Was too busy watching ole miss Bama but it looks/sounds like swoopes struggled mightily.... Nothing new. This offense simply doesn't have the talent to compete. At least the defense continues to have solid performances. Pretty remarkable how Texas could miss out on practically all the qb talent in this state for so long but here we are.... Strong has his hands full.
It's the product of a decade of neglect by Mack Brown but it's not something that's solved by simply recruiting a superstar QB- that's what Mack thought the answer was.
QBs are important but great teams are built with good lines on both sides of the ball, it all starts and ends with the talent up front. DD
Swoopes was worse in this game than the UCLA game. He was making reads 2-3 seconds late; he can't run the zone read; his throws were just inaccurate. The offensive line was a little bit better in this game. The offensive play-calling was better for 2.5 quarters before it fell apart - part of that is on Swoopes for not making plays. We just need more explosive plays on offense; I don't know if the wide receivers are doing a good enough job. Strong deciding to kick the 52 yard field goal was a disaster of a call. That was a bad play waiting to happen. The fake punt by Baylor was another example of awful special teams. The defense was worn down by the fact that there is no debt in the front seven. I know Steve Edmond had 9 tackles, but he was making tackles on run plays 8 yards down the field.
I think it's fair to say Swoopes was terrible today, but I think he might develop into a decent QB one day. Otherwise, Jerrod Heard, a redshirt freshman, is on the bench right now, and Zach Gentry will be coming next year. A quarterback competition next year could yield a better starter.
It blows my mind that Texas has had such lousy offensive lines for this many years in a row. They typically recruit and develop solid defensive lineman, but they have flat out sucked on the other side. When was the last good UT offensive lineman in the NFL?
Their one conference game was against Iowa St which went 2-7 last year in the big 12. Offenses get better from year to year or they can get worse. Maybe they are just as good but the point is that you can't make general assessments when there is no real team for the school to face at the start of the year. Sagarin has their SOS at the 104th toughest in the country. The comparison to their first 4 opponents vs the rest of college football is ridiculous.
UT guy sitting in front of me at the game was talking to me about this. Said he's not sure if he's slow or just not elusive. He said he Swoopes doesn't seem to have any instinct for making tacklers miss.
Fun defensive stats before the team has gotten tired due to the offense sucking so badly: In 5 games, Texas defense has given up 9 total points in the first half - 3 field goals. One of those was on a turnover where the BYU started their drive in FG range. In 3 of the games, UT pitched defensive shutouts in the half. Two games, they pitched shutouts for the whole game (NMSU scored their only points on a fumble recovered for a TD).
This is certainly encouraging. There just isn't a lot of evidence out there to suggest the offense is going to get better. At least the worst of the schedule will be over after this weekend. Ok St and Kansas St are both pretenders until they have quality wins. There should be a sortable stat in the standings for quality wins. There should be a way to filter up teams that have wins against top 25 and top 10 opponents. I feel like you have to go to the comp ratings websites for any real statistic based comparison of the teams that isn't based on how many points they scored against Sam Houston St. Then again, TCU....
http://collegefootballtalk.nbcsport...lie-strong-has-full-support-of-texas-regents/ The Texas Board of Regents felt like they needed to publicly support Charlie Strong after the Baylor win. Not a great sign with evaluating the fan/season ticket holder's frustrations. Strong can save this dip if he can somehow beat OU or maybe TCU if they are undefeated. It doesn't mean his job is in jeopardy. It just means that he certainly hasn't given fans anything to feel good about or anything that suggests that they took a step in the right direction. Anyone can yell at these guys, make them work harder in the gym, move them into the dorms and kick guys off the team. People need to see something that shows he is a good on the field coach. I want to think so but how can you ignore how poorly the team has played in the 2nd half of games? It's really hard not to think that other teams are making the proper adjustments at halftime and he can't keep up. Again, he hasn't really ****ed up but he certainly hasn't done anything that impresses the masses other than increase discipline. That doesn't translate to wins within itself. At least the defense as really improved but I feel a lot of that has to do with Jordan Hicks coming back from injury and having a really great season plugging up the middle but still. We do seem to have good coaching on the defensive side of the ball and maybe once we have a decent QB then everything else will fall into place. We just got a pretty solid WR to commit (Reggie Hemphill) back to the team. I won't bother posting how high school analysts have rated him because according to some, that's as impressive as his massive Clutchfans poster rating. So I guess all we can say is that he is a guy that catches passes. This rates pretty well with every other college football program who have also recruited guys who catch passes.
LOL, you're just now starting to think this? I could have told you this, and have posted it over a year ago. He was a below average 2A QB in HS and was absolute garbage in Spring ball. They guy is just an average "athlete", not a College QB. Just horrible, and Shawn Watson is absolutely lost as the OC with him at the QB spot.
Like I said in the previous post, the Baylor game is very important for Strong. But so far I did see anything in Strong who is better than Brown, which is bad for UT. UT is a third level team in Texas right now, which is embarrassing.
