On Texas Football: State-champion coach Bryan Erwin lists expectations for Longhorns season opener
On the initial video edition of the season of On Texas Football’s Lunch with the Coach, Inside Texas’ Bobby Burton and former state championship-winning coach Bryan Erwin discuss their expectations for Longhorns’ upcoming season and the 2023 opener against Rice on Saturday in Austin.
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Erwin, who coached La Marque to two titles after being a graduate assistant for Texas in the 1980s, focused on three specific expectations for the Longhorns this season: better special teams play, the three Ts (turnovers, third downs on defense and three-and-outs reduction by the offense), and explosive plays.
Erwin likes to compare most things to golf, saying special teams can be compared to the short game.
On special teams, Erwin said Texas needs to be better on kickoffs and on punts to help reduce the number of returns.
“I think special teams are such a key component,” he explained. “We’ve got to be better in the kicking game. Mainly kickoffs is what I’m most interested in. Last year only 30% of our kickoffs resulted in touchbacks and also 40% of our kickoffs were returned. That’s a bad stat in today’s day and time when you want to have a kicker that can bust that thing from the 35-yard line, knock it to the goal line or five yards deep.
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“We shouldn’t have to defend kickoff returns; we shouldn’t have to defend that yardage.”
Texas allowed an average of 17 yards a return on kickoffs last year.
“There’s a lot of hidden yards in there when you give up 17 yards per return,” Erwin said. “You know, there’s 20-30 yards in return yardage right there that you’re negative in the game – that’s two or three first downs and the game is all about yardage and first downs.”
Burton opined that Texas would improve in the return game this season.
“I think that the return game will be better in part because of the addition of Joe DeCamillis (as a special assistant for special teams),” Burton said. “They’ve added this guy who’s a 20-30-year NFL coach and all sudden, he seems to be handling the return game. I think they’re gonna pop something there this year.”
Erwin said Texas needs to bring the “delta” between plays run on offense and plays defended more in line with the figures produced by two-time defending national champion Georgia.
“Texas averaged about 67 plays per game last season and defensively had to defend approximately 74 plays per game,” Erwin listed. “So that’s a delta of negative-seven. We’re running seven fewer plays offensively than then we’re defending defensive. That’s a problem. We’ve got to up that number, offensively and we’ve got to decrease that number, defensively.
“Let’s compare it to Georgia’s average, which was 70 plays offense and 60 plays defensively, so they were plus-10 Delta.”
All that plays into Erwin’s “three Ts.” Go check out the rest of the video for more detailed info.
