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As always, we'll give analysis along with the tiered rankings (now updated through four games) which are derived via a proprietary scoring formula, and based on the following advanced charting statistics (please note the distinctions in how tackles, etc. are counted and why these stats will always differ from the official university stats):
Click Images to Enlarge
***Please note for 2019: -1 point has been added for any defensive penalty outside of defensive pass interference which is always considered a coverage burn and is not double-counted.***
Defensive Snap Counts By Week and Percentage of Total Defensive Snaps Played Through 4 Weeks
Defensive Productivity Market-Share Percentages and Snaps per Production Caused Metrics Through 4 Weeks (snaps per disruption caused is colored coded from blue/best to red/worst)
VERSUS OKLAHOMA STATE
- Run-Stuffs
The Deep Dig defensive productivity grading scale (linked above) credits points for a non-traditional statistic we've named run-stuffs. A run-stuff is generated by a defensive player via their disruptive penetration upfield or their eating up of a double-team along the line of scrimmage in which the offensive ball carrier on a running play must divert course from a perceived original aiming point due to the mess the defensive player has caused within the offensive blocking scheme. It is a gauge for run disruption independent of traditional counting stats like tackles, assists and TFLs, etc.
Texas generated 10 run-stuffs during the Oklahoma State game which is the best mark in this category the defense has seen all season. This was a key factor in keeping Chuba Hubbard (who was the nation's leading rusher coming into the game) largely under wraps given the immense volume he received on the ground.
For comparison, here are the cumulative run-stuff numbers for the previous three contests:
vs. Rice: 5
vs. LSU: 3
vs. La Tech: 7
As we'll discuss, Texas has had a very positive two weeks of production from a few previously underperforming defensive linemen, and much of that is due to the fact that Texas was averaging 5 run-stuffs per game coming into the contest and was able to double that mark against the Cowboys.
The team's run-stuff leaders heading into the bye week:
Moro Ojomo - 7
Keondre Coburn - 6
Malcolm Roach - 4
Ta'Quon Graham - 3
Joseph Ossai, Brandon Jones, Juwan Mitchell, Marquez Bimage - 2
Jalen Green, Josh Thompson, Jacoby Jones, T'Vondre Sweat, Marcus Tillman - 1
- Defensive Line Surging
We asked last week if Ta'Quon Graham, who has been through his time at Texas a high-upside player yet to flip the switch, could parlay a great game versus Rice into another versus OSU. What we saw Graham's coming-out party continue. Graham just LOOKED more active. Even if you were just watching the game casually and not going back to chart and grade every play, we feel assured that fans saw a more active force at the defensive end who was getting to the QB, taking good pursuit angles to make big tackles and generally performing to the level you'd assume when you see such a well-put-together behemoth in football pads. Graham doubled his season total of run-stuffs in this game while also pitching in for what we graded as 2.5 TFLs. He also got to the QB twice for QB hits, both of which messed up the play for the Cowboys offense.
The fact that Graham was still in the sub-replacement level category coming into the Rice game and is now among the Top 7 producers on the defense is a low-key statistic of the week here at the Deep Dig.
Keondre Coburn has seen a similar rise. It's interesting to think that fans worried about these two players much more than Malcolm Roach only weeks ago, but the ensuing season has seen Coburn and Graham rise to levels of both production and per-snap efficiency that are better than Roach's. When things all even out, it will be nice to see all three defensive line starters settle in in around the tier in where Coburn and Graham now find themselves. Considering they've played 50-75 fewer snaps than any players ranked ahead of them in the market-share rankings, their current slotting is more than reasonable.
Even more promising is the immediate depth in Moro Ojomo who is performing like a starter and needs more run. We've been talking about the importance of non-traditional line-disruption in the run game since long before Tom Herman came to town lauding this key measure in the trenches. When we look at a cumulative sum of run-stuffs, TFLs and batted passes at the line of scrimmage, Ojomo -- on top of being the team's outright stuffs leader at only half the volume of the starting defensive linemen -- comes out looking like a stud:
TOP 5 Snaps per line disruption caused (stuffs, TFLs, batted passes - at least 50 snaps)
Moro Ojomo - 10.38
Keondre Coburn - 20.26
Ta'Quon Graham - 22.92
Malcolm Roach - 26.62
Joseph Ossai - 31.57
We also have some of these same players showing up in the line disruption efficiency top 5 metric for line disruption to the passing game, so it's not just as run-stuffers where these surging DL talents are making their hay:
TOP 5 Snaps per passing-game line disruption caused (sacks + pressures + hits - at least 50 snaps)
Jacoby Jones - 17.5
Ta'Quon Graham - 21.29
Joseph Ossai - 22.1
Keondre Coburn - 25.33
B.J. Foster - 26.57
- Missed Tackles
Good news, then bad news, then good news in a bit of a bad news sandwich: The good news is that one of the team's biggest question marks (the viability of a largely unproven defensive line) appears to be answering itself positively. The bad news is that the defensive unit as a whole tackled miserably versus Oklahoma State last week. The good news, though, in the end is that the egregious missed tackles number versus OSU did not seem to lead to game-changing plays as we've seen at times of defensive implosion under Orlando at Texas. Variance was on the side of the Longhorns on Saturday in this regard, especially against a team that had two weapons so dangerous in the yards-after-contact and yards-after-catch categories in Hubbard and Tylan Wallace.
In all, Texas missed 18 tackles on the night:
Sterns - 4
Ossai and B. Jones - 3
Coburn - 2
Green, Adimora, Brown, Thompson, J. Jones and Adeoye - 1
Texas missed as many tackles versus OSU as it did in the previous 3 games combined (Rice -2, LSU -6, La Tech -10). A little more good news to add as a side dish to the bad news sandwich above, is that Texas missed 24 tackles versus Oklahoma State in 2018. Six more. Hopefully, like in 2018, this showing from Texas will represent the high-water mark in whiffs moving forward, because teams like Oklahoma will not let the Horns off as easily.
- Depleted Secondary?
We're not so sure.
Let's take stock of the injuries on the back end: Coming out of the Oklahoma State game, we have ...
S Caden Sterns out for around 4 weeks (knee).
DB Josh Thompson out indefinitely (foot).
CB Jalen Green out around 4 weeks (shoulder).
Prior to the game, we already had injuries to ...
S BJ Foster - missed the last two games with a hammy but could be back after the bye.
S Demarvion Overshown - missed the last two games with a hammy but could be back after the bye.
We also saw during this game that CB D'Shawn Jamison (who has been playing well, allowing a team-best among CBs completion rate of only 25% when clearly targeted) got scarily banged up but was able to return for action later in the contest. So, what does this mean in the near-term future?
We know that the staff seems to have finally soured somewhat on Kobe Boyce, which comes about 3 weeks too late. Boyce joins Donovan Duvernay as the only two players who have had an overall negative impact on the defense through 4 games. We can assume the staff has finally realized this as it took injuries to Jalen Green and then a player in Josh Thompson who had only toyed around at the true outside CB position for a few snaps versus Rice for Boyce to get rotated in versus OSU. With a healthy Jamison, the starting corners look like they'll be Jamison and Anthony Cook for now, and then we'll have to see what the staff does with Brandon Jones. We could see a unit that looks like this:
Joker (3rd safety): Chris Brown
Nickel: Brandon Jones
CB: Anthony Cook
CB: D'Shawn Jamison
S: BJ Foster
S: Montrell Estelle
or
Joker (3rd safety): BJ Foster
Nickel: Chris Adimora
CB: Anthony Cook
CB: D'Shawn Jamison
S: Brandon Jones
S: Chris Brown
... or some combination similar to those. In the "Cowboy" package, we know that Overshown will be in the mix once healthy again and Adimora seems to have done enough in his limited playing time to have earned a role in that 8-DB package. Even as a "depleted" group, Texas could roll out a pretty salty bunch of players when it goes to its third-down speed package in Brown, Cook, Jones, Jamison, Overshown, Foster, Estell and Adimora. That's a lot of great DBs for a unit that some may look at as an injury ward on the surface-level.
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As always, we'll give analysis along with the tiered rankings (now updated through four games) which are derived via a proprietary scoring formula, and based on the following advanced charting statistics (please note the distinctions in how tackles, etc. are counted and why these stats will always differ from the official university stats):
Click Images to Enlarge
***Please note for 2019: -1 point has been added for any defensive penalty outside of defensive pass interference which is always considered a coverage burn and is not double-counted.***
Defensive Snap Counts By Week and Percentage of Total Defensive Snaps Played Through 4 Weeks
Defensive Productivity Market-Share Percentages and Snaps per Production Caused Metrics Through 4 Weeks (snaps per disruption caused is colored coded from blue/best to red/worst)
*******************
VERSUS OKLAHOMA STATE
- Run-Stuffs
The Deep Dig defensive productivity grading scale (linked above) credits points for a non-traditional statistic we've named run-stuffs. A run-stuff is generated by a defensive player via their disruptive penetration upfield or their eating up of a double-team along the line of scrimmage in which the offensive ball carrier on a running play must divert course from a perceived original aiming point due to the mess the defensive player has caused within the offensive blocking scheme. It is a gauge for run disruption independent of traditional counting stats like tackles, assists and TFLs, etc.
Texas generated 10 run-stuffs during the Oklahoma State game which is the best mark in this category the defense has seen all season. This was a key factor in keeping Chuba Hubbard (who was the nation's leading rusher coming into the game) largely under wraps given the immense volume he received on the ground.
For comparison, here are the cumulative run-stuff numbers for the previous three contests:
vs. Rice: 5
vs. LSU: 3
vs. La Tech: 7
As we'll discuss, Texas has had a very positive two weeks of production from a few previously underperforming defensive linemen, and much of that is due to the fact that Texas was averaging 5 run-stuffs per game coming into the contest and was able to double that mark against the Cowboys.
The team's run-stuff leaders heading into the bye week:
Moro Ojomo - 7
Keondre Coburn - 6
Malcolm Roach - 4
Ta'Quon Graham - 3
Joseph Ossai, Brandon Jones, Juwan Mitchell, Marquez Bimage - 2
Jalen Green, Josh Thompson, Jacoby Jones, T'Vondre Sweat, Marcus Tillman - 1
- Defensive Line Surging
We asked last week if Ta'Quon Graham, who has been through his time at Texas a high-upside player yet to flip the switch, could parlay a great game versus Rice into another versus OSU. What we saw Graham's coming-out party continue. Graham just LOOKED more active. Even if you were just watching the game casually and not going back to chart and grade every play, we feel assured that fans saw a more active force at the defensive end who was getting to the QB, taking good pursuit angles to make big tackles and generally performing to the level you'd assume when you see such a well-put-together behemoth in football pads. Graham doubled his season total of run-stuffs in this game while also pitching in for what we graded as 2.5 TFLs. He also got to the QB twice for QB hits, both of which messed up the play for the Cowboys offense.
The fact that Graham was still in the sub-replacement level category coming into the Rice game and is now among the Top 7 producers on the defense is a low-key statistic of the week here at the Deep Dig.
Keondre Coburn has seen a similar rise. It's interesting to think that fans worried about these two players much more than Malcolm Roach only weeks ago, but the ensuing season has seen Coburn and Graham rise to levels of both production and per-snap efficiency that are better than Roach's. When things all even out, it will be nice to see all three defensive line starters settle in in around the tier in where Coburn and Graham now find themselves. Considering they've played 50-75 fewer snaps than any players ranked ahead of them in the market-share rankings, their current slotting is more than reasonable.
Even more promising is the immediate depth in Moro Ojomo who is performing like a starter and needs more run. We've been talking about the importance of non-traditional line-disruption in the run game since long before Tom Herman came to town lauding this key measure in the trenches. When we look at a cumulative sum of run-stuffs, TFLs and batted passes at the line of scrimmage, Ojomo -- on top of being the team's outright stuffs leader at only half the volume of the starting defensive linemen -- comes out looking like a stud:
TOP 5 Snaps per line disruption caused (stuffs, TFLs, batted passes - at least 50 snaps)
Moro Ojomo - 10.38
Keondre Coburn - 20.26
Ta'Quon Graham - 22.92
Malcolm Roach - 26.62
Joseph Ossai - 31.57
We also have some of these same players showing up in the line disruption efficiency top 5 metric for line disruption to the passing game, so it's not just as run-stuffers where these surging DL talents are making their hay:
TOP 5 Snaps per passing-game line disruption caused (sacks + pressures + hits - at least 50 snaps)
Jacoby Jones - 17.5
Ta'Quon Graham - 21.29
Joseph Ossai - 22.1
Keondre Coburn - 25.33
B.J. Foster - 26.57
- Missed Tackles
Good news, then bad news, then good news in a bit of a bad news sandwich: The good news is that one of the team's biggest question marks (the viability of a largely unproven defensive line) appears to be answering itself positively. The bad news is that the defensive unit as a whole tackled miserably versus Oklahoma State last week. The good news, though, in the end is that the egregious missed tackles number versus OSU did not seem to lead to game-changing plays as we've seen at times of defensive implosion under Orlando at Texas. Variance was on the side of the Longhorns on Saturday in this regard, especially against a team that had two weapons so dangerous in the yards-after-contact and yards-after-catch categories in Hubbard and Tylan Wallace.
In all, Texas missed 18 tackles on the night:
Sterns - 4
Ossai and B. Jones - 3
Coburn - 2
Green, Adimora, Brown, Thompson, J. Jones and Adeoye - 1
Texas missed as many tackles versus OSU as it did in the previous 3 games combined (Rice -2, LSU -6, La Tech -10). A little more good news to add as a side dish to the bad news sandwich above, is that Texas missed 24 tackles versus Oklahoma State in 2018. Six more. Hopefully, like in 2018, this showing from Texas will represent the high-water mark in whiffs moving forward, because teams like Oklahoma will not let the Horns off as easily.
- Depleted Secondary?
We're not so sure.
Let's take stock of the injuries on the back end: Coming out of the Oklahoma State game, we have ...
S Caden Sterns out for around 4 weeks (knee).
DB Josh Thompson out indefinitely (foot).
CB Jalen Green out around 4 weeks (shoulder).
Prior to the game, we already had injuries to ...
S BJ Foster - missed the last two games with a hammy but could be back after the bye.
S Demarvion Overshown - missed the last two games with a hammy but could be back after the bye.
We also saw during this game that CB D'Shawn Jamison (who has been playing well, allowing a team-best among CBs completion rate of only 25% when clearly targeted) got scarily banged up but was able to return for action later in the contest. So, what does this mean in the near-term future?
We know that the staff seems to have finally soured somewhat on Kobe Boyce, which comes about 3 weeks too late. Boyce joins Donovan Duvernay as the only two players who have had an overall negative impact on the defense through 4 games. We can assume the staff has finally realized this as it took injuries to Jalen Green and then a player in Josh Thompson who had only toyed around at the true outside CB position for a few snaps versus Rice for Boyce to get rotated in versus OSU. With a healthy Jamison, the starting corners look like they'll be Jamison and Anthony Cook for now, and then we'll have to see what the staff does with Brandon Jones. We could see a unit that looks like this:
Joker (3rd safety): Chris Brown
Nickel: Brandon Jones
CB: Anthony Cook
CB: D'Shawn Jamison
S: BJ Foster
S: Montrell Estelle
or
Joker (3rd safety): BJ Foster
Nickel: Chris Adimora
CB: Anthony Cook
CB: D'Shawn Jamison
S: Brandon Jones
S: Chris Brown
... or some combination similar to those. In the "Cowboy" package, we know that Overshown will be in the mix once healthy again and Adimora seems to have done enough in his limited playing time to have earned a role in that 8-DB package. Even as a "depleted" group, Texas could roll out a pretty salty bunch of players when it goes to its third-down speed package in Brown, Cook, Jones, Jamison, Overshown, Foster, Estell and Adimora. That's a lot of great DBs for a unit that some may look at as an injury ward on the surface-level.
