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Thanks @satyanash

Nahlin:

We think Keaontay Ingram is headed for a pretty big year. The combination of Roschon Johnson and Bijan Robinson pushing him plus the knowledge he’s on NFL radars should help him overcome some things that have held him back — namely availability. There are a handful of guys we’re watching who will leave with draftable grades, not necessarily early round grades. But that‘s putting the cart ahead of the horse, we’ll have plenty of time to discuss that down the road.

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247 Jeff Howe:  RB Depth Chart for Tech

RUNNING BACK

1. Keaontay Ingram (Jr.)

2. Roschon Johnson (Soph.)

3. Bijan Robinson (Fr.-HS)

Key Quote: "I think an even distribution is what we're after. I think especially in 2020, you're going to want to make sure that those guys stay fresh and healthy. I don't know that Roschon did anything out of the ordinary. Keaontay had missed a couple of practices and that set him back a little bit, but, I mean, I don't know how more emphatic I can be that — I know you guys always want to judge who's on the first line in the two-deep and who jogs out with the ones, but to us and more importantly to those young men, it's irrelevant." — Herman on Johnson getting the start in the UTEP game over Ingram and how the workload will be divided

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Notes for Tech thanks to @satyanash

Humidor

RBs: Keaontay is the most steady, Roschon is the most respected, and Bijan is the freakiest. With the two slot machines likely out we wonder if Bijan gets more targets in the passing game. Sources have been mentioning his incredible feet and we saw that in space. Electric player.

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Scipio Tex notes Tech Game          (Thanks @satyanash  )

RB

Whether Texas tried to force the run or was patient with it may be a matter of perspective. What is more obvious to me is that the run game was very vanilla and the coaches didn’t do enough by personnel, formation, or constraints to help it. Ingram got the start and was very efficient on his touches, totaling 89 yards on 12 carries and adding another 20 yards on 3 catches. Good cuts, got upfield, broke arm tackles. It also helped his yards per carry that he got the bulk of the work when Texas spread it out and created a lighter box. Roschon had a tough 44 yards on 16 carries. He lost out on a couple of potentially bigger runs by going down at first contact, but his negative or no gain runs were on Tech guessing right on our predictable run game, not anything he did wrong. His move the pile 4th down conversion was a good effort. Bijan Robinson looked and played like a freshman. Went down at first contact and his ill-advised hurdle attempt loss of ball security was not his finest movement. If you look at the angles created in our running game, a lot of it just doesn’t look good.

 

Also run game related...

What went well:  Sam's Run Game. He was incorporated early and often, then again late, and the box score (16-69-1) belies how crucial he was in providing clutch third down conversions and getting us deep into the red zone when the rest of the offense seemed a little short of ideas.

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  • 4 weeks later...
12 minutes ago, LTtxfan said:
 

 

Ah man, we've been on the "shooting ourselves in the dick repeatedly" train, when we should have been on the "higher level" train instead.   That silly goose Herman gave the instructions to get on the wrong train. What an embarrassing mixup, but at least it sounds like we got it all figured out now. 

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I know Bijan hasn't set the world on fire, but I'm very pleased with where he's at.  You can see the tools he has to be a very very productive back.  As a freshman, he's holding his own in pass blocking.  He has the elite ability to cut on a dime break through a hole.  He's probably our best RB when it comes to catching out of the back field.  He's not quite there yet breaking tackles from a physicality stand point but that will come as he gets older.

I have one big reservation.  I hope the staff does not try to beef him up like they did with Ingram and Rojo.  Rojo already had a thick build coming out of high school so it didn't really affect his speed much.  Also RoJo was never going to blow you away with his speed.  He's a physical runner that brings energy to the field and good instincts.  However, they completely ruined Ingram.  Go watch Ingram's freshman highlights. He had a certain quickness and ability to cut it inside and pull away from defenders.  He never had elite speed but he was fast enough to break long gains.  Now that they beefed him up to 235lbs, he's lost the quickness and you can see just how average he looks on the field.  He's hard to bring down but they took away the one great trait he had.  I fear Herman's meathead mentality is going to place Bijan in the same trajectory.  Keep him at 210ish and let him retain his speed.  They need to get Ingram back to his 215-220lb weight.  He's not as effective right now and no defense respect his speed.  

Edited by victory88
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5 minutes ago, LTtxfan said:

 

It did impress me. Sometimes we use the term "BYOB" in football. The blocking was decent on the play, save one man, so Bijan had to "Be Your Own Blocker" and his spin did the trick. I love that he says he is working on various elements (like the spin move) to improve his arsenal. It's getting weaponized ahead of schedule, IMO.

Which of course makes me all the more ragey that we had a fucking 2nd and 2 and called two consecutive unsuccessful pass plays to kill our 76 yard drive and settle for FG. RTDB! 20-0 record when we run >20 times? RTMFB!

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Let's not make this difficult... give Bijan Robinson the ball

Dustin McComas •   2H AGO 

1) Give Bijan Robinson the damn ball…

Hey, did you know Tom Herman and Stan Drayton coached Zeke Elliott? Of course. Because Herman is beginning to mention it as much as an ABC broadcaster sharing Colt McCoy and Jordan Shipley were roommates. Herman pointed out, during an interview on 104.9 The Horn Tuesday, Elliott didn’t play much his freshman season when asked about Bijan Robinson’s workload.

Maybe future second-round pick and then Carlos Hyde and Braxton Miller, who received 91 Heisman votes at the end of the 2013 season, combining for 379 carries had something to do with that? The following season Elliott was suddenly ready for 273 carries while quarterback J.T. Barrett added 171. Basically, Ohio State used the exact same method as it did previously – feature the dual-threat quarterback and best running back by far more than anyone else.

The next season, Elliott handled 289 carries, and he finished his short Ohio State career with 650 total touches after 33 his freshman season. Quite a workload change. Why did Ohio State repeatedly feed the rock to its best running back and feature the leagues of its dynamic quarterbacks? Probably because they were really, really good and talented players who gained a lot of yards.

This was the first play of last Saturday’s Texas win against West Virginia:

 Then, this happened not too long after:

 Robinson received just eight more touches until coaches entrusted the freshman, despite workload concerns, to put the win on ice when he snagged a pass and sprinted down the field for 35 yards.

 When Robinson touched the ball, Texas averaged an absurdly good 10.8 yards per play. The Longhorns managed just 4.0 yards per play when they didn’t feed the five-star. This doesn’t have to be hard. Hyde isn’t ahead of Robinson. No one is. Keaontay Ingram couldn’t even suit up. Robinson is the guy to feed, and he’s yet to have more than 15 touches in a game.

It’s not like we’re clamoring the five-star freshman receive 40 touches. But anything under 20 seems extremely silly, especially when he’s eating up yards with extremely good efficiency and the passing offense is disappointingly inconsistent. Oh, and especially for a team that wants to establish the run almost to a fault at times. If keeping guys fresh and workloads are of grave concern, maybe giving Ingram, who went through similar load management as a freshman, four-straight touches against TCU, the fourth at the goal line after at least a 52-yard sprint was followed by a 16-yard run within a tempo offense, should be evaluated too.

2) While we’re on the subject of the running game…
Credit Tom Herman, Chris Ash, Mike Yurcich and probably some other coaches too for spending so much time on the running game on both sides of the football following the Oklahoma loss. Texas’s run fits on defense and its defensive line play look markedly better while the team is also anticipating run with greater on success. On offense, it hasn’t always been pretty. Heck, maybe it hasn’t often been. But Texas found some success against a good West Virginia defense and a few more carries for that Robinson guy should help.

The thing I never expected to type about this season: the only thing that’s regressing for Texas is the quarterback play and passing attack. And that could be Herman’s 2020 downfall despite a favorable schedule to finish the season. Texas can’t continue to steal wins because its passing attack is subpar...

 

(The remainder is behind pay wall)

https://texas.rivals.com/news/let-s-not-make-this-difficult-give-bijan-robinson-the-ball

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Scipio Tex RB write-up for West Virginia game...        (Thx @satyanash ) 

What do gap blocking, angle advantage, and pulling linemen offer our OL and RBs? An opportunity.

Bijan opened the game with a 54 yard run, impressed even more with a vicious stiff arm on a 18 yard jaunt on his next carry, and then iced the game late with a 35 yard reception up the sideline. I think we all would have liked to seen more opportunities between those bookends. He finished with 12 carries for 113 yards and 2 catches for 38 yards. I don't think he's ready for 20-25 touches per game, but it's clear that the freshman is our burstiest runner and he responded very well to the new direction in the running game. He didn't have a negative run and even if you remove his 54 yarder, he averaged over 5 yards per carry.

Roschon Johnson disappointed me on a couple of runs. 10-29. Tried too string out too many runs instead of cut and go, which is his forte, and how he has broken every big run he's ever had at Texas.

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Is Texas ready to start featuring Bijan Robinson on offense?

ByJEFF HOWE 14 hours ago

The justified cries for Tom Herman, Mike Yurcich and Stan Drayton to get the ball into the hands of Texas running back Bijan Robinson more often figured to be answered last weekend. Had the Longhorns played Kansas and Robinson was able to go to work on a Jayhawk defense that’s last in the Big 12 in rushing yards per game allowed (213.7), yards per rushing attempt allowed (5.3) and rushing touchdowns allowed (21), the No. 1-ranked running back in the 247Sports Composite and Top247 for 2020 could’ve built on the coming-out party he experienced in a 17-13 win over West Virginia on Nov. 7.

Instead, the Kansas game getting postponed and pushed back to Dec. 12 means No. 20 Texas (5-2, 4-2 Big 12) will need Robinson’s encore to a 113-yard, 12-carry performance to come against a defense for No. 15 Iowa State (6-2, 5-1) that’s allowing the fewest yards per rushing attempt in the conference (3.04) and is second in the league in rushing yards per game allowed (104). Robinson showing out as the offense’s featured runner will be easier said than done, especially after the Longhorns ran for only 54 net yards on 26 official attempts in last season’s 23-21 loss in Ames, with Roschon Johnson getting two weeks to heal a series of nagging injuries and Keaontay Ingram possibly returning to action after suffering an ankle injury in the team’s 41-34 overtime road win over Oklahoma State on Oct. 31.

With that said, there’s plenty of data to suggest giving Robinson more touches than any of the other running backs on the roster is not only the right move, but it's one of the biggest keys to a Texas victory on Friday (11 a.m., ABC).

For starters, Robinson has recorded five of the offense’s 38 plays of 20 yards or more on the season, which is more than Johnson (two) and Ingram (two) have combined to produce. The carries between the three backs are almost evenly split through seven games and Robinson (51) is leading the Texas running backs in yards per rushing attempt (5.8), effectively leaving Ingram (4.8 yards per carry on 53 carries) and Johnson (4.2 yards per carry on 52 carries) in the dust.

In Herman’s 47-game tenure, he’s had nine games where a running back has gone over the 100-yard mark. Robinson had his first 100-yard rushing effort in the win over the Mountaineers on the fewest number of carries by any of the nine 100-yard rushers in the Herman era with his 9.4 yards per carry topped only by the 10.4 yards per rush Chris Warren III recorded in a 166-yard performance in a 56-0 win over San Jose State in 2017.

This is where the numbers begin to favor making Robinson the backfield bell cow for Herman, who’s 20-0 on the Forty Acres when the Longhorns record 40 or more official rushing attempts in a game, successfully featuring a running back usually leads to wins. For instance, Texas has won each of the nine games in which Herman has had a running back rush for at least 100 yards, including each of the team’s five conference victories in 2019 and the Alamo Bowl win over Utah.

Robinson getting to the 15-carry mark for the first time in his young career is also an important benchmark in the Herman era. In the 17 games in which Texas has had a running back record at least 15 rushing attempts (it’s happened 19 times with Warren and Kyle Porter both topping 15 carries in 2017 wins over San Jose State and Iowa State), the Longhorns are 16-1 with the lone defeat coming in last season’s 37-27 loss to TCU where four turnovers hindered the offense.

That Robinson has yet to be truly unleashed is frustrating for the burnt orange faithful who see the former five-star prospect helping out a struggling offensive line (according to Football Outsiders, Texas ranks no better than No. 51 nationally in any major run-blocking metric the publication tracks) by accounting for unblocked defenders and maximizing running plays unlike the other backs have been able to do in 2020. Nevertheless, Herman’s history suggests he's going to start featuring Robinson based on his history with other Longhorn true freshman runners he’s coached.

With Robinson getting ready to play his seventh game, it’s worth noting that Daniel Young didn’t record a 15-carry game until he was 10 games into his true freshman season in 2017 in a 42-27 win over Kansas. That same season, Toneil Carter had 15 carries in his sixth game, a 38-7 blowout win over Baylor.

In 2018, Ingram’s sixth game saw him get 19 carries in a 23-17 win over the Bears in which Sam Ehlinger suffered a shoulder injury on the opening drive of the game. An injury to Ingram in the fifth game of the 2019 season, a 42-31 win at West Virginia, paved the way for Johnson to get 21 carries in the victory.

What’s interesting in each of those cases is the true freshman in question became the lead dog in the running back stable either because the game was one where the Longhorns were in firm control or depth dwindled to the point where the high-volume back was clearly the most effective and healthiest option. If Ingram is cleared to play and all three backs are available, then Herman and Co. have options, and with the game expected to be close (Texas is a 1.5-point favorite as of Tuesday according to the William Hill Sports Book), Robinson getting the lion’s share of the touches isn’t a given, even though he’s shown he’s worthy of being a significant part of the game plan.

 

https://247sports.com/college/texas/Article/Texas-Longhorns-football-RB-Bijan-Robinson-get-ball-in-hands-155355269/

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 9/21/2020 at 1:06 PM, LTtxfan said:

Thanks @satyanash

Nahlin:

We think Keaontay Ingram is headed for a pretty big year. The combination of Roschon Johnson and Bijan Robinson pushing him plus the knowledge he’s on NFL radars should help him overcome some things that have held him back — namely availability. There are a handful of guys we’re watching who will leave with draftable grades, not necessarily early round grades. But that‘s putting the cart ahead of the horse, we’ll have plenty of time to discuss that down the road.

First sentence lol

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