Longhorns’ red zone failures, on both sides of the ball, are crucial in loss to Oklahoma
Two weeks ago after a 38-6 win over Baylor, Texas coach Steve Sarkisian and members of the Longhorns lauded their success in the red zone – both stopping the Bears from scoring and scoring themselves when they drove inside the 20-yard line.
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On Saturday against No. 12 Oklahoma, the Longhorns got their comeuppance, as the Sooners dominated when they were the goal line and produced a stirring goal line stand that made a huge difference in a 34-30 win over No. 3 Texas in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas.
This game was not for the feint of heart, as the lead changed hands twice in the final 1:17 and ended with the Sooners’ fourth touchdown – on a three-yard pass from Dillon Gabriel to Nic Anderson – with 15 seconds remaining. Oklahoma ran plays inside the Texas 20-yard line on six drives and scored on all six of them, adding field goals on the other two.
“We had the plan in place to stop them but the quarterback was able to get away a few times and we didn’t execute in a few others,” Texas linebacker David Gbenda said. “We know we have to get better and we will get back to work and fix what we need to fix.”
Conversely, the Longhorns had three drives into the red zone and scored only once. The other two ended in a Quinn Ewers interception and the aforementioned failure to score from the OU 1 on four snaps early in the fourth quarter.
“We just got to game plan better and we’ve got to execute better – it’s pretty simple,” Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said. “I thought we showed a lot of resiliency on a couple of those drives inside the five you know – they score the one on a third down, we were hanging in there we just couldn’t keep them out.
“And then the last one I think is busted coverage. I gotta look at the tape, but I think we didn’t guard the guy so that’s unfortunate when you just don’t guard him. So you know, Oklahoma took advantage of mistakes and then that ultimately is a lot of what football is when two good teams play. When one team makes a mistake can you capitalize on that error?
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“It felt like they capitalized on areas when maybe we weren’t right where we needed to be whether it was a run, fit, or in coverage.”
Asked about Texas’s failed four plays from the OU one-yard line in the fourth quarter, Sarkisian said the team’s goal line package has been very effective for it over the years. The Longhorns brought in their jumbo package for the first three snaps, all runs by Jonathon Brooks, and a fourth-down pass to Xavier Worthy could not get the ball into the end zone.
“We take a lot of pride in it and we wanted to do what we do and execute the plan that we had,” he explained. “We thought we had a good plan.
“I think the first down play looked like the linebacker kind of shot the gap – why we didn’t block him is hard to tell. The second down play kind of got strung out a little bit. Third down play looked like they got some penetration again and then on fourth down, we went to a play that we felt really good about.
“Bang-bang, right? We don’t score by about four inches, you know, so it was tough play for Xavier trying to get in right there. So we got to reevaluate.”
