while the Bears closed the game on a 21-3 run.
2022 Texas Tech - The Longhorns scored 24 first half points and held a 31-17 lead with 4:27 left in the third quarter, only to allow Tech to run off a 20-3 run to close out the game.
2022 Oklahoma State - The Longhorns scored 31 points and led my multiple scores on three different occasions, but were held to 3 second half points and were outscored 24-3 over the final 32:41 of game time.
These are the games that have defined Sarkisian's career thus far and the storylines are all the same. How different might last season have looked if the Longhorns had been able to close out any of those three games? How different might this season's run for a spot in the Big 12 championship game look if the Longhorns hadn't been outscored by a combined 54-6 after reaching its zenith in both games.
It's all gas, no breaks for Sarkisian and his teams right up until the moment when a head coach like Lincoln Riley, Mike Gundy, Dave Aranada or McGuire makes an adjustment to what is happening to their teams against the Longhorns and then Sarkisian rarely displayed the ability to make an adjustment to correspond with the opponent's adjustment.
That's where we are right now.
Until Sarkisian can start making second half adjustments after the opposing teams have made its adjustments, this is going to be the story of his tenure.
Closes losses... on the road... after holding big first-half (and sometimes second-half leads). The ability to finish games isn't just a player issue. It starts at the top with Sarkisian.
Of course, you don't have to believe me.
You can listen to McGuire. You can look at the box scores. You can just use your eyes.
Again, none of this is rocket science.
No. 2 - About pulling Ewers for Hudson Card on Saturday ...
This is going to be an unpopular opinion, but I wouldn't have pulled Ewers in favor of Hudson Card on Saturday.
I'm a subscriber to the belief that young quarterbacks learn the most from extreme adversity and if you believe that Ewers is going to be the player that leads the program out of the woods in 2023, you've got to let him weather a few storms, even if it means losing an occasional game.
Yes, I know that Dabo Swinney pulled starting quarterback DJ Uiagalelei on Saturday in the third quarter in favor of my guy Cade Klubnik, a decision that Klubnik rewarded his coach with by helping lead a second-half come back win.
I'm just not sure I view the two decisions that Swinney and Sarkisian were forced to make are apples to apples. Maybe apples to bananas. Two things stand out about comparing the two situations.
1. You can make the case that Klubnik is truly the long-term answer for the Tigers at the quarterback position. As much as I'm a fan of Card, he's not the long-term answer at the quarterback position for the Longhorns. That would be Ewers.
2. Swinney made the call in the third quarter when the Tigers were losing by two scores. Despite Ewers' struggles, the Longhorns had a double-digit lead with 2:41 left in the third quarter. Are you really going to pull your starter in a road game that you're winning when going to the fourth quarter, especially when that player is in the middle of his first career road start?
This isn't the same situation as Card making his first career start at Arkansas last year when the Longhorns were getting run out of the stadium.
I'd argue that when Oklahoma State tied the game with 9:54 remaining in the fourth quarter that it was exactly the moment that you needed Ewers to experience as a young player, regardless of the final outcome.
Michael Jordan once said, "My failure gave me strength, my pain was my motivation."
It won't make the sting of Saturday's loss feel any better, but Ewers will be a better player in the future by learning and growing from this failure and the pain that comes with it. Taking him out of the game would have robbed him of a valuable teaching moment.
How else is he going to thrive in these situations moving forward if you take him out of the very first one he experiences?
No. 3 - Just for the record...
There was quite a bit of hyperbole on the message boards and on social media following last night's 94.7 efficiency rating that Ewers posted over four quarters in Stillwater.
A lot of people seemed to think that Ewers' performance was the worst quarterback performance they had ever seen. Frankly, I'm shocked that some of you have forgotten some of the Mom's-spaghetti-vomit-on-your-shirt performances at the quarterback position for the Longhorns over the years, but in reality the Longhorns have had 18 sub-100 efficiency rating performances (minimum 15 pass attempts) since 2012.
Basically, every quarterback that has started for the Longhorns in the last decade has at least one. Most of them had multiple such performances. Everyone's favorite Longhorn Sam Ehlinger had two... in his junior season.
It happens, especially to young quarterbacks on the road.
Here's the gruesome list:
2019 Sam Ehlinger at Baylor (99.5) - 22 of 37 for 200 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT
2019 Sam Ehlinger at TCU (99.1) - 22 of 38 for 321 hards, 2 TD, 4 INT
2017 Sam Ehlinger at Texas Tech (96.5) - 26 of 47 for 239 yards, 1 TD and 2 INT
2016 Shane Buechele vs TCU (82.9) - 16 of 39 for 218 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT
2015 Tyrone Swoopes at Notre Dame (67.3) - 7 of 22 for 93 yards, 9 TD, 0 INT
2015 Tyrone Swoopes vs. Texas Tech (63.2) - 9 of 18 for 52 yards, 0 TYD, 1 INT
2015 Jerrod Heard at TCU (60.2) - 8 of 20 for for 48 yards, 0 TD, 0 INT
2014 Tyrone Swoopes vs. Baylor (70.9) - 16 of 34 for 144 yards 0 TD, 2 INT
2014 Tyrone Swoopes at Kansas State (87.6) - 13 of 25 for 106 yards, 0 TD, 0 INT
2014 Tyrone Swoopes vs. West Virginia (78.3) - 11 of 29 for 124 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT
2014 Tyrone Swoopes vs. TCU (94.4) - 20 of 34 for 200 yards, 1 TD, 4 INT
2014 Tyrone Swoopes vs. Arkansas (63.2) - 13 of 25 for 57 yards, 0 TS, 1 INT
2013 Case McCoy vs. Oklahoma State (98.9) - 26 of 39 for 221 yards, 0 TD, 3 INT
2013 Case McCoy at Baylor (46.6) - 12 of 34 for 54 yards, 1 TD, 2 INT
2013 Case McCoy vs. Oregon (47.3) - 8 of 17 for 48 yards, 0 TD, 2 INT
2012 David Ash vs. Oklahoma (63.8) - 13 of 29 for 113 yards, 0 TD, 2 INT
2012 David Ash at Kansas (58.1) - 8 of 16 for 63 yards, 0 TD, 2 INT
2012 David Ash vs. TCU (70.2) - 10 of 21 for 104 yards, 0 TD, 2 INT
I know that's not going to make you feel better, but I hope it gives some perspective and context.
Hell, even the best quarterbacks in the history of the sport had some amazingly bad clunkers early in their college careers. Consider the following games as evidence.
2018 Joe Burrow vs. Miami (94.8) - 11 of 24 for 140 yards, 0 TD, 0 INT
2018 Joe Burrow at Florida (91.6) - 19 of 34 for 102 yards, 0 TD, 2 INT
2018 Joe Burrow vs. Mississippi State (88.7) - 16 of 28 for 129 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT
2017 Josh Allen at Iowa (84.0) - 23 of 40 for 174 yards, 0 TD, 2 INT
2017 Josh Allen vs. Oregon (51.6) - 9 of 24 for 64 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT
2017 Josh Allen at Boise State (82.6) - 12 of 27 for 131 yards, 1 TD, 2 INT
2016 Patrick Mahomes at Iowa State (99.2) - 18 of 36 for 219 yards, 1 TD, 2 INT
2016 Josh Allen at Nebraska (78.7) - 16 of 32 for 189 yards, 1 TD, 5 INT
2015 Kyler Murray at Auburn (68.8) - 13 of 23 for 104 yards, 0 TD, 3 INT
2010 Russell Wilson at East Carolina (86.8) - 26 of 52 for 322 yards, 1 TD, 3 INT
2010 Russell Wilson at Central Florida (73.7) - 10 of 30 for 105 yards, 1 TD, 0 INT
2009 Russell Wilson vs. South Carolina (79.2) - 12 of 23 for 74 yards, 0 TD, 0 INT
2009 Russell Wilson vs. Clemson (99.9) - 12 of 32 for 183 yards,, 2 TD, 1 INT
2008 Russell Wilson at Clemson (74.9) - 10 of 21 for 92 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT
2003 Aaron Rodgers vs. Oregon State (33.4) - 9 of 34 for 52 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT
1998 Tom Brady vs. Syracuse (95.9) - 13 of 24 for 104 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT
1994 Peyton Manning vs. Alabama (97.7) - 10 of 18 for 138 yards, 0 TD, 2 INT
No. 4 - Big 12 officiating dumpster fire ...
I'm still kind of at a loss about the one-sided nature of the penalties in Saturday's game more than 24 hours after it all happened.
In my mind, as soon as the officials got back to their locker room at halftime, a conversation like this HAD to occur.
Lead official: "Fellas, I don't think we're doing a bad job at all, but we've called 10 penalties on the Longhorns and none on the Cowboys. The optics of that are pretty terrible."
Official No.2: "Sir, Oklahoma State had committed the fewest penalties in the Big 12. Is it our fault Texas is so undisciplined."
Lead official: "No, it's not your fault, but I don't want to get a phone call from the league office on Monday because of the appearances of bias."
Official No.3: "We understand, boss. What do you want us to do?"
Lead official: You know how it is. You can pretty much call a holding penalty every time Oklahoma State runs the ball or throws it to the boundary. Just make sure and throw a few flags in the second half, so we don't get called out."
Official No.4: " We hear you loud and clear."
Apparently, that conversation did not take place. How do we know? Because the game ended with the Longhorns being called for 14 penalties, while the Cowboys played the cleanest game in the history of college football.
I just don't know how that happens. If there's a one-sided set of fouls in an NBA game at halftime, you better believe the other team is going to be in the bonus three minutes into the third quarter. The last thing that can happen is that the one-sided appearances continue for four quarters to such a degree that the integrity of the contest gets called into question.
The officials in Stillwater scoffed at appearances and integrity, seemingly yelling "YOLO!" while running back onto the field for the third quarter.
We all knew that Big 12 officials would eventually give Texas the old' Grant Teaff screw-job before the Longhorns left the conference for good, but this wasn't something that even the biggest conspiracy theorists could have seen coming.
I said it right after the game and I'll say it again, that was some absolute bullshit.
How important was it to the outcome of the game? Just ask Mike Gundy.
No. 5 - Updating the freshmen participation board ...
You can not add deep snapper Lance St. Louis and wide receiver Savion Red to the list of players that have played in 5+ games this season, thus eliminating any chance at a redshirt season for both.
The current list of freshmen that have played in 5+ games this season includes the following: K Will Stone, DS St. Louis, OL Cole Hutson, OL Kelvin Banks, OL Cam Williams, WR Savion Red, RB Jaydon Blue, CB Jaylon Guilbeau, DE Justice Finkley, CB Austin Jordan and Edge Ethan Burke.
Interestingly enough, cornerback Terrance Brooks wasn't listed in the participation chart for the game in Stillwater and is still stuck on four games, which means that his redshirt option still exists.
Wide receiver Brenen Thompson played on Saturday and is now sitting on four games played.
The only other freshman that is currently sitting on three games played is offensive lineman DJ Campbell, who saw the most playing time on Saturday than he's seen all season.
No. 6 - Texas Football Scattershooting ...
... After the carnage of flags in Stillwater, the Longhorns now led the Big 12 with the most penalties committed in the conference with 51, which is six more than Texas Tech has in second place. Texas is the only team in the conference with 400+ yards of penalties (408).
... Ewers doesn't have enough attempts to qualify for the Big 12 passing leaderboard, but his season passing efficiency of 143.6 would rank fifth if he did. Hudson Card's 158.3 season rating would rank fourth if he had enough action to qualify.
... Bijan Robinson has taken the lead in the Big 12 rushing title race, as his 920 yards in 8 games (115.0 per game) leads Deuce Vaughn (106.3 per game) and TCU's Kendre Miller (104.4). It's crazy to think, but Vaughn might not make first-team All-Big 12 when you consider that Robinson and Miller have 11 and 10 touchdowns on the ground, respectively, while vaughn only has 4.
... Xavier Worthy leads the Big 12 in touchdown receptions (7), but is fifth in receptions (36), fifth in yards (510) and sixth in yards per game (63.8).
... Bert Auburn is 7th in the Big 12 in field goal percentage (72.2).
... This team is really going to miss Anthony Cook, who you'd think will probably miss the final four games of the season after breaking his arm on Saturday. For my money, Cook has been having an all-Big 12 type of season at safety and you can make a case that this team might be 4-4 right now without him. With his omission from the line-up, Kitan Crawford and Michael Taffe are both going to step up their level of play, something that didn't really happen against the Cowboys.
... A year ago, transfer Ben Davis led all Texas defenders with a pretty pathetic 2.5 sacks for the season. Through eight games, the sack leaderboard looks like this:
1. Barryn Sorrey (3)
2T. DeMarvion Overshown (2.5)
2T. Moro Ojomo (2.5)
4. Jaylan Ford (2)
5T. Diamonte Tucker-Dorsey (1.5)
5T. Keondre Coburn (1.5)
7T. Ovie Oghoufo (1)
7T. D'Shawn Jamison (1)
7T. Byron Murphy (1)
... A year ago, Jaylan Ford led the team in tackle for loss with 6. Through eight games, here's what the tackle for loss leaderboard looks like.
1. Jaylan Ford (7.5)
2. DeMarvion Overshown (6)
3. Jahdae Barron (5.5)
4T. Ovier Oghoufo (5)
4T. Moro Ojomo (5)
6. Barryn Sorrell (4)
7T. Byron Murphy (3)
7T. Keondre Coburn (3)
... Ovie Oghoufo has a single sack and five tackles for loss this season as the starting edge player for this team. That's not remotely good enough.
... I still don't understand the Longhorns not using more jet sweeps, end-arounds, shuffle passes, hitches and short pitches to receivers in the name of helping their young quarterback and getting the ball to their best playmakers. It kind of blows my mind that Xavier Worthy averages a touch in the running game once every four games, while no other receiver even has a single carry.
... UTSA is the only team that Texas has beaten this season that received a single vote in either of the two major polls on Sunday.
No. 7 – BUY or SELL …
(Buy) I'm not sure it is all hinging on a 7-5 record. If there's a big public sentiment that a change needs to be made, I think Sarkisian will make the change. He'll have 2024 recruiting that he'll need to really consider.
(Sell) The hire of Kwiatkowski wasn't anything like those hires. He arrived with a rep as being one of the best DCs in the entire country. It's just not fully working out.
(Sell) While I believe Texas might have beaten Alabama, the truth of the matter is that the Tide would have made adjustments before or at halftime and I have very little trust that Sarkisian would have adjusted well to their adjustments. What happened in the first quarter wouldn't have happened over four quarters... IMO.
(Sell) I think he's just going through the kind of growing pains that almost all young quarterbacks go through.
(Sell) There's certainly a chance that it could/would happen, but my instincts say that he plays in the bowl game.
(Buy) Yes.
(Sell) He's in danger of losing momentum he might have been able to bring into the off-season, but I don't believe the 2023 class or the locker room is about to fall apart.
(Sell) I don't know that I've ever viewed him as a generational player, even if I rated him as a five-star. Yes, I do believe his arm talent will see him drafted in the first round, but I had several questions about him as a prospect and making plays in the face of pressure was one of them.
(Buy) It's no small thing that almost the entirety of the interior of the defensive line, along with the likes of Demarvion Overshown, D'Shawn Jamison and Anthony Cook will all need to be replaced.
(Sell) The moment the Mannings decided t commit to Texas was the moment I think they made peace with whatever might happen on the field in 2022.
(Buy) He's a smart dude.
(Sell) I haven't heard any rumblings from Camp Ewers that is suggesting he's dealing with issues related to the injury.
(Buy) No doubt.
(Sell) The plan is the plan and the plan has the entire 2022 season being used as a build-up to what is hoped to be a sensational 2023 season.
No. 8 - Scattershooting on anything and everything ...
... Congrats to the Texas soccer team. Big 12 Champions. It's the first time the Longhorns have had a piece of the regular-season title since 2001. Whoa.
... If I had a vote that mattered ...
1. Georgia
2 Ohio State
3. Tennessee
4. Michigan
5. Clemson
6. TCU
7. Alabama
8. Oregon
9. USC
10. Oklahoma State
... Heisman Ballot: 1. QB Hendon Hooker (Tennessee), 2. QB CJ Stroud (Ohio State), 3. QB Max Duggan (TCU), 4. RB Blake Corum (Michigan) and 5. RB Bijan Robinson (Texas)
... At least the Longhorns have this going for them...
... No deficit seems to be too big for TCU to overcome. For the second straight week, TCU was down by multiple scores, only to flip the script in dominating fashion once the "on" button was pushed.
... Tennessee/Georgia is going to be some kind of game in two weeks.
... Is Brian Kelly getting it going in Baton Rouge?
... Kansas State seemingly had a bad loss to Tulane at home, but Tulane is 7-1 and leading the American Conference. Maybe that wasn't such a bad loss.
... Welcome back, Dak. There was nothing about Sunday that really stood out as significant, but the Cowboys moved to 5-2 and didn't have to strain much to get there, primarily because Detroit was pretty terrible on offense. Just pick up the W and move on.
... Christian McCaffrey, who? All D'Onte Foreman did in his first start as the new RB1 in Carolina was rush for 118 yards on 15 carries, while totaling 145 yards of all-purpose offense. Attaboy.
... Devin Duvernay has emerged into a really good NFL player.
... The Astros are a monster of a team. They deserve the label of World Series favorites. I'm not confused at all about the challenge in front of my Phils.
... It hasn't been easy being a Phillies fan for 39 years, but moments like this are what help you get through the lean years. MV3!
... I can't believe the Padres didn't bring in Josh Hader to face Harper. He had been so dominant in the post-season.
... The Spurs are 2-1 and the Sixers are 0-3. What alternate universe have I entered?
... On a weekend when Chelsea, Man United, Tottenham, Arsenal and Brighton all dropped points, freaking Liverpool lost to Forest. Good grief.
No. 9 - The List: Top 10 Horror Movies ...
It's that time of the year when I end up watching a certain kind of movie (horror) that I rarely watch in the other 11 months out of the year. Just a heads up, I didn't consider Jaws, Silence of the Lambs, Alien, Misery of The Sixth Sense as horror movies. Right or wrong, I chalk these movies up into other movie categories.
10. Friday the 13th
I'm pretty sure this was the first horror movie that I watched as a young kid. I might have been 5. It scared the living crap out of me, especially when the babysitter and her friends left me alone with the movie as a joke.
9. Scream
My favorite horror film from the 90s. A cast that includes Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, David Arquette and Drew Barrymore goes a long way.
8. A Nightmare on Elm Street
Another movie from my childhood where I remember exactly where I was and who I was with when I watched it for the first time. I was at Shane Barnes' house and my bike was stolen while we watched the movie.
7. Poltergeist
I wasn't afraid of anything in the closet or under my bed until I saw this movie when I was probably 7. Thanks, HBO.
6. Rosemary's Baby
One of the all-time classic slots in just outside of the top 5.
5. Halloween
You knew Michael Myers was going to be somewhere in the Top 10.
4. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
I don't know how you make a Horror Top 10 without Leatherface cracking the Top 10.
3. Psycho
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you arguably the best of Alfred Hitchcock.
2. The Exorcist
I will not argue against anyone that believes Pazuzu deserves the No.1 slot.
1. The Shining
I've probably seen this movie more times than the other nine combined. I don't know if it is because it was a cable fixture of my childhood or if I somehow just end up watching it once every couple of years, but it's probably not good that I've seen this movie at least 25 times.
No. 10 - And Finally ...
I leave you with the best thing I saw all weekend.
The only thing that I might argue would be to try to salvage the season by trying the back up qb. But I also don't know when the right time would have been, and I can definitely see the rewards of letting him try to grind through it. I hope you are right that he learns and is better for it.
I REALLY hoped Sark could fix his historical woes, but at this time he is who his record says he is. I hope he gets it fixed. I want him to be "the guy". Very likeable indeed, but he isn't getting paid to make friends.
In order for the 2023 team to be the best it can be, it will likely take some 2022 knocks along the way.
Ewers made a couple of big plays in the final minutes and was let down by his best receiver and the refs.
That run play that was called back was a dawg play, no?
I'm not sure that putting Card in means Texas wins. far from it.
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