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Alex Dunlap fills in for Anwar Richardson who is on vacation
The Texas defense in 2021 was miserable.
It doesn't take a statistician or a professional analyst to tell you this, either. The eyeballs of even the most casual fans determined exactly the same. The middle of the D-line was gashed, the linebackers swallowed and the DBs burned.
Texas fans are excited about the offense coming into 2022, however, and rightfully so.
Even though it is somewhat concerning that he hasn't taken even the slightest grip on a starting job yet, transfer QB Quinn Ewers brings the allure of the unknown and a mouth-watering recruiting pedigree. Again, this player has not yet even won a starting job, yet still has the 15th-best odds in all of college football to win the Heisman Trophy over at DraftKings Sportsbook (+5000).
And if we're talking Heisman odds, look no further than stud RB Bijan Robinson. He has the 4th-best odds in all the land (+2000) behind only Bama QB Bryce Young, Ohio State QB CJ Stroud and former Sooner (now at USC) QB Caleb Williams. Robinson leads a platoon that also includes a future NFL contributor in Roschon Johnson as a thunderous change-of-pace and Keilan Robinson as the occasional flash of lightning.
Texas brings back all of its best receiving weapons starting with Xavier Worthy, who it would be easy to make a case for as on track to be greatest Texas WR in modern history. There's also Jordan Whittington and a new starting stud in Isaiah Neyor, and exciting depth all over the place ... from Agiye Hall to Brenen Thompson and others. If Troy Omeire is 80% of the legend he's been talked up to be from consecutive fall camps where he suffered season-ending injuries, he'll be hard to keep off the field, himself.
The primary tight ends are a mix of exciting youth in Ja'Tavion Sanders, Gunnar Helm and Juan Davis paired with one of Jeff Banks' hand-picked former players at Bama in Jahleel Billingsley, who Texas went after hard in the transfer portal.
The only real question mark is the offensive line, but, when comparing it to last season, there is very little chance the unit doesn't improve, given extra seasoning and experience of players like Hayden Conner and Jake Majors. Any modicum of improvement as seniors from guys like Junior Angilau and/or Christian Jones will be, by definition, representative of an improvement on last season. The infusion of extremely talented freshmen also brings wild cards to the mix. While it's hard to trust freshmen on the offensive line -- when you have a player like DJ Campbell on campus, well, let's just say he's not your typical freshman. Youth didn't keep Creed Humphrey off the field at Oklahoma, and it didn't keep Connor Williams off the field here in Austin.
But, here again, we have to look to the defense. There are nowhere near the number of superlatives we can lay out regarding the group. In fact, I challenge anyone to give me a definitive answer that you feel strong conviction about for any of these questions:
- Who is the best player on the Texas defense?
- What is the best position group on the Texas defense?
- What is the identity of the Texas defense?
We can answer all of these questions pretty easily for the offense. Of course we could argue over whether Bijan Robinson is better than Xavier Worthy, or whether the RBs (when you consider all three of the top ones) are a stronger group overall than the receivers, but those are nit-picks. We know they're all good. We know that, in theory, and at the very base of everything else, this will be an offense that runs through Bijan Robinson. Off that action, it takes big shots downfield, and does all it can to get the ball in the hands of its fast playmakers in space.
Conversely, we don't know if any level of the Texas defense is good.
The conventional wisdom would probably make the chalk answer for "best player on the Texas defense" LB Demarvion Overshown, but, to be completely upfront and honest, are we even allowed to ask if he has really even been THAT good? If you look at the efficiency metrics from the Deep Dig last season at players who played at least 100 snaps, Byron Murphy (5.87), Ben Davis (7.47) and Anthony Cook (8.01) were all better than Overshown in their snaps/production-caused metric (8.22).
Still, when looking at these types of numbers, and examining some of the context to go along with them, there are reasons to believe in the prospect of improvement from the Texas defense in 2022:
1) The first reason to believe improvement is in the cards for the Texas defense is the most simple: it's going to be hard to get much worse. Texas lost to Kansas at home in 2021 and fans should never let that fact get memory-holed, as tempting as it may seem to want it gone from your brain forever. That game will either stand as a testament looking back to how far Texas has come, or as a continuing stain and a rejoinder to all who don't see meaningful change as necessary should a lack of success continue.
There's also the fact that teams who were really bad at something the year before usually sort of get better in whatever aspect that was. The reason why this seems to happen is probably two-fold: a) again, when you're at the bottom of the barrel in some form or fashion it's just naturally easier to move up, just like it's easier to move down if you are at the top of the heap; and b) teams usually focus on fixing the things that they know caused them to lose. Things they were miserable at. They don't like to be embarrassed, and they certainly don't want to continue embarrassing themselves.
2) The least efficient defensive player since at least 2013 played the 4th-most snaps of all in 2021. Yes, EDGE Ray Thornton was the least efficient player on a snaps/production caused basis (52.42) in the history of the Deep Dig. On 498 total snaps, his COMBINED number of sacks, QB hits, QB pressures and batted passes was ... 5 (five). That's basically one act of QB disruption every 100 snaps or so. Joseph Ossai did the same thing once every 15.9 snaps in 2020.
To put just how miserable production off the edge was in 2021, here is a list of how players ranked in this metric during the 2021 season:
- EDGE DJ Harris Jr. 13 total snaps; 13 snaps/QB disruption-caused
- S/LB Morice Blackwell 17 total snaps; 17 snaps/QB disruption-caused
- NT Byron Murphy 276 total snaps; 27.6 snaps/QB disruption-caused
- EDGE Ovie Oghuofo 486 total snaps; 30.3 snaps/QB disruption-caused
- DE Jacoby Jones 213 total snaps; 30.4 snaps/QB disruption-caused
- DT Moro Ojomo 403 total snaps; 33.5 snaps/QB disruption-caused
- NT T'Vondre Sweat 295 total snaps; 34.7 snaps/QB disruption-caused
- DE Alfred Collins 317 total snaps; 35.2 snaps/QB disruption-caused
- DE Barryn Sorrell 92 total snaps; 36.8 snaps/QB disruption-caused
- EDGE Jett Bush 179 total snaps; 39.7 snaps/QB disruption-caused
- LB Ben Davis 140 total snaps; 46.6 snaps/QB disruption-caused
- NT Keondre Coburn 368 total snaps; 52.5 snaps/QB disruption-caused
- DB Anthony Cook 482 total snaps; 53.5 snaps/QB disruption-caused
- LB Demarvion Overshown 493 total snaps; 58 snaps/QB disruption-caused
- LB Ayodele Adeoye 69 total snaps; 69 snaps/QB disruption-caused
- DB Chris Adimora 115 total snaps; 76.6 snaps/QB disruption-caused
- DT Vernon Broughton 167 total snaps; 83.5 snaps/QB disruption-caused
- LB Jaylan Ford 343 total snaps; 85.75 snaps/QB disruption-caused
- EDGE Ray Thornton 498 total snaps; 99.6 snaps/QB disruption-caused
The only players worse in this metric than Thornton (who's actual job in his position was to create these exact statistics) were two inside linebackers (Luke Brockermeyer and David Gbenda) plus the corners and safeties. In short, there is no way that the EDGE position doesn't improve as far as efficiency in getting to the QB, despite EDGE looking to be one of the remaining gaping holes on the roster.
Ovie Oghuofo -- who really played mostly as an overhang player and SAM linebacker in an off-ball capacity in 2021 -- got to the QB with over three times greater frequency per-snap than Thornton last year, playing a position not as suited to put him in great spots to do so. Now that Oghuofo has the inside track to start at the EDGE, we should expect an uptick from him. He was over three times more effective at disrupting the QB than Thornton last season despite playing many snaps at a position less-conducive to QB disruption by design.
3) Keondre Coburn simply HAS to bounce back. Snacks is the big dog in the front and center of the defense and he had his worst season at Texas in 2021. In 2019 as a freshman, he generated production once every 9.38 snaps. He improved that number to once per every 7.32 snaps. As a junior in 2021, that number fell to a career-low of once every 10.37 snaps. Coburn generated only 17 run-stuffs on the season, also a career-low, and for the first time since arriving on campus, was not the leader in the clubhouse in this metric. That was Byron Murphy in 2021 with 22. Now that we've seen how some tweaks are going to be occurring along the defensive line from an alignment standpoint with an extra DL on the line situationally in place of a nickel corner, we should expect less attention to be paid to the interior DL guys individually. This coupled with the natural regression to the mean we should be expecting to see from Coburn anyway bodes well for the chance of a 2022 bounceback.
4) As bleak as the situation is at inside linebacker, it was worse last year.
Watch No.47 on this play (at 14:36 if it doesn't take you there automatically).
It's the play that sticks out in my mind most of the whole season and it is emblematic of how a lack of ability from an ILB to shed second-level blocks with lateral agility can crack open an entire defense. Even if we can't definitively say that Overshown is the best player on the defense, most would agree he's in the conversation. Pairing him with a guy like Jaylan Ford or even possibly Diamonte Tucker-Dorsey will represent an upgrade at LB.
5) Safety play will be greatly improved. BJ Foster is gone and this is addition by subtraction. Although Foster was a firecracker of a prospect and a player everyone who follows the team closely was over-the-top about early in his career, something just went badly sideways. By his final season at Texas, fans were used to seeing him miss tackles (25 whiffs over the last three seasons), but would likely be surprised to hear that he allowed a 100% completion percentage on passes where he was clearly targeted as an over-the-top defender. Now, he did have some interceptions and one blow-up hit in 2021, but all of those came on plays where he was able to step in front of the coverage of a backfield-mate to make a play. In steps Anthony Cook, the team's overall most productive player from the 2021 season when playing the nickel, likely playing alongside Jerrin Thompson or Kitan Crawford -- both of whom bring appealing traits to the back end of the defense.
6) Cornerbacks will be better in run-support. It may be somewhat surprising for some to find out that D'Shawn Jamison, despite being known as more of a special-teams speed dynamo and flashy change-of-direction artist, was actually the surest-tackling corner on the Texas roster in 2021. He only missed two tackles last year, leading to a 315.5 snaps/missed tackle number -- the second best on the entire defense. Josh Thompson is now gone, and despite some NFL buzz that eventually petered out to an undrafted free agent landing with the Jacksonville Jaguars, was the team's worst tackler on a per-snap basis, whiffing once every 36.8 snaps. With Ryan Watts looking like he'll be the starter opposite Jamison, you have a player who has looked very good in a limited sample as far as his ability to come downhill, take good pursuit angles, wrap up and finish. At the very least, he's highly unlikely to lead the team in snaps-per-missed tackle, which, again, by definition means that improvement in this area seems imminent.
7) Gary Patterson. This really doesn't take much explanation at all. He's not an on-field coach, but one of the lessons this spring taught us is that Patterson truly is heavily involved with his input on how the defense as a unit should be run. It's hard to think of a coach who has done more with less on defense than Patterson when thinking about his time as head coach at TCU.
In the end, he could be the biggest wild card of all.
With all of these things in mind, and in the spirit of Anwar's chosen column name, the "Sunday Pulpit", I hope you can at least leave this piece with a little bit of hope in your heart and a few new reasons to believe.
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THE FUNNIEST THING YOU WILL SEE THIS WEEK
It is not a kid doing a flip, or hitting his dad in the nuts with a wiffle ball bat on Tik-Tok. I don't usually come across many of those kinds of videos in my personal routine. Instead, I implore you to behold the greatest joke ever told. RIP Norm McDonald.
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SPORTS ON A DIME
1. I have never been the highest on Jalen Hurts, even going back to his time in high school, so, in hindsight, I obviously underestimated him pretty badly. I will say that it's now or never for him in Philly, though. The Eagles have surrounded him with ridiculous talent in AJ Brown, Devonta Smith, Dallas Goedert, a solid OL and good platoon of runners. If he doesn't lead the Eagles to serious NFC East contention, he's not Philly's franchise QB. The Eagles will know for certain one way or another after this season, which is actually a sort of an advantageous spot to be in. 2023 will be an excellent year for QBs in the draft.
2. Poona's agent is always going to hype his client up in any aspect he can, but I'm actually buying the idea that he's good at hoops.
3. Everyone talks about Michael Pittman in Indy, but the Parris Campbell truther in me never dies. As one of my business partners at RosterWatch, the Trashman, wrote this week ..."In the Colts' most recent practice, Campbell caught 8 of 24 or 1/3 of Ryan’s total passes. If you take Ryan’s career attempts and parse them out by thirds, it leaves you with 12.7 targets per game."
Now, that (12.7 targets per game) won't happen, but Campbell is certainly a player I'm targeting in the final round of early best-ball and redraft leagues for 2022. All the normies have totally forgotten about him.
4. Vikings star WR Justin Jefferson in the Cooper Kupp, high-volume role? In a Rams-ified version of the Minnesota offense under Kevin O'Connell?
If we knew for certain this were to be the case, Jefferson would be a slam dunk first WR pick off the board in fantasy -- and a Top 3 pick overall.
5. In home-league fantasy football drafts, ALWAYS REMEMBER to pick the player who is ON THE NFL TEAM that you (and/or the sportsbooks) think is GOING TO BE BETTER this season when all other things are equal.
6. Count me in on the Giants QB Daniel Jones-isn't-terrible train. I thought he had a very similar week at the Senior Bowl to Justin Herbert and Josh Allen, but has been in horrible situations. Now, Jones gets Brian Daboll as his new HC -- the guy largely credited with grooming Allen. Talk about an upgrade from the clapper Jason Garrett and the meathead Joe Judge. He also gets his full complement of receivers back healthy as well as Saquon Barkley (who's poised for a bounceback himself) and a revamped OL. Like Hurts, he's an NFC East QB in a make-or-break year. Quotes like this one from Davis Webb are the types of things I'm certainly filing away.
7. What a career for Ryan FitzMagic. He always turned into FitzTragic eventually through the course of a season, but when that guy was on -- he was fun as hell to watch. I hope he gets into announcing. He might not need to, though, as he made $82 million in career earnings.
8. I'm in big on Ceedee Lamb this season with Amari Cooper gone and Michael Gallup likely to start the season at less than 100% or sidelined. I was in big on Ceedee even before all that, in fact. I said the minute he was drafted that he walks into Dallas as the best WR on the team, even over Cooper. But can any doctors in the house let me know if it's possible for a full-grown man to grow a half-inch over an offseason?
9. We can't get too over our skis based on reports and video clips from OTAs, but I love seeing this little preview of Russell Wilson to Jerry Jeudy in Denver. Russ is going to elevate that entire Broncos offense immensely. All Denver was missing was a QB and they got a superstar.
10. Burrow, Ekeler, Jefferson, Lamb
