The Deep Dig
WVU Part II: Offense
presented by Wendy Swantkowski, DDS
Looking for experienced, family and cosmetic dental care in the Houston-Memorial area? Go with the best! OB sponsor Wendy Swantkowski, DDS. Call 281-293-9140 and find out why so many Orangebloods members are her patients!
Offensive Line Thoughts and Grades
Deep Dig Grading Scale
55 LT Connor Williams - 99 snaps
1 QB pressure, 1 run-stuff allowed
1 holding penalty
2 knockdowns, 1 pin
DEEP DIG GRADE: 79.22
WVU game photos via Texas Athletics
While he struggled at times, Williams was only one penalty away from his third-straight 80-point game and apparently what we wrote last week needs repeating.
After Connor Williams — one of two true golden sons of the Deep Dig and most precious future monsters — was named a semifinalist for the Outland Trophy, the Deep Dig has been under attack. It’s confusing and seems so backwards to us.
Insults and questions about our grading system have come from all sides. As if the Deep Dig did not manufacture, conduct and invite others aboard the Connor Williams hype train from Game 1 at Texas to present.
Let us guess: next, folks will be throwing tomatoes at the Deep Dig because D’Onta Foreman is a Heisman Trophy semifinalist. It makes about as much sense. Why? Because throwing tomatoes for no damn reason is what the masses seem to love to do these days. And it’s exactly why we find ourselves tending to spend less and less time outside the creaky confines of our dark basement, despite the fall sun calling us like a siren to get some brisk, fresh air. We resist these temptations because at least things actually make sense down here.
Up there, everything is seeming more and more cockamamie.
The detractors have claimed that the grading scale is too hard and indicated they do not believe it is predictive. Small comments and jeers that can only lead some of us to believe these detractors believe our hours upon days upon weeks of work spanning four years are meaningless.
Let’s make these things clear before we re-hash what we thought was made clear in this very space last week:
- There are few people we trust less about true prospect evaluation than the Football Writers of America. They may be good writers, but they are media. They are not professional evaluators or even people who spend any amount of time educating themselves about evaluation as it is not their job.
- The Deep Dig’s grading scale was designed for NFL prospects in an attempt to rank them in order and establish draft-round-projections.
- The grading scale IS HARD. That’s the most important part. Readers of the Deep Dig who’ve been confused about the scale’s purpose need to understand that what this column has been doing for four years is comparing players at Texas to players who were true NFL prospects. Connor Williams is the first of any to reach draftable-status, and has done so as a sophomore.
- Look around and tell us which other Texas OL in the last four years has been drafted. No one has ever gotten great grades because, unfortunately, Texas hasn’t had good offensive linemen in recent years.
As for the actual system (a selection from last week’s Deep Dig)
When the system was invented in 2012, it separated the run-portion from the pass-portion, and grading scale’s milestones generally represented a player reaching the score in one of two portions, but not necessarily in both. For example, Donald Hawkins got 80-plus point scores in the run-block portion of his grade three times during his senior season at Texas, but never an average of the run and pass-portions that equaled out around this area.
Players like Jake Matthews received 90-plus scores in the pass-block portion alone, but if an average were to be taken of both the run and the pass-portion as the Deep Dig switched to in 2014, it’s very likely his “true” overall scores would have been more like an 86 or 87. Hence, the need for adjustment of the scale as illustrated above.
With Williams improving on his record-score from Baylor to Texas Tech, these things become clear. We don’t do all this work for no reason. We live in constant anticipation of a future Texas monster and the forecasting of such monsters has been a pretty tough sell around these parts lately. But after grading every snap of every offensive lineman at Texas over now (nearly) four years, we have good news that is final and definitive:
1) Williams has taken the step in his sophomore season that only our most wildly optimistic regulars had foreseen coming. He’s the D’Onta Foreman of the offensive line. In the midst of such regression amongst the rest of the Texas football team, Williams is flashing red sign of positive development that simply cannot be ignored. He hasn’t been good, he’s been amazing.
2) He could be drafted right now. Right this instant and NFL franchise could feel comfortable spending a 5th to 7th round pick on Williams and giving him a year in an NFL system to develop.
3) He will be a first-round pick should he elect to come out after his junior season.
So now, YOU tell us where we’ve sold Connor Williams short.
Don’t worry, we’ll wait. We’ve literally got nothing but time down here.
77 LG Patrick Vahe - 56 snaps
1 run-stuff allowed
1 ineligible downfield penalty
DEEP DIG GRADE: 75.67
72 LG Elijah Rodriguez - 43 snaps
1 run-stuff allowed
DEEP DIG GRADE: 77.56
It was basically an even platoon at the left guard position versus WVU as Elijah Rodriguez started, but Patrick Vahe ended up getting the lion’s share of the work. The main takeaway here is that both players operated at a perfectly suitable level for execution of a D1 gameplan. However, the most interesting part is how much better Rodriguez graded out than Vahe.
We’ve begun to wonder what has happened with Vahe and the reasons for the regression in his play, but find it largely useless to wonder. What we can say with certainty is why his play has actually regressed. The actual physical things. This is for a number of reasons, including, but not limited to…
1) Catching the Kent Perkins disease of getting his head down coming into engagement and dipping his shoulder to address defenders in the open field as a pulling option. How this continues to happen with Texas players blows our collective mind. It is not only horrible form which causes players to lose their feet and leverage, it is extremely dangerous and will end up getting someone hurt. It has not been corrected yet in either Perkins or Vahe, so it is safe to assume the Texas staff doesn’t care about this abject and dangerous sloppiness. How hard is it to teach a player to keep his eyes up, stick his facemask just above the numbers of the defenders, keep his hands inside on him, bring his hips through, then drive that dude’s ass off your spot?
2) Looking a step slower, less explosive and less flexible. He’s more stiff. Maybe this came from trying to add strength without worrying about how it would affect his mobility because he can’t get to the second-level for the life of him.
3) Changing from a phone-booth player in 2015 who would make his living road-grading to a guy seemingly too worried about positioning (or who knows what) to get after defensive linemen in the same way. He doesn’t move his feet while engaged with anywhere near the motor he used to, he loses his feet far more often, he’s easier to disengage with as an ice-picking defender and he gets too overextended in a number of situations.
As crazy as it is to say, Elijah Rodrigoez could possibly end up being the better option. While Rodriguez has been absolutely terrible in every other opportunity he’s had to be graded by the Deep Dig, the performance versus WVU was eye-opening. We finally saw some of what the staff has surely seen during practice to want to do everything they can to get the guy involved.
We just don’t see why all this dickering around is taking place on the left side of the line when the worst player on the entire unit plays at the other guard position.
56 C Zach Shackelford - 99 snaps
3 run-stuffs, 1 QB pressure, 1 sack allowed
DEEP DIG GRADE: 73.97
A week off his best performance as a Texas Longhorn, Zach Shackelford returned back to the player we’ve come to know during his true freshman season at Texas. That is, an average-at-best option at the center position who’s best off being hid by the offensive staff in any way possible.
To Shack’s credit, he was swindled a good number of times in this game (there were 99 snaps graded after all) by Kent Perkins and one of Elijah Rodriguez or Patrick Vahe absolutely blowing their part of shared assignments and making Shack look like the idiot standing around who’d just missed his block to bust up the play. And to Shack’s credit, he’s finally getting better in the (increasingly used) zone-game by not allowing the same amount of upfield pressure through his play-side shoulder in recent weeks. It’s not so much a tribute to his gaining of strength, but rather, to his understanding of his power step and his positioning in order to avoid it. When guys are getting off of Shack’s blocks in zone these days, they are doing it at an increasing rate around his body to the back-side of the play rather than “worst-case-scenario” of upfield through his play-side shoulder.
We still stand by the notion that Shackelford was not ready to play this season physically, and with some added strength will be a good-to-above-average player as early as next season.
76 RG Kent Perkins - 98 snaps
2 sacks, 1 run-stuff, 1 TFL allowed
DEEP DIG GRADE: 73.29
(Alex Anderson played 1 snap at RG when Perkins lost a helmet; any reasonable person would have left Anderson in).
We’re going to take a page out of Perkins’ book and take this section off.
58 Brandon Hodges - 56 snaps
2 run-stuffs allowed
DEEP DIG GRADE: 77.00
75 Tristan Nickelson - 43 snaps
3 run-stuffs, 2 pressures allowed
DEEP DIG GRADE: 72.21
Again, why the mixing up of players and the constant rotations at the right tackle position? Hodges has been miles better than Nickelson for one. We understand that Nickelson won a WWE-style weight belt over the course of the summer for being the best one at carrying dumbbells and running sprints, but this sort of thing doesn’t always translate to the football field. While Nickelson may still develop into a nice player at some point (we’re not giving up on him entirely at this point), Hodges is currently the better option. He’s only graded unacceptably once (versus KSU) and has had three-straight games of 77’s or better which Texas should take to the bank all day long.
OL snaps per disruption allowed or penalty caused
Skill-position snap counts and one-liners
Quarterback
7 Shane Buechele - 99 snaps
- RIP 18-wheeler package. For real this time?
Running Back
33 D’Onta Foreman - 90 snaps
21 Kyle Porter - 8 snaps
- With Foreman being used at this kind of clip, he may be best served to move on to the NFL after the season is over. He’s now shown (outside of tying Earl Campbell’s record which will be broken versus Kansas) that he’s capable of carrying an extremely heavy load. All worries of Foreman being in any way injury prone have been brutally squashed at this point assuming he holds up for the remainder of the schedule. He’s shouldered the load for Texas, he’s been the offense per Charlie Strong. In fact, he’s saved Charlie Strong from a midseason firing that surely would have occurred had Foreman not been on the roster. He’s provided Texas fans with a small glimpse of magic during a time when positives have been hard to come by.
- If a Lil’Jordan Humphrey is moved to RB at closed practices and no one is around to see it, does it ever really happen?
Wide Receiver
8 Dorian Leonard - 85 snaps
9 Collin Johnson - 56 snaps
3 Armanti Foreman - 46 snaps
11 Jacorey Warrick - 41 snaps
6 Jake Oliver - 39 snaps
2 Devin Duvernay - 35 snaps
1 John Burt - 11 snaps
13 Jerrod Heard - 10 snaps
- John Burt out of the snap cellar? Welcome to the basement Jerrod Heard! It wasn’t a ton of snaps for Burt, but he was making progress toward a big contribution before he was again benched for letting a ball bounce off his pads which resulted in an interception. Over the course of the last five games, Burt has played only 27 total snaps. For comparison, Jerrod Heard, who’s been a ghost himself lately, has seen exactly double that amount at 54.
- After seeing his lowest snap-count of the season last week, Dorian Leonard emerged as an 85% participant versus WVU and honestly looked like the player with the best hands on the team over and over again. We’re beginning to think that Leonard will have some sort of NFL future if development continues.
- We asked last week and got no good answers, so we’ll ask again. Who was the last “Collin Johnson” at Texas? Roy Williams? Limas? Someone from further back? Who was the last true size/speed combo who had the type of upside we’ve already seen out of Collin Johnson as a freshman?
Tight End
42 Caleb Bluiett - 42 snaps
47 Andrew Beck - 18 snaps
- Did somebody say tight ends?
Did he play on offense? Nope.
Scholarship players who did not record a snap on offense versus WVU (doesn’t include special teams participation if applicable):
As we turn our attention to (yet another) make-or-break game for Charlie Strong at Texas (how many are there going to be?)
… we thank you, once again, for reading.
WVU Part II: Offense
presented by Wendy Swantkowski, DDS
Looking for experienced, family and cosmetic dental care in the Houston-Memorial area? Go with the best! OB sponsor Wendy Swantkowski, DDS. Call 281-293-9140 and find out why so many Orangebloods members are her patients!
. . .
Offensive Line Thoughts and Grades
Deep Dig Grading Scale
55 LT Connor Williams - 99 snaps
1 QB pressure, 1 run-stuff allowed
1 holding penalty
2 knockdowns, 1 pin
DEEP DIG GRADE: 79.22
WVU game photos via Texas Athletics
While he struggled at times, Williams was only one penalty away from his third-straight 80-point game and apparently what we wrote last week needs repeating.
After Connor Williams — one of two true golden sons of the Deep Dig and most precious future monsters — was named a semifinalist for the Outland Trophy, the Deep Dig has been under attack. It’s confusing and seems so backwards to us.
Insults and questions about our grading system have come from all sides. As if the Deep Dig did not manufacture, conduct and invite others aboard the Connor Williams hype train from Game 1 at Texas to present.
Let us guess: next, folks will be throwing tomatoes at the Deep Dig because D’Onta Foreman is a Heisman Trophy semifinalist. It makes about as much sense. Why? Because throwing tomatoes for no damn reason is what the masses seem to love to do these days. And it’s exactly why we find ourselves tending to spend less and less time outside the creaky confines of our dark basement, despite the fall sun calling us like a siren to get some brisk, fresh air. We resist these temptations because at least things actually make sense down here.
Up there, everything is seeming more and more cockamamie.
The detractors have claimed that the grading scale is too hard and indicated they do not believe it is predictive. Small comments and jeers that can only lead some of us to believe these detractors believe our hours upon days upon weeks of work spanning four years are meaningless.
Let’s make these things clear before we re-hash what we thought was made clear in this very space last week:
- There are few people we trust less about true prospect evaluation than the Football Writers of America. They may be good writers, but they are media. They are not professional evaluators or even people who spend any amount of time educating themselves about evaluation as it is not their job.
- The Deep Dig’s grading scale was designed for NFL prospects in an attempt to rank them in order and establish draft-round-projections.
- The grading scale IS HARD. That’s the most important part. Readers of the Deep Dig who’ve been confused about the scale’s purpose need to understand that what this column has been doing for four years is comparing players at Texas to players who were true NFL prospects. Connor Williams is the first of any to reach draftable-status, and has done so as a sophomore.
- Look around and tell us which other Texas OL in the last four years has been drafted. No one has ever gotten great grades because, unfortunately, Texas hasn’t had good offensive linemen in recent years.
As for the actual system (a selection from last week’s Deep Dig)
When the system was invented in 2012, it separated the run-portion from the pass-portion, and grading scale’s milestones generally represented a player reaching the score in one of two portions, but not necessarily in both. For example, Donald Hawkins got 80-plus point scores in the run-block portion of his grade three times during his senior season at Texas, but never an average of the run and pass-portions that equaled out around this area.
Players like Jake Matthews received 90-plus scores in the pass-block portion alone, but if an average were to be taken of both the run and the pass-portion as the Deep Dig switched to in 2014, it’s very likely his “true” overall scores would have been more like an 86 or 87. Hence, the need for adjustment of the scale as illustrated above.
With Williams improving on his record-score from Baylor to Texas Tech, these things become clear. We don’t do all this work for no reason. We live in constant anticipation of a future Texas monster and the forecasting of such monsters has been a pretty tough sell around these parts lately. But after grading every snap of every offensive lineman at Texas over now (nearly) four years, we have good news that is final and definitive:
1) Williams has taken the step in his sophomore season that only our most wildly optimistic regulars had foreseen coming. He’s the D’Onta Foreman of the offensive line. In the midst of such regression amongst the rest of the Texas football team, Williams is flashing red sign of positive development that simply cannot be ignored. He hasn’t been good, he’s been amazing.
2) He could be drafted right now. Right this instant and NFL franchise could feel comfortable spending a 5th to 7th round pick on Williams and giving him a year in an NFL system to develop.
3) He will be a first-round pick should he elect to come out after his junior season.
So now, YOU tell us where we’ve sold Connor Williams short.
Don’t worry, we’ll wait. We’ve literally got nothing but time down here.
77 LG Patrick Vahe - 56 snaps
1 run-stuff allowed
1 ineligible downfield penalty
DEEP DIG GRADE: 75.67
72 LG Elijah Rodriguez - 43 snaps
1 run-stuff allowed
DEEP DIG GRADE: 77.56
It was basically an even platoon at the left guard position versus WVU as Elijah Rodriguez started, but Patrick Vahe ended up getting the lion’s share of the work. The main takeaway here is that both players operated at a perfectly suitable level for execution of a D1 gameplan. However, the most interesting part is how much better Rodriguez graded out than Vahe.
We’ve begun to wonder what has happened with Vahe and the reasons for the regression in his play, but find it largely useless to wonder. What we can say with certainty is why his play has actually regressed. The actual physical things. This is for a number of reasons, including, but not limited to…
1) Catching the Kent Perkins disease of getting his head down coming into engagement and dipping his shoulder to address defenders in the open field as a pulling option. How this continues to happen with Texas players blows our collective mind. It is not only horrible form which causes players to lose their feet and leverage, it is extremely dangerous and will end up getting someone hurt. It has not been corrected yet in either Perkins or Vahe, so it is safe to assume the Texas staff doesn’t care about this abject and dangerous sloppiness. How hard is it to teach a player to keep his eyes up, stick his facemask just above the numbers of the defenders, keep his hands inside on him, bring his hips through, then drive that dude’s ass off your spot?
2) Looking a step slower, less explosive and less flexible. He’s more stiff. Maybe this came from trying to add strength without worrying about how it would affect his mobility because he can’t get to the second-level for the life of him.
3) Changing from a phone-booth player in 2015 who would make his living road-grading to a guy seemingly too worried about positioning (or who knows what) to get after defensive linemen in the same way. He doesn’t move his feet while engaged with anywhere near the motor he used to, he loses his feet far more often, he’s easier to disengage with as an ice-picking defender and he gets too overextended in a number of situations.
As crazy as it is to say, Elijah Rodrigoez could possibly end up being the better option. While Rodriguez has been absolutely terrible in every other opportunity he’s had to be graded by the Deep Dig, the performance versus WVU was eye-opening. We finally saw some of what the staff has surely seen during practice to want to do everything they can to get the guy involved.
We just don’t see why all this dickering around is taking place on the left side of the line when the worst player on the entire unit plays at the other guard position.
56 C Zach Shackelford - 99 snaps
3 run-stuffs, 1 QB pressure, 1 sack allowed
DEEP DIG GRADE: 73.97
A week off his best performance as a Texas Longhorn, Zach Shackelford returned back to the player we’ve come to know during his true freshman season at Texas. That is, an average-at-best option at the center position who’s best off being hid by the offensive staff in any way possible.
To Shack’s credit, he was swindled a good number of times in this game (there were 99 snaps graded after all) by Kent Perkins and one of Elijah Rodriguez or Patrick Vahe absolutely blowing their part of shared assignments and making Shack look like the idiot standing around who’d just missed his block to bust up the play. And to Shack’s credit, he’s finally getting better in the (increasingly used) zone-game by not allowing the same amount of upfield pressure through his play-side shoulder in recent weeks. It’s not so much a tribute to his gaining of strength, but rather, to his understanding of his power step and his positioning in order to avoid it. When guys are getting off of Shack’s blocks in zone these days, they are doing it at an increasing rate around his body to the back-side of the play rather than “worst-case-scenario” of upfield through his play-side shoulder.
We still stand by the notion that Shackelford was not ready to play this season physically, and with some added strength will be a good-to-above-average player as early as next season.
76 RG Kent Perkins - 98 snaps
2 sacks, 1 run-stuff, 1 TFL allowed
DEEP DIG GRADE: 73.29
(Alex Anderson played 1 snap at RG when Perkins lost a helmet; any reasonable person would have left Anderson in).
We’re going to take a page out of Perkins’ book and take this section off.
58 Brandon Hodges - 56 snaps
2 run-stuffs allowed
DEEP DIG GRADE: 77.00
75 Tristan Nickelson - 43 snaps
3 run-stuffs, 2 pressures allowed
DEEP DIG GRADE: 72.21
Again, why the mixing up of players and the constant rotations at the right tackle position? Hodges has been miles better than Nickelson for one. We understand that Nickelson won a WWE-style weight belt over the course of the summer for being the best one at carrying dumbbells and running sprints, but this sort of thing doesn’t always translate to the football field. While Nickelson may still develop into a nice player at some point (we’re not giving up on him entirely at this point), Hodges is currently the better option. He’s only graded unacceptably once (versus KSU) and has had three-straight games of 77’s or better which Texas should take to the bank all day long.
. . .
OL snaps per disruption allowed or penalty caused
. . .
Skill-position snap counts and one-liners
Quarterback
7 Shane Buechele - 99 snaps
- RIP 18-wheeler package. For real this time?
Running Back
33 D’Onta Foreman - 90 snaps
21 Kyle Porter - 8 snaps
- With Foreman being used at this kind of clip, he may be best served to move on to the NFL after the season is over. He’s now shown (outside of tying Earl Campbell’s record which will be broken versus Kansas) that he’s capable of carrying an extremely heavy load. All worries of Foreman being in any way injury prone have been brutally squashed at this point assuming he holds up for the remainder of the schedule. He’s shouldered the load for Texas, he’s been the offense per Charlie Strong. In fact, he’s saved Charlie Strong from a midseason firing that surely would have occurred had Foreman not been on the roster. He’s provided Texas fans with a small glimpse of magic during a time when positives have been hard to come by.
- If a Lil’Jordan Humphrey is moved to RB at closed practices and no one is around to see it, does it ever really happen?
Wide Receiver
8 Dorian Leonard - 85 snaps
9 Collin Johnson - 56 snaps
3 Armanti Foreman - 46 snaps
11 Jacorey Warrick - 41 snaps
6 Jake Oliver - 39 snaps
2 Devin Duvernay - 35 snaps
1 John Burt - 11 snaps
13 Jerrod Heard - 10 snaps
- John Burt out of the snap cellar? Welcome to the basement Jerrod Heard! It wasn’t a ton of snaps for Burt, but he was making progress toward a big contribution before he was again benched for letting a ball bounce off his pads which resulted in an interception. Over the course of the last five games, Burt has played only 27 total snaps. For comparison, Jerrod Heard, who’s been a ghost himself lately, has seen exactly double that amount at 54.
- After seeing his lowest snap-count of the season last week, Dorian Leonard emerged as an 85% participant versus WVU and honestly looked like the player with the best hands on the team over and over again. We’re beginning to think that Leonard will have some sort of NFL future if development continues.
- We asked last week and got no good answers, so we’ll ask again. Who was the last “Collin Johnson” at Texas? Roy Williams? Limas? Someone from further back? Who was the last true size/speed combo who had the type of upside we’ve already seen out of Collin Johnson as a freshman?
Tight End
42 Caleb Bluiett - 42 snaps
47 Andrew Beck - 18 snaps
- Did somebody say tight ends?
. . .
Did he play on offense? Nope.
Scholarship players who did not record a snap on offense versus WVU (doesn’t include special teams participation if applicable):
. . .
As we turn our attention to (yet another) make-or-break game for Charlie Strong at Texas (how many are there going to be?)
… we thank you, once again, for reading.
