I can't speak for Desert Scar, but I thought our defense against OSU sucked. That said, Chizik doesn't have an 8 year history of this. There's no pattern I can discern that I can say "Chizik is bad at this" as opposed to a particular gameplan or particular players. Greg Davis has a long history of the exact same problem, so it's easy to identify.
We went 1-4 in the redzone yesterday, with a dominant offensive line and playmakers at reciever and running back. When that happens people will be upset. We went sideways too much, we always have. We generally run too many plays where the reciever catches the ball when he's not moving. Now that we've actually got good position coaches on offense, that's not going to be a problem very often - with our offensive line, our running backs and our recievers Texas will make plays no matter what offense you call. Against an inferior defense a conservative offense makes sense - you'll make plays regardless and you won't make stupid turnovers that'll keep a bad team in the game. Against a team that approaches equal talent, that's not going to work - which is why the Texas offense had so often sputtered in big games in the past. Davis gets big credit for unleashing Vince last year. That offense last year was incredible, unpredictable - we did what we want, when we wanted to. Pass the ball all the time? We could do that. Run out of the spread? do that too. Line up and just pound teams? That too. Big plays, ball control - it had everything. Obviously the offense this year can't be as good - no Vince. But the lessons learned last year - namely putting your playmakers in a position to make plays - seem to keep being forgotten. And it's a recurring theme.
I take issue with the defenses personal fouls that has nearly cost lots of recent game. That could be largely the coaches fault. But an all-america safety whiffing on two rather straitforward tackles and the same all american safety and all american corner getting burn on the half court pass, seems more players than coaches. Texas this year should have been confident their secondary could make sure tackles and handle 1 on 1 coverage. These were tackles and plays we were making last year (except we couldn't handle Jarrett and Holmes a couple of plays, but oh well). You want an aggressive defense and you need your secondary to be tight. I havn't seen the defensive scheme I have had a big problem with, save the big cusion we gave to Gonzalez. Am I dissappointed with some individual play breakdowns, yes, but the Texas defense has played very well, not flawless, but very well. They played well enough to have a shot at the #1 team in the country had the offense took advantage of their opps to score. Finally, I am happy with Mack Brown. One of the best recruiters in the country. Runs a good ship and has a lot of good coaches. I just wish Greg D would retire and we brought in a hungrier guy from an innovative system and with a knack for unpredicatble calls in game situations other than right before when a chip shot FG wins a game. We were unpredicable in the 2% situation when anything but a bonehead mistake and you win the game and far too predictble during routine parts of the game. And still, is anyone defending Charles only getting 10 touches. How can such a game plan be reasonable.
I'm talking about when you recommended the OSU/Michigan offense. believe me, Meyer's retooling this year in no way resembles those old-school big-10 offenses
k guys like every greg davis talk that happens, there will be no resolution. all i have to say is look at the W-L record. i think the one thing that we can all learn from this thread is that OU sucks.
I never brought up Meyer and OSU/Mich to say they are similar. But if Meyer came into a situation where he had the best Oline returning in the country, one of the best staple of RBs in the country, one of the best verticle threat WRs in the country, and multiple good TEs, BUT a freshman QB, I don't think he would be running a short passing system. We didn't need to be complicated. Smash between the tackles, smash between the tackles, the mix in the occasional counter, reverse, a play action passing game aiming for chucks, and screens to your great backs. Generally I hate big 10 power football, but when you have a great D PLUS have a great oline and great skill players with the exception of a QB it can be very effective (Mich rode it to a split NC in the 90s and more recently OSU won a NC on it). And it was what our team player talent/development this year was made for.
you know the **** why we do? because we watched him piss away some of the greatest collections of offensive talent ever from 2000-2004. piss them away. i started going to UT in 2000 so from day one i basically got to experience the golden age of piss-poor greg davis playcalling. i hit the phenomena at its zenith. in football fandom terms, i was abused as a small child and it has scarred me for life. you know, that's pretty much true of myself and probably a lot of others. my friends and i even admitted as much yesterday while watching the game. one of the announcers i think said something nice about greg and we started laughing. i then said "you know, i don't think greg davis could ever do anything to make me like him." and we joked that if we led the nation in yardage and points for 10 straight years, we'd just say why wasn't it 11. so you know, i'll never be objective about greg davis probably. but that doesn't make us wrong. it doesn't make us a bunch of loons who have no clue what we're talking about. 2000-2004 wasn't imaginary. we sucked hard in big games. 14, 3, 17, 13, and 0 were the offensive points we scored agianst ou, and not all of those were even meaningful points (at least 14 were late, meaningless TD's). in 2004 we got shutout against an ou defense that would later give up 35 to a&m and osu and 55 to usc, and i know a&m and osu were not 35 points more talented than us on offense. there were numerous other ****ty performances on top of those. there was always some excuse for the "playing not to lose" style of playcalling in big games. and you know what, if you look hard enough, you can almost always find one. the timid, curl into the fetal position, wussy greg davis always came out for games that mattered. but then the "let vince be vince" era started after the mizzou game in 2004 and the offense actually looked good. davis stopped going into the fetal position at the drop of a hat. he called a real game. we threw short, we threw long, we threw in between, we had crossing routes, out routes, comebackers, inside runs, outside runs, we mixed up running and passing, we passed on first down, we kept defenses off-balance. no doubt having a bad ass offensive line, vince young, a group of really good receivers, one of our best TE's ever, and great rb's made it all look better, but for once the playcalling actually looked good. it wasn't just us out-athleting teams and "taking what the defense gave us," we took it to teams. we made them take what we wanted to give them. i hardly ever complained about the playcalling. sure, individual plays sucked, but the overall plan seemed sound and made sense and played to our strengths. but if it takes the greatest player ever and an amazing surrounding cast for you to trust them and call a good game, then i find you lacking. because like i said, you can almost always find a reason to play like a wuss. while i find the playcalling to be better than the 2000-2003 days, we are still much closer to the old days, than the previous year and a half. the ou game is like a microcosm of everything. we play not to lose and get f'd up for a half, then davis puts some trust in the offense and we score 2 TD's in the 3rd and then just salt it away. not being conservative doesn't mean you wing it all over the place like spurrier's florida teams, but it is very easy to tell the difference between a team playing not to lose and a team playing to win. you don't have to be a D-1 level coach, you can just be an internet poster, to tell the difference. as for yesterday, the playcalling in general wasn't bad, but it was atrocious down by the goalline. you could see we were trying more to make sure we got a fg than to go for the TD. after the initial kick return, 3 crappy calls to set up a fg. later, we get 1st and goal at the 2 (on what i thought was a nice call that drew a pass interference), and what the hell do we do? do we do the obvious, use our big hosses up front, and either qb sneak or power I our way into the endzone? no, we run without a fb for one play for a 1 yard loss. then we get in the I, but toss it out wide and lose about 4. then we threw a zero yard screen to the flats and get nothing. how the hell do you lose 4 yards on 3 plays with our personnel down by the goalline? it should never happen. and then the inexcusable fade route to sweed with the damn game on the line that was close to being intercepted. holy crap that was a bad call. and it's calls like that that will probably forever keep me from being able to embrace GD. the best he can do is like the VY years and make me mostly not notice him. and, in general, i don't understand why so many admittedly neutral to barely fans of davis seem to love to take the mantle up for this guy so often. they come out and admit that he's barely average and then tell us to shut up because we won as if UT shouldn't do better than average with the money we can pay coaches. of course we win a lot. even from 2000-2003 when we were pathetically underachieving we won like 10.5 games a year. that's how much talent we recruit. and of course we score a lot, because we always rack it up on the weak teams. and i don't even mean we run up the score on them (because we do whatever we can to not run it up), we just score a hell of a lot on bad teams. probably more so than most other good offenses. and we've done that this year as well. it's the games that matter (like 5 straight ou games) that people complain about. then, like me, they are so pissed off by those games that they complain about anything and everything, even in the other games. in our 3 games against real teams, we've scored 7, 21, and 22 for 16.7 offensive ppg. and the 21 was against a mediocre ou offense that was giving up essentially what their opponents were averaging and we only got 230 yards on them and only 21 even with 5 TO's forced by the defense. the 22 against nebraska came with 3 points at the end we shouldn't have even had without a miracle fumble, 3 points at the beginning from return to the 9, and on a 39 yard drive for a touchdown. it wasn't hugely impressive to get 22 against them (even cancelling the two cheap fg's with the 2 we missed, we still needed an easy TD and another off a neb turnover to score 22). color me unimpressed. i don't understand, Sam, why you're getting on major so much for not liking the ohio st. game plan because the game plan we did use scored 7 points. if you wanna support that, go ahead. it seems like i had something else to say, but suffice it to say that, through all that rambling and most likely all those spellling and grammar errors, my point is that, while greg davis may be a whipping boy who garners some unfair criticism from time to time, he's a done enough to earn it 100 times over and the people doing the criticizing aren't just crazy internet posters who have no business criticizing a college coach just because they aren't one as well.
All this talk and no mention of the 2 place bump we got in the BCS standings. For shame. 1. Ohio State (.9764) 2. Michigan (.9451) 3. Southern Cal (.9430) 4. West Virginia (.7551) 5. Auburn (.7466) 6. Florida (.7261) 7. Texas (.7241) 8. Louisville (.7215) 9. Notre Dame (.6730) 10. California (.6680) 11. Tennessee 12. Clemson 13. Arkansas 14. Rutgers 15. Boise State 16. LSU 17. Boston College 18. Wisconsin 19. Oklahoma 20. Missouri 21. Texas A&M 22. Nebraska 23. Oregon 24. Georgia Tech 25. Washington State PS. GD called a good game except for his Red Zone calls. I keep my sanity by reminding myself that Mack and GD know the players better than I do. This is why I don't don't lose sleep over atrocious 1st and goal play calls. ...and that fact that GD managed to rope in the best QB in the country (John Brantley) for 2007.
LOL, unless you, you know "can't read" you'd see that each team's passing game was profoundly affected by the wind, which you tried - rather unsuccessfully - to claim that a 20-30 mph headwind is not a valid reason to have. But yeah, you're right, Nebraska played it bold into the wind, and ended up completing 40% of their passes, threw a game changing INT, and had little to no success whatsover against the wind - if only Greg Davis was so bold as to do the same, you'd be quite "objective", right? I guess I just don't understand why you want them to throw the deep ball (or is it the short forward pass? ) into a strong headwind and/or a two or three deep zone rather than the open pass in the flats. I would suspect that such a rational, objective literate individual such as yourself would realize that taking what the defense gives you is essentially Football 101, and that winning a tough road game in adverse conditions against a decent team is something to be appreciated, as are winning scoring drives, and so are two year runs of unprecedented success and unbelievable offensive productivity to the point where you could actually appreciate the big picture and level a criticism that made sense.....rather than redirecting to "firegregdavis.com" every time you don't win by a bazillion points. I guess I was somehow jaded by the fact that you and the peanut gallery of experts have done absolutely nothin but sh-t on Greg Davis for years despite the unprecedented success mentioned. You're right major, I suppose somebody who puts a lot of effort into being faux logical and impartial such as yourself woudl be especially hurt by such a barb. Accept my apologies Mr. Spock. Anyway, I'm still waiting for your critique of CHizik, or your eruption of praise for Davis and his "8 year history" of, oh yes, heading what is probably the most productive offense in the country over that span.
Enter the perspective zone for a few seconds. Despite what we want to believe - Texas talent from 2000-2004 is not nearly as great as you (we) wanted to believe. It was good, no question, but "greatest collections of offensive talent ever"? That's just not true. Look at the NFL draft. I don't even need to run the numbers to tell you that Ohio State, USC, Florida State, Michigan, and Miami (none of whom has won more than 1 BCS national title during that same span) have had as much or more talent pass through their respective programs during those years on offense and probably defense too. Of the skill position players, aside from Vince Young and Roy Williams and Benson - it's hard to believe that many Texas guys woudl be able to hang with the likes of Jeremy Shockey, Kellen Winslow III, Andre Johnson, Santana Moss, Reggie Wayne, Ted Ginn, Santonio Holmes, Mike Williams, Dwayne Jarrett, Reggie Bush, Braylon Edwards, Matt Leinart, Carson Palmer, Willis McGahee, etc etc etc. Now, I'm sure the circular way around this is to argue that "Davis coached them into sucking" but I'm not going to bother with that. I got on him because Major thought the solution was to throw the ball deep more. Against a three deep zone, with a shaky quarterback with questionable arm strength and accuracy and decisionmaking at that point - that's suicidal. McCoy was barely able to complete the easy sideline passes. However, my objective wasn't Ohio state, my objective was Nebraska. Like I said, the fact tht he's go to bring that game up to bolster his argument against yesterday's win (combined with other ploys, like the laughable claim that the wind was not a factor) is too much for me to let go without noting his disingenuous logic - a product of the same bias that you at least had the decency to admit. I don't know about you but I'd be loathe to categorize the defense vs. OSU (who put up 24, which could easily have been 31 had they not decided to run clock at the end) as "near perfect" considering that Troy Smith pretty much completed whatever he wanted, whenever he needed to, and to their 2 reciever who was both small and slow. Penn State did a much better job against them (with lesser talent) this year.
A&M needs to win, but Missouri needs to win the Big 12 North. If I remember correctly, beating a team twice doesn't help much in the computer scores.
Well how about the OU's skill players over their 4-0 or 5-0 stretch versus UT--since we know they were the national power UT frequently played. You didn't read what I said at all. I said they would have had to play near perfect to win as incompenent as the offense was in scoring. The offense only scored 7 points and had two crucial TOs (Not that they couldn't move it, they more than doubled TOSU's ground game and more than double their YPC, they just executed poorly when in scoring position ) So Texas defense wasn't perfect, they were not even near perfect. But they were good. They held then to 78 yards rushing and a less than 3 average. They held them to their lowest point total this season. But that game and this weekend the secondary had breakdowns they shouldn't have. But it hasn't been like they havn't been in position (with the exception of the Gonzalez coverage), the players, including some of thier best (Mi Griffin, Ross) have made major mistakes.
The silence speaks for itself. VY made Davis look good last year with his audibles and running skillz. I think it's likely that he can teach and develop most players well but his play-calling sucks.
Who gives a f-ck what OU's skill players were? You think they never lost to schools with inferior talent during that same span? I'm just dispelling the myth that some sort of legendary unparalleled collection of talent was present during those days - when in fact schools like Ohio state, Michigan, Miami, and USC had more, talent pass through their halls. I don't understand why you are recycling UT-haters 101 arguments here - it shows that bashing Davis knows no bounds, no matter what. They did not hold them to the lowest point total this season. Penn State only gave up 14 points. (OSU had two defensive touchdowns that game). You did not see that game I take it, but I did, and Penn State harassed Troy Smith, the best player in the country, into his worst game of football in over a year. (12-22, 115 yards, 2 ints, 1 TD - and most of the positive yards came late in the game). Penn State did a much better job, with much lesser talent. Hell even Bowling Green managed to give up fewer total yards, though more points. The defensive performance against Ohio State was nothing to brag about - despite the fact that it didn't have the handicaps of a shaky QB who can't throw that well. That's because you have one group of posters like Major screaming that the ball wasn't thrown downfield enough. On the other side you have a group of posters screaming that the ball wasn't run to Charles enough. Like I said, this eptiomizes how screwed Greg Davis is and how he can do no right no matter what when it comes to the armchair playcallers that populate the UT fan base. ........oh, and if you guys want an answer, by watching any UT football game this year you'd know that the answer to this is that the plan (and I believe this is Mack's plan, not Davis) is to have Charles split time with Selvin Young all year, both because they're different types of backs and because Mack shows loyalty to his senior captain/leader. If you want to toss young under the bus, take it out on Brown for that one - but it's not as if Young was wholly ineffective either on Saturday or all season.
First, that was the team who consistently beat UT, often humilating them, despite probably fewer, or at most equivalent, future pros. I would think that is the most apt comparison for utilization of the talent you have. Second, what is with the bliping attitude. You call out the anti-Davis folks for being unreasonable, and then pull that crap after we take the time to respond to you. Well there is no doubt UT held OSU to the lowest total rushing. And 24 points to TOSU is not bad, even if PSU's defense played better. Besides, PSU's defense is good, they had a bad game versus ND, but that is there only bad defensive effort in 2 years. They only gave up 17 to Michigan. PSU's offense has imploded. BTW I saw about half the game (OSU-PSU), moved to other games. On offense however, Texas played a defense with 8-9 new guys and had to know they had to put up points to win. And Texas moved the ball OK, they were just really bad at taking advantage of their opps in OSU's side of the field--they left a lot of points on the field and had two critical TOs that put the defense in a bad spot. If you had to pick whether Texas defense or offense played worse in that game, definetly the offense. But the defense could have played a lot better, yes. Texas played a defense with 8-9 new guys and had to know they had to put up points to win. And Texas moved the ball OK, they were just really bad at taking advanatge of their opps in OSU's side of the field. I suspect Major and I are closer than you think. What I like least is the short passing and spread type approach. 1) it requires a lot of reads by a fresh QB, 2) it underutlized the returning talent. What I want is more off tackle running and a smattering of other off balance plays like a traditional play action passes that look for chunks of yardage when you have favorable matchups (like Sweed versus any DB 1 on 1). As for Charles, bottom line is he is underutilized. Selvin has looked good, yes. Not the big play threat Charles is, but a very good D1 tailback (and Selvin could block better for Charles than a 3rd WR can). Well maybe we should have designed plays that had both on the field the way SC had LenDale and Bush (put Charles as sort of 2nd tailback or slot WR/runner)? Basically I have a problem with a lot of the whole approach this year. Way too many 3 WRs sets and not enough 2 back or 2 TE sets. We did a very poor job of using our strengths and designing the offense around 2+ superb tailbacks, good TEs, 1 terrific verticle threat WR, and a power Oline. Just look for what SC ran in the 2nd half of the Rose Bowl last year to see the general philosophy (ask much as people think flash, when SC has gotten into trouble over their win streak they were a power football team first and used that to open up everything else). You want to find fault with Mack for that fine, but that is usually the OC job. Finally, I don't know why you are so defensive about Davis. I assume he makes over 300K and has made millions at the University of Texas. He can handle the heat. And Mack Brown isn't immune to criticism, but he is a great recruiter, treats his players right and a good deligator--90% of what you want in a head football coach. But I think the easiest fix to get the Texas Longhorns to be an even greater football power is a superior OC, and I have a lot of years to base this observation on and many weaknesses are still there. If you don't agree, fine.
Why is the Oklahoma performance even relevant to last week's game? You're just picking nits. And it's not like the defenses were roughing people up during those days - and I'm not dfending anything that even happened. This is just a ruse and an excuse to bash on your part. I made a simple point that it was a stretch to say that Texas had one of the greatest assemblages of talent ever from 2000-2004. They were not even the greatest of that era....and the evidence clearly bears this out - since 2000 Texas is not even close to schools like Ohio State, Michigan, USC, Miami, Florida, Florida state when it comes to producing NFL talent over the last 6 years (OSU had over 2x as many NFL draftees in that time period)- and yet Texas record from that time period to the present is as good or better than all of the above, as is their offensive achievemetns. That's all, that's my point. It has nothing to do with Oklahoma or shortcomings against them or giving up 60 points twice or not stopping Adrian Peterson or Chris Simms or anything. They held them to a low total rushing because Troy Smith was carving up the defense through the air - which leads me to the point that most critics don't seem to get: you take what the defense gives you. Texas does whatever they can to stop the run and was particularly shaky against the pass. Instead of running into a tough run defense - OSU picked on weak man coverage that was offered. The same principle applies in reverse, which is why having a QB toss the ball up for grabs against a 3 deep zone or into a 20-30 mph headwind is an illadvised idea. Right - and this is an offense with the weakest link at that point in the season at its most important position. Sorry DS but I can't reconcile "too conservative" with " more off tackle running" - ca ne marche pas. In addition a slow developing PA against a blitz like Neb was bringing in the second half is unlikely to succeed (the textbook play against that kind of thing? the short flare in the flats or a screen (or a long sideline pass if McCoy gets enough time.) Does anybody ever factor in that McCoy is the one throwing the football to his receivers on the side routes? I know that all 4 men are not running out patterns, rather he's making a read and choosing to throw to the sideline most of the time (save for the called WR screens) Blame Mack; I think it's pretty clear that he has the final word on who plays and who does not - in fact he has indicated in public that it is his decision. I would blame the absence of Charles in the 4th quarter on his 3rd quarter fumble. I'm not even defeding him at all, in fact I have criticized him in the past. however I'm also willing to give him credit for a job well done, which is something that most are loathe to do, aside from the occasional "well at elast he didnt' ruin Vince" which is as backhanded a compliment as they come. I'm defending his rignt to not automatically be tarred and feathered every time something doesn't go perfectly. But I realize when criticism slides over the line to reflexive rather than analytical - as Francis 4 prez admitted, most of it is so ingrained that he will never get a fair shake because people have been blaming him for so long (over an unprecedented period of success). That is what a lot of what I ahve been reading from yesterday is about - like I said, when half the people are b****ing to run more, and the other half are b****ing to pass more - it's hard to satisfy that. In fact that's probably an indication of doing a good job mixing up plays really. I mean look at Major, proclaiming that the wind wasn't a factor - how in god's name do you come up with that? You don't have to even run the numbers to figure out that it was a huge factor, just watching the game and how all the big downfield passes came with the wind is enough to illustrate this. (all 5 TD's with the wind - though the shovel shouldn't really count) The only thing I can get from that is that it's easier to hop on to the scapegoat to whom nobody ever gives credit -- which is really odd that you're scapegoating people after a win in a game with so many other potential scapegoats (lots of defensive mistakes, nearly game losing penalties, spotty kicking). That's why I like to highlight the treatment of Chizik. Where is the Chizik criticism? His defense gave up a boatload of points to USC and couldn't stop anybody in the fourth quarter. Troy Smith torched the secondary this year. Iowa State had success throught the air, as did Baylor, as did Nebraska. What is the problem? He has had multiple Thorpe award players in his secondary - there is no Colt McCoy to have to factor in. But nobody's going to blame him because he doesn't have the 8 year history of "failure" (man I wish I could fail so well) that Davis has.
i agree with you to an certain extent. but i also think desert scar has a point also. i dont think it would be too far off base to suggest that perhaps davis is just average. he may not be that incredibly bad and he may not be all that good just about average, and that if someone else was in his place that maybe they could do better. its pretty improbable though that you can lead the country in scoring for 1 1/2 seasons and stink at your job that bad.
I just think it's hilarious that everybody else is such a better playcaller. You know if you scan the message boards for pretty much every college football team you will find, universally, that there is a significant contingent of fans of every single team that knows, absolutely knows that they (personally) are superior playcallers. You will not find a program in the country where this is not the case, save for maybe a few exceptions. Ohio State fans savage Tressell for having inferior, conservative offenses; USC has been disappointed iwth their conservatism this year. FSU and Miami's offenses are in the toilet. Mark Richt at Georgia is consistently dogged. A day doesn't go by when Michigan isn't b****ing about thier coaching staff -- and those are just the elite powerhouse type teams (though not FSU and Miami this year, obviously) The exceptions are funny insofar as they tend to prove the rule: Weis at ND doesn't get much criticism yet because the hype/honeymoon about him being an offensive genius has yet to wear off (despite the fact that ND has not been that effective offensively this year and was manhandled by UCLA's defense for most of Saturday afternoon. If you tell me that ND played a great game offensively on Saturday - you're crazy, they were thoroughly whipped by a mediocre team and consistently stoned on 4th down - at home, in decent weather. But you don't see people calling for his head. Urban Meyer has a great genius reputation, so nobody grumbles about his handling of the Tebow/Leak situation (though it probably started a bit after the last loss). Another factor is that Meyer, Weis (and also Rich Rodriguez and Petrino) tend to not get criticism as theire programs are resurgent (just like Davis had a 2 year honeymoon before the vultures start to cirlce). of course in time if Weis' offense continues to struggle to put up points vs. UCLA he too will go from genius to idiot in many fans eyes. Look at Mark Richt. He was a hotshot OC from FSU in their glory years when he took over UGa -- however now that the bloom is off the rose, his play calling is under the microscope; google "Mark Richt" and "play calling" and see what comes up. The other renowned gurus are guys ike Mike Leach and June Jones and Spurrier....of course they play for smaller schools which have their own problems. There's only a few true offensive geniuses out there and even they rarely put up the sustained run of success on the level that Texas has. It's simply not possible that everybody calling plays in college football is as bad as fans say. Greg Davis is probably above average as an OC in the grand scheme of things.
over the last 5 to 10 years criticizing coordinators has become very popular among fans. I think part of it is with all the programs on all the sports networks breaking down game tapes week after week we all think we know more about football than we really do.
