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Media/$9.95-er postgame analysis articles (Week 1)


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Posted
4 hours ago, RabidM said:

It was sobering as fuck to watch that analysis video.  Watching the DB's sit there and just wait for the receivers to run to them, because the DB knew they would and were correct was painful.  You can see pre-snap they know what is coming.  People have figured out Sark's offense the same way they figured out Orlando's defense.  Orlando had zero ability to run anything else and was hopeless and helpless.  I hope Sark is smarter, but I thought he would have figured this out after Georgia X 2 and Ohio State last year.  I'm not sure what to believe because this should have been fixed in the off season.  

We must have a MASSIVE self scouting problem.  We should be finding these problems before opposing coordinators.  I suspect this is something that is being severely neglected.  Does anyone know if we even have a dedicated self scouting team?  

People need to realize that Sark's offense is not complex. He's not gonna go and make it complex to make you happy. The complex portion of Sark's offense is the disguising and motions from the different formations that he runs his same set plays out of. The time it takes to diagnose it real time is what makes it tough. Each defender has to know what's going on exactly when it happens if the offensive players are doing what they're supposed to be doing. One person guesses wrong, and it can be an explosive. 

Posted

(Scipio Tex) 2025 Texas-Ohio State Postmortem: Defense/Special Teams

Spoiler

The old saying that defense travels certainly held true in Columbus. The Longhorn stop unit more than did their part to secure a win, limiting the Buckeyes to their lowest offensive output in a decade, but a fruitless offense and negligible special teams kept Texas from getting enough points on the board to support the defensive effort. 

A conservative Buckeye game plan certainly limited their output, but that conservatism also limited Longhorn opportunities for turnovers and big plays. It cuts both ways and Texas really did play well. The Horns were locked in. Pursuit was excellent, there was great physicality, and the defense only missed three tackles all game.

23 different Longhorn defenders played against Ohio State, with 18 getting double digit snaps. That’s high level depth and few coaches have the confidence to play that many players in a big road environment against the most dangerous pass catchers in college football. It’s clear that the defensive coaches trust their players.

The Longhorn defensive staff adopted a different strategy compared to their Buckeye peers on the same side of the ball, who all but dared Texas to punish them in the run game and focused exclusively on killing our pass game.

Realizing Ohio State was going to get big with 12 personnel to mitigate Texas pass rush, test Longhorn toughness, and to give Sayin more limited coverages to read, PK responded to Ohio State’s heavy and traditional sets in a variety of ways, but we ran quite a bit of three interior DTs in both 4 and 5 man fronts.

It was fun to see Texas in a classic 5-2 high school defense with three bigs, two edges and Lefau and Hill playing inside.

It worked. No Buckeye runner had a run longer than 8 yards and Ohio State yards after contact were rain drops in the Sahara. Their standard run game yielded only 87 yards at 3 yards a carry. Ohio St was also 4 of 14 on money downs. There was a lot of trust put in the Texas secondary and they held up save one long score.

Defensive Tackle

I was impressed by the quality, different play styles, and depth. None of them are impactful pass rushers yet, but they won consistently against a physical OL.

Hero Kanu is our most athletic interior guy. He played a ton of 3 and 5 technique. Good quickness, get off, and he’s strong for his size. He played the most snaps of any of our DTs and his positional flexibility and ball pursuit means that trend will continue.

Alex January’s growth has been remarkable. He’s reshaped his body and he’s getting off of the ball so much better. He’s physical as hell and his hustle down the line of scrimmage was noticeable on multiple plays. A pair of big time stops rallying to the football.

Travis Shaw played a ton of true nose and he plays differently than I anticipated. He long arms the center and then flows laterally between the tackles like a walked-up 340 middle linebacker. Much more mobile than I expected. People can get under him on double teams, but he big brothered the Buckeye center multiple times. You have to keep his snaps limited though.

Cole Brevard can’t really be moved. We played him at nose and 3 tech where he chewed up double teams and kept Lefau clean. Really nasty inside. Can’t give us much pass rush unless he can just bully a weaker guy.

Maraad Watson was the least impressive, but he wasn’t a liability. He struggled with physicality and literally got put on skates on Ohio State’s 2nd play of the game on a double team.

We have five guys we can win with and who knows what some of the talented young freshman may flash as the season unfolds. 

Edge

Limited impact as Ohio State threw it only 20 times and more than half of those attempts came on quick throws. Texas still logged six pressures in 20 throws and a 30% pressure rate is good. I think it’s more frustration at the absence of sacks. The hopeful exploitation of OSU’s new tackles never really materialized. I wasn’t overly impressed by the edge rush on the handful of occasions that were true drop backs, but it was a pretty limited sample size.

Substitution wasn’t quite as liberal here, Umeozulu, Vasek and Spence all played. The mainstays were Simmons, Moore (he’s basically playing edge, at least in this game) and Burke. Burke was really stout against the run.

Linebacker

Liona Lefau was incredible. His weight gain has made him a much more physical between the tackles, he’s retained all of his quickness and pass defense ability, and he showed terrific instincts and played fast as hell. 9 tackles. He led Texas with 9 tackles and excelled in every phase.

Anthony Hill played like the 4th best linebacker on the field and the 2nd best on the Horns. Too much overpursuit. Physicality is never an issue. He’s just not always great against a lot of traditional run game stuff at LB. Never really has been. Let’s see how it plays out, but he’s still best as a point and shoot defender, in pursuit, interior blitzing. He’s so athletic and plays so hard that he was still an effective complement to Lefau. Tyanthony Smith is really fun to watch. He’s going to be really good. Texas kept the LB rotation tight and I would have, too. This isn’t the game where you risk a bad run fit and a cheap long run.

Defensive Backs

Sayin was 13 of 20 for 126 yards with about 1/3rd of his yards coming on one throw. He had four pass attempts longer than 10 yards over the entire game. We were more effective in coverage when we blitzed him. Michael Taaffe and Jelani McDonald never left the field. Taaffe was terrific in run support from depth – he had three hard tackles at the line of scrimmage, finished with 9 tackles overall, and got 80% of his snaps as a true deep safety. A handful of nickel snaps.

McDonald is still the best tackler on the team. He played all over the place: nickel, extra box defender OLB, true safety. Incredibly valuable player. He and Lefau are very complementary in their ability to tackle, cover ground, blitz, and become good zone defenders. Positionless basketball. 

Jaylon Guilbeau played OK except for the 40 yard Tate score. He was able to recover and get a hand on in there after the ball hung in the air, but Tate made a great catch. A more accurate ball is an easy score though. He’s the weak link right now, but that’s also a relative statement. We’ll see how the battle here plays out.

Malik Muhammad played well. Beautiful PBU and I could care less about his penalty. You can’t play receivers like that without being aggressive. The longest pass he conceded all day went for 9 yards and it was a great pass to a great route.

Kobe Black got some run at corner. He looks good. He just needs more game experience.

Derek Williams played about a dozen snaps, but he didn’t look quite ready for game speed. Missed tackle, bad angles in pass coverage. Didn’t show great recognition.

Ohio State targeted freshman Graceson Littleton 4 times in only 19 snaps. He surrendered only 14 yards, had a hard hit, locked down Inniss like the king’s virgin bride to be, and had a gorgeous pass break up. What an absolute stud. Terrific game speed. He just sees it out there.

Special Teams

Our punter is indeed good. A 46.3 net (not average, net) with three of four kicks downed inside the 20. His average hang time was 4.3 secoonds.

No work for Mason Shipley beyond a single extra point. We didn’t come to Columbus to kick field goals. We came to fail in goal to go.

The return teams were unhelpful. Wisner unwisely brought out a kick to only the 15 yard line. Not fielding punts cost us some yards.

You’d love to create a cheap score or more opportunity in a game like this.

Final Thoughts

The Longhorn defense is very deep and they can play waves of good to very good players. I’m curious to see what the third wave looks like when they play against San Jose State, UTEP and Sam Houston State.

While I’d be reluctant to take Taaffe, McDonald or Lefau off of the field when it matters, it’s impressive to have so many different athletes with varying strengths and body types to match up to opposing offenses and maintain a high standard of play for four quarters. Texas still has plenty of tests down the road, but this will be an exciting group to watch. 

 

Posted
6 hours ago, Atticus said:

People need to realize that Sark's offense is not complex. He's not gonna go and make it complex to make you happy. The complex portion of Sark's offense is the disguising and motions from the different formations that he runs his same set plays out of. The time it takes to diagnose it real time is what makes it tough. Each defender has to know what's going on exactly when it happens if the offensive players are doing what they're supposed to be doing. One person guesses wrong, and it can be an explosive. 

He needs to make changes. They don't have to be complex. They just have to not be predictable.  When the film shows the defense knows the routes as soon as the ball is snapped, you have an offense that has been figured out way too much to be consistently effective against good teams.  

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Posted
12 minutes ago, RabidM said:

He needs to make changes. They don't have to be complex. They just have to not be predictable.  When the film shows the defense knows the routes as soon as the ball is snapped, you have an offense that has been figured out way too much to be consistently effective against good teams.  

Lol…. No. Down, distance, formation, alignment, player tendency all can dictate plays and known route combinations. It’s exactly what teams study, practice and scheme for.


Your team also has to know what to run, be comfortable with what they run and be able to execute what they run too. Football isn’t played in a vacuum or a madden screen.

Shit, our first play of the game is the same play we have run for each of Arch’s starts, (tOSU must have known that) and it was wide fucking open and Arch shot putted the ball into the dirt.

When individual play limits what you can execute schematically, magically shit doesn’t work as well.

Ewers struggled with the deep middle/post routes, and excelled at the mid and short passing game. Thus, our game plans and execution reflected that.

On Saturday Arch did not do anything well. We ran him, we moved him out of the pocket, we gave him short throws, long throws, throws over the middle, play action throws, etc….. nothing sparked him. Saturday was not his day, and our offense reflected that. 

If Arch was just “bad” instead of “terribad” on Saturday, we win that game.

 

Posted
1 minute ago, Fico said:

Lol…. No. Down, distance, formation, alignment, player tendency all can dictate plays and known route combinations. It’s exactly what teams study, practice and scheme for.


Your team also has to know what to run, be comfortable with what they run and be able to execute what they run too. Football isn’t played in a vacuum or a madden screen.

Shit, our first play of the game is the same play we have run for each of Arch’s starts, (tOSU must have known that) and it was wide fucking open and Arch shot putted the ball into the dirt.

When individual play limits what you can execute schematically, magically shit doesn’t work as well.

Ewers struggled with the deep middle/post routes, and excelled at the mid and short passing game. Thus, our game plans and execution reflected that.

On Saturday Arch did not do anything well. We ran him, we moved him out of the pocket, we gave him short throws, long throws, throws over the middle, play action throws, etc….. nothing sparked him. Saturday was not his day, and our offense reflected that. 

If Arch was just “bad” instead of “terribad” on Saturday, we win that game.

 

Arch was very good on the deep ball. That is clearly his strength. Even in what I pray is the worst game of his life, his deep ball was as advertised. 

Posted
1 hour ago, Fico said:

Lol…. No. Down, distance, formation, alignment, player tendency all can dictate plays and known route combinations. It’s exactly what teams study, practice and scheme for.


Your team also has to know what to run, be comfortable with what they run and be able to execute what they run too. Football isn’t played in a vacuum or a madden screen.

Shit, our first play of the game is the same play we have run for each of Arch’s starts, (tOSU must have known that) and it was wide fucking open and Arch shot putted the ball into the dirt.

When individual play limits what you can execute schematically, magically shit doesn’t work as well.

Ewers struggled with the deep middle/post routes, and excelled at the mid and short passing game. Thus, our game plans and execution reflected that.

On Saturday Arch did not do anything well. We ran him, we moved him out of the pocket, we gave him short throws, long throws, throws over the middle, play action throws, etc….. nothing sparked him. Saturday was not his day, and our offense reflected that. 

If Arch was just “bad” instead of “terribad” on Saturday, we win that game.

 

Almost every decent team since OU last year has dramatically slowed our offense down or completely shut it down for extended periods of time, with similar problems predating last season.  The feeling of the opposing defense being in our huddle has become quite familiar to us.  The book is out on Sark's offense and tendencies.  He either accepts this and adjusts or we're going to continue to get out coached by competent defensive coaching staffs.  

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted
On OTF last night Shipley, CJ, and Rod couldn’t come up with an answer about what our offensive identity is

First thing I said when the game was over. I’m not sure what the fuck we’re doing on offense now.
Posted
Just now, Red Five said:


First thing I said when the game was over. I’m not sure what the fuck we’re doing on offense now.

The only identity I can think of and point to is sarks script….we don’t do anything exceptionally great 

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