The run game against Rice

The central takeaway of the Arkansas game was obfuscated by the subsequent storylines about quarterback. Despite facing a redshirt freshman quarterback and missing one of their starting linebackers, the Razorbacks greeted Texas to Fayetteville with a 3-2-6 dime defense. Then they lined up in a three-safety shell and played a lot of Tampa 2 with a 5-man box against Bijan Robinson and the Longhorn run game.

The Longhorns didn’t seem to know what to make of it. Initially they seized the cheese and tried to run inside zone over the Hogs, only to be thwarted by their own poor blocking and stout play by the Arkansas front. They ran the outside zone play, which had served them so well late in 2020 and then again in the opener against Louisiana, only four times.

Obviously heading into the Rice game Texas fans wanted to see the run game get back on track against an overmatched opponent with outside zone retaking a place of prominence. I calculated up the results, but I only include here the carries by scholarship running backs. You don’t want to make too much of the results against Rice and certainly not from the clock-eating inside dives to Gabe Watson late in the game when everyone is waiting to go home.

Here are the results:

Surprised?

Texas continued to run the ball downhill, albeit it with more of a focus on the zone running game, and absolutely blasted the Owls with their inside zone plays.

I will offer a caveat, I’m not distinguishing between inside zone and duo for this project and given Stan Drayton’s history teaching the former very similarly to the latter I’m not sure there’s really a meaningful difference. That said, it should be acknowledged the Wild RoJo, 72-yard touchdown run is counted among the inside zone plays and but would surely count as “duo” if you want to be persnickety.

Either way, Texas continued to emphasize downhill runs as they’d done against the Hogs only this time they got real movement at the point of attack and blew open some holes.

There was a renewed emphasis on outside zone as well of course. Included the outside zone arsenal were some quarterback reads on the backside and then also these two fun additions:

pic.twitter.com/ae3Xp7qaQv

— Asst to the Minister of Culture (@Ian_A_Boyd) September 21, 2021

It’s basically the same play, perhaps they check it for the front. In the first example the Owls have a cornerback off the ball who has to be responsible for the cutback lane and this goes badly when Bijan throws his 170 pound body out of the way.

In the second example there’s an edge player on the backside and Texas slides back Cade Brewer to handle him. The split flow by Brewer creates hesitation for their linebackers, leading to Keilan Robinson taking the ball out the front door for a 65-yard touchdown.

This offense has a lot of ways to run zone, inside or outside, and it’s clearly the meat and potatoes of the system. I think they were thrown off by Arkansas’ gameplan and lost the plot on the road. Perhaps this is also why they were hesitant to make changes along the offensive line.

The counter scheme is important to the offense though and I think they’ll improve with the play as the season progresses. The trick of the counter scheme is in offering something to build play-action from. There’s an old adage in football which says “if you really want play-action, you better pull a guard.”

Of course Texas Tech hilariously ran a play-action play in 2019 from power-read without really ever running the actual power-read play…but ideally your play-action would be built off a running play you actually use. Texas has two issues here, one is they haven’t yet established counter as a mainstay in the offense. The other is they have struggled to execute the counter play-action protection scheme.

Similar issue, a rusher leaks in between tackle and pulling guard after they're both engaged. pic.twitter.com/lLw25aHAgW

— Asst to the Minister of Culture (@Ian_A_Boyd) September 21, 2021

It all looks good until a late coming linebacker or looping defensive lineman finds the daylight between Christian Jones and Junior Angilau, who’s pulled over to block the edge player or the first free-coming defensive player he finds.

They’ll need to clean this up before facing TCU and Oklahoma, who excel at movement up front in the pass-rush. The whole point is to buy time for double moves, like the one by the slot in the second example. You can’t be giving up inside pressure when throwing double moves off play-action. It’d also help if Casey Thompson could take some deeper drops and still push the ball down the field but if that’s going to be an issue, use a protection which moves him around more or make sure you can execute this one.

Changing the guard (or tackle?)

The second-team offensive line looked good against Rice. The first team looked pretty good as well, and the second team didn’t have to try to execute any protections for double move play-action shots. They just got to line up and mash a worn down unit who wanted to get back to Houston.

Still, we could see a few things we’ve consistently seen. Hayden Conner is hard to get around, he’s an even bigger and stronger version of Junior Angilau and an obvious fit for this scheme. Andrej Karic continues to be athletic and tough in every instance where we see him get snaps for the Longhorns. Tope Imade was also powerful and solid in his opportunities.

So what do we make of this? Should there be a lineup change?

Maybe, but also maybe not. What exactly would the change be to raise the caliber of this unit?

Hayden Conner may be better than Junior Angilau and/or Denzel Okafor, but is he better right now? Consider that pass protection and assignment errors have been the main issue for Texas and Conner is a true freshman who’s been cross-training at two positions. Is he ready to offer consistently clean play? I have no idea.

The more popular change I think most would like to see is inserting Karic into the starting lineup. The only question, where?

He might be a better left tackle than Christian Jones, but then Jones was said to have had a better camp and continues to be one of the more promising athletes on the entire unit who just needs more consistency. Perhaps Texas could put Karic in and either slide Jones over to right tackle or put Karic at right tackle, but does this line really get better without Derek Kerstetter? The super senior had a bad outing against Arkansas but then was good against Rice and is steady in pass protection and a leader in the locker room. It may be Karic needs to replace one of these guys but it’s not as cut and dry a situation as it appears when he’s pancaking people in garbage time.

The other popular solution is to continue to play both Kerstetter and Jones while adding Karic but to slide someone inside to guard, ideally to Denzel Okafor’s place at left guard. There’s more problems here though.

Okafor is a great run blocker in zone and while his pass protection has been shoddy it’s not obvious to me moving a tackle inside will make the situation better. Can any of these three tackles anchor against a defensive tackle coming downhill on them? Would they be strong enough to get push? Do any of them have any real experience or knowhow for playing guard in the new system or will they also be prone to mental breakdowns which lead to inside pressure?

I see what everyone else sees, it seems Andrej Karic is one of the five best offensive linemen on the team and maybe THE best. However, fitting him into the starting lineup isn’t quite the slam dunk you’d think. Maybe the best solution would be sliding the versatile Kerstetter inside to guard and playing Karic at right tackle. Since fall camp I’ve suspected the most likely solution would be for Karic to get the start if there’s an injury (anywhere on the line, really) and then to Wally Pipp someone and refuse to relinquish the gig.

We’ll get to Texas Tech later in the week, but I suspect the Red Raiders will offer the current offensive line and quarterback another chance to build confidence and cohesion before the real test on the road to Gary Patterson’s Fort.