Coach V: Film doesn't lie for Texas Football

By: Coach Venable — There are always thousands of reasons why a team loses a football game. Blaming individuals or individual plays is a lazy excuse. Football is not an excuse making sport so let’s eliminate everything but the facts., thank you. Of course, sometimes established facts need a colorful opinion to spruce up the article’s interest but will try to stay on solid ground as long as possible.

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OSU made more positive plays than UT on both sides of the ball. Fact.

The OSU football field runs east to west. It may be the only major field in the country (high schools included) that doesn’t run north to south. There was a brisk wind swirling around the stadium. Sanders (OSU QB1) has practiced and played thousands of reps in those conditions. It can be stated that he has documented proof of what that ball might do in those conditions. Ewers (UT QB 1) had exactly two days to figure which way the ball would react on short, medium, or long tosses while his receivers had the same problem adjusting as well.

It’s much easier to throw with/against the wind than throwing into a sideways wind—will it knock the ball down or float it longer? Could the throw dip and swirl or go straight sideways and carry huge off target? We saw all of the above for both teams but it just seemed OSU throws danced into waiting arms while UT throws skittered into the ground.

The UT offense ran the ball very well in the first half of the game. The UT offense had major problems completing passes during the first half yesterday. OSU put one and one together and decided to add to the box to reduce the run and took their chances UT could complete a pass. Give credit where credit is due—OSU made one adjustment that had a huge bearing on the game by taking a chance and it worked. Tip your hat.

We had 14 penalties. OSU had zero. Wow, just wow.

Our two stallions (5 and 2) made a ton of brilliant plays. In the first half they moved chains and crossed the alumni stripe during the first half. They also made sparkling maneuvers in the second half but these were getting back to the LOS. MT’s are unacceptable but these two rang up a ton of aw craps among the Cowboys.

Our pass protection had a tough day against a good defense. We may see a change in the interior very soon.

Speaking of MT’s our defense led the college football world yesterday. This wasn’t Bijan and Roschon dodging our flailing efforts but we made them look like our guys with an array of diving arm tackles backed up with direct missed targets too embarrassing to count. I thought players were to show improvement as the season wore on/out.

I found it interesting that we stuck with our audible through the thick and thin of their audibling. We would walk up the MLB to the LOS edge—they would in turn checkoff to a different play. We would then shift back our guy to the MLB alignment. We would then stunt our MLB into the A gap while they threw a pass over the short middle to a wide open receiver. What did we think they would checkoff to once we showed blitz from edge with our Mike backer vacating the middle?—how did we improve our standing by still stunting and leaving the middle vacant either way?

Yikes.

OSU is a good sound football team that doesn’t beat themselves. They have a tremendous advantage with their stadium. Those paddles three feet away make grown men pay attention. They have a quality coaching staff. They teach the game well. It’s not a crime to lose to a well prepared program.

We played very hard for the most part but our staff must figure it out—we can’t play our starters as many plays as we have been asking of them. When you see a Jerrin Thompson (28) on their last td or Jaylan Ford (41) in the 4th quarter pursuit you know they were pushed past their limit and that’s on the staff.

We have some terrific football players. Enjoy them. We don’t have a championship football team at every position. Hope they get better. We didn’t play well enough to win yesterday. Facts. We need the off week to heal up and hopefully work on fundamentals. We aren’t very good at those pesky traits. Putting—tackling. Practice.