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Texas Recruiting Notes 2021


Reese Bennett

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1 hour ago, Atticus said:


If we hadn’t been a shit team, the impact would have been greater.
We don’t know the full story yet, but it’s pretty dumb to let this guy walk when we don’t really have another player with his athletic profile on our roster.

I went back to look at his film (highlights/etc) and that's pretty much all I saw.  I was surprised based on the talk of him when he signed. Nothing stood out in any way regarding his playing ability, just that he looked the part.

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1 minute ago, MonkeyDoughnut said:

I went back to look at his film (highlights/etc) and that's pretty much all I saw.  I was surprised based on the talk of him when he signed. Nothing stood out in any way regarding his playing ability, just that he looked the part.

I was never big on Watson, I was just hoping that the staff saw something and he would be a solid CB/Nickle.  Maybe he still will be, oh well.. Kitan Crawford moving on up

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I went back to look at his film (highlights/etc) and that's pretty much all I saw.  I was surprised based on the talk of him when he signed. Nothing stood out in any way regarding his playing ability, just that he looked the part.

Word was he didn’t get targeted much in HS, but he had excellent measurables. Gotta coach em up
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(Eric Nahlin) A RRS Stream of Consci_ _sness: Looking Inward

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It’s RRS week but I‘m far less concerned by what downtrodden OU will do to Texas than I am what Texas will do to Texas. UT’s issues are internal and all-too-often self-inflicted. This Shootout features two teams with its side-by-side shotgun barrel tied in a knot. Whichever team unties the knot, wins. The current Texas program is talented enough to stay in games it plays poorly in, even ones where the officiating is entirely one-sided, but it isn’t talented enough to win those games unless it plays relatively clean. Even the prior week versus Texas Tech, where the officiating horror show in Austin was replaced by the one on special teams in Lubbock, underlined this point.

Tom Herman has to do a better job of preparing his team. Wasn’t the purpose of hiring a dedicated offensive coordinator so he could better focus on team-wide preparation and in-game management? This is still a low IQ team, head coach IQ be damned. As we know, the MENSA talk was always nonsense as it relates to what matters here — football. Would you want Stephen Hawking wheeling up and down the sideline? Do you think Richard Feynman would draw plays on the board anyone beyond Hayden Conner could understand?

I do wonder if Herman’s non-football intelligence, of which I’ve heard of beyond the media storylines, clouds his own self-belief and how he views the sport. He seems to coach like he’s in charge of the most intelligent, fundamentally sound, mistake-free, clean executing team rather than the frequently dumb (in aggregate), athletically superior team that sometimes wins in spite of itself.

In the first iteration, it would make more sense to worry about things like time of possession and having an offense centered around ball control. Just keep it close! After all, you want to limit opportunity for that talented, high-flying offense your opponent has. But he doesn’t realize because of the inherent advantages of recruiting Texas, that should be the offense he deploys; the one other defenses fear. He holds the athletic advantage in nearly every contest he enters. Over the course of a game, the benefit of athletic advantage will more often than not play out the more possessions you have. It’s like Vegas betting, but this time he’s Vegas. At least he should be.

To be sure, we’ve seen some improvement on offense since Mike Yurcich arrived but the offense still operates in fits and starts, and Tom seemingly refuses to build a two-score lead. He still seems content by winning on the margins late in games. Maybe his dream is to really be Kirk Ferentz’s successor at Iowa. As if there will be a successor, but just think about all those glorious tight ends! Think of how many 24-21 complementary football victories Herman would experience. And yes, there will be some 21-24 complementary football losses but they just have to execute better!

The Texas Tech game plan was classic Tom and he deserved the loss he didn’t get. The TCU game plan and play-calling showed much more creativity and aggression than we’ve seen in the past, but he still refuses to let it rip in crunch time. He better develop a killer instinct and quick, because his team in his fourth year on campus doesn’t execute well enough to grind teams down and win by attrition. He better create some insurmountable leads because one thing that doesn’t benefit Tom Herman is the margin of error in the top-to-bottom best coached league in the country.

If he doesn’t want to create those leads, he should sit back and let his coordinator and quarterback do it.

#####

From @datvideoguy: “You write great articles. I don't know if you've written about this in the past but could you go into more detail at some point on why Herman's players fail to develop at the rate of some of our conference foes. I have my thoughts/theories but I trust you to have a better handle on something like that than I can judging from my couch.“

Thank you, I bet you make great videos. We should pair my writing with your videography and make a documentary. We’ll name it Give Tom the Needle. For now it will be about letting the air out of the ball in crucial moments, but if he loses this weekend in similar fashion it may turn into something more.....dark.

Re: development. I always belabor fit to scheme as a big part of maximizing players. Chiefly because it stems from evaluation and is what I feel most confident opining on. Herman has said they don’t try to fit square pegs into round holes but we’ve seen a lot of that in the past, especially on defense. If you inherit a team, the first thing you do is utilize a scheme that best suits your talent. Over time you recruit talent to your preferred scheme.

Poor scheme/game planning/play-calling is going to create an optical illusion on your talent. At the same time the talent is being physically developed in what I consider a rigorous S&C environment, the players are being deployed irresponsibly and with poor understanding of the game.

We’re seeing players who are physically ready for the NFL receiving rookie playing time and making an impact. Charles Omenihu and Malcolm Roach immediately come to mind. The high school evaluation on Omenihu was defensive end and for Roach it was defensive line in general. After seeing these players in the NFL, does anyone think UT got the most of them? Even with Omenihu winning Big 12 DLOY as a senior I think it’s a resounding ’no.’

At one point, it should have been Omenihu at SDE, Chris Nelson at NT, Roach at 3-tech, and Breckyn Hager at B-backer. Instead it was Hager miscast entirely at 4i, Omenihu being neutered at 4i, and a solid Nelson at nose. Behind them, we saw confusion. Putting guys in the right scheme plays a big part in developing them. Also, they have undeniably received poor cerebral and technical development. I get out of my comfort zone discussing that. I’m no coach, but at the most basic level the results and resulting staff turnover indicate that.

When you compare to conference foes, those programs excel where UT doesn’t. I’ve long admired the ability of Gundy, Patterson, Campbell, the K-State staffs, and the Baylor staffs to evaluate and recruit for their scheme. Maybe it’s because some of those schools are forced to rather than retrofitting four-stars into a system, but OU has the same first-world problems UT does and has no issues, at least on offense.

There’s a lot more to discuss but I’m already feeling readers drop off. Maybe we’ll pick this back up in a Part II.

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The Lost Favor Fallacy: Once a coach reaches a tipping point with the fan base everything he does from that point forward is terrible and he can do no good. @MBHORNSFAN wouldn’t trust Tom Herman to tie his shoes at this point! I first observed this phenomena with Mack Brown. Then I observed it again with Charlie Strong. Sure enough, after playing poorly two weeks in a row, I’m starting to see it with Tom Herman.

Let’s try to keep our heads and continue looking at the finer details rather than just a snapshot of the final score. Of course results matter, but Herman’s processes are better than those of late-stage Mack and Strong. There are solid fundamentals for the program in place, even if there aren’t always solid fundamentals within the program. Herman made some good hires, we just need to see that proven out before it’s too late.

The Lost Favor Fallacy seems to also be affecting Caden Sterns. I’m not really a fan of his, and have been contemplating this Captain Caden thing but where it’s said like Captain Caveman sort of ironically, but he didn’t play nearly as poorly as this board indicates. I thought he played pretty well actually.

#####

Is lackluster wide receiver recruiting catching up to Texas? To some degree, yes. Quentin Johnston was the type of loss that makes it harder to win. He moves so much easier than Brennan Eagles, and moving easy is how you get open. But I’m not ringing the alarm just yet for a few reasons:

- lack of experience
- what experience they do have comes from when they were poorly coached
- small sample size
- and the biggest reason: we’re seeing the ball shared to a wider variety of players rather than force feeding one or two proven players. That allows more opportunity but also underlines the lack of experience and time spent with good coaching. Over time it may further reveal lack of talent.

Bad games are contagious and drops were pandemic on Saturday, but they were finding open space and wearing their face masks. Keep feeding them. To somewhat answer the question, wide receiver recruiting has not been maximized, but that will be tougher to notice the more time the quarterback has to spend with healthy receivers and the more time Andre Coleman has to coach them. Important for the program long-term is the scheme is attractive and 2022 is loaded with talent.

 

  • Hook 'Em 3
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3 hours ago, MonkeyDoughnut said:

I went back to look at his film (highlights/etc) and that's pretty much all I saw.  I was surprised based on the talk of him when he signed. Nothing stood out in any way regarding his playing ability, just that he looked the part.

 

3 hours ago, Atticus said:


Word was he didn’t get targeted much in HS, but he had excellent measurables. Gotta coach em up

Yeah. He was the best corner on a team with a full P5 DL. In the 2 seconds opposing QBs had to throw the ball, they went elsewhere.

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woahh. that's a major shock even considering the shit on the field. He was one of those that "is solid no matter how the season goes - sold on university" guys. Guess that was hot garbage, can't blame him.

Also, to those who may know: do BMDs pay attention to these things? This program is destined to start free-falling

 

 

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5 minutes ago, Houston20 said:

woahh. that's a major shock even considering the shit on the field. He was one of those that "is solid no matter how the season goes - sold on university" guys. Guess that was hot garbage, can't blame him.

Also, to those who may know: do BMDs pay attention to these things? This program is destined to start free-falling

 

 

He's been shakey for awhile after his girlfriend went to OU on a softball scholarship

Still, the recruiting is faltering, so hopefully this is a wake-up call to not give Mensa even more rope to hang the program with

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6 minutes ago, westexhorn said:

We gonna find out very soon if Herman can right this ship this Saturday.  If we don't dominate OU, CDC better grow a pair and make the move of his career.

We already know whether or not he can and the outcome Saturday won’t change that.

Edited by Burt Macklin
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