State of the Program: Texas needs to ‘play hard for all four quarters’ to beat Iowa State
On the latest video episode of On Texas Football’s State of the Program, Inside Texas’ Bobby Burton and Eric Nahlin discuss the Longhorns’ recent inability to close out games, how the culture on the 40 Acres has changed over the past two seasons and the keys for a win as Texas travels to play a tough Iowa State team this Saturday.
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State of the Program is sponsored by Adam Loewy of the LoewyLawFirm.com.
Nahlin, the publisher of InsideTexas.com, said Texas needs to “play all four quarters” to beat the Cyclones, who have won four of five games since a 3-3 start.
“Texas has a lot of familiarity with this Iowa State team,” Nahlin said. “It’s still Matt Campbell, the coach in his eighth year, and he’s had his wing man (Jon Heacock) the whole time so that they know the defense well. And Texas knows what they’re going to try to do on offense. So I don’t think it’s a mentally taxing game but it is going to be physically taxing. Iowa State plays extremely hard. Texas is gonna have to play hard for four quarters.”
Nahlin explained that the Cyclones are not the only opponent they will be facing in Ames this weekend – despite being 9-1 and atop the Big 12 Conference and posting their best start since 2009, Texas is battling itself and its lethargy late in games.
“There’s a lot of different aspects to it,” he said. “There’s not a one-size-fits-all answer for it. A lot of it has to do with the lack of execution on the players part – I think they do lack intensity once they get up to a big lead. But that’s on Texas coach Steve Sarkisian as well. When you lack focus, you make more mental errors and we’ve seen far too many mental mistakes in the last couple of weeks. We saw some very poor tackling and angles last week, which is usually effort and focus.
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“Some aspects of situational play calling both on offense and defense (too) because there’s play calls to take advantage of, I believe,” Nahlin added.
Burton asked if safety has become the “weak” spot in a stout Texas defense.
“Texas definitely lacks some top-end talent that we see in other positions on the team,” Nahlin said. “We’ve talked about that before. But a lot of teams play sound defense with safeties that aren’t going to get drafted and Iowa State is a good example of that. There’s no excuse for the mental errors or playing the wrong leverages, missing tackles, not using the sideline when you should. That’s not necessarily pure challenge. A lot of times that’s effort or focus,
How does Texas fans marry the success of the team – after all the Longhorns are at No. 7 in the latest CFP rankings – with the criticism of how it can get better?
Go check out the video in its entirety to get that answer and glean more information.
