On Texas Football’s Lunch with the Coach: Positives and negatives from Longhorns’ win over Alabama
On the latest 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 the positives and negatives from Texas’ huge win on the road over Alabama.
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Erwin, who coached La Marque to two titles after being a graduate assistant for Texas in the 1980s, worked back from the end of the game with his positives, lauding the Longhorns for being able to run off the final seven and half minutes to secure the victory.
“Just the focus on staying in bounds, getting first downs, moving the chains, keeping the clock running and knowing that you really don’t want to put the ball the air,” Erwin said about the final drive. “You want to keep the ball on the ground. You don’t want to stop the clock for any reason other than them using their timeouts and they did use their timeouts early and often during that drive.
“That was a 12-play, 34-yard drive that ate up seven and a half minutes. Twelve plays for 34 yards – that’s impressive. So I really loved the way we finished the game. We could have easily gone three-and-out, you know run the ball, run the ball, run the ball and get stopped and punt, then Alabama gets the ball and goes down and score and now the pressure is on big time. So a great job of closing the game out. Like I’ve always said, ‘go win the darn game when you are in that position,’ and Texas did.”
He also listed the play of the Texas safeties, especially against the run, and the domination of the Longhorns’ defensive tackles as other positives.
Erwin said the Texas game plan was “brilliantly simple. There was enough multiplicity in there, that our guys did a great job in that, too.”
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As far as things to work on Erwin listed Texas’ three-and-outs right before halftime and then on its first possession of the third quarter. That’s when the momentum of the game swung to Alabama and the Crimson Tide responded by taking the lead with 13 consecutive points.
“The three-and-out at the end of the half basically gave Alabama a two-for-one because they got the ball back to start the third quarter,” Erwin said.
“Alabama knew they had that momentum, too. You could feel it in the stadium and they’re like, ‘here we go. We’ve seen this.’ We’ve seen this about 67 times. And I’m like, ‘okay, this is how they do it. This is how they win.’ And Alabama was poised at that time to go win the game. But the way our guys responded, or the way Sark responded, the way our playmakers responded, was a thing of beauty.”
Go check out the rest of the video for more detailed info and plenty of additional insights from Bobby and the coach.
