Face Plant

(Screams into the void)

I remember very few middle school sporting events, but I have a vivid memory from one that I wasn’t even playing in. It was the 7th grade track meet and the girls were running in the 400-meter dash. One girl from my school was smoking the rest of the pack - the race was hers for the taking. As she rounded the last turn with 100 yards to go, everyone else was at least 30 yards behind her with no hope of catching up. This girl could have stopped, lit up a Kool cigarette and waltzed to the finish line to claim the gold or whatever prize was awarded in middle school. Then, she started to stumble and it all went wrong. As she got wobbly, she started flailing her arms out wide to hold herself up, but she didn’t stay up and since her arms were way out wide, she didn’t have anything to break her fall. Smack. This chick ate a face full of track rubber in front of every middle school in the district. Needless to say, she lost the race. It was the most ill-timed face plant you could have imagined. I don’t remember this girl’s name, but I remember this moment. Do it at the beginning of the race, nobody remembers, but when you’re mere feet from glory and, instead, you make sweet chin music in front of an audience of middle schoolers, people don’t forget. A few years later, we had high school speech together and I remember her bringing this up when we gave speeches about our most embarrassing moments. She still was haunted by it, and even stopped running track because of it. It’s hard to get back up off the proverbial mat after something like that, because people expect you to do it again.

All this talk about face plants brings me to the Longhorns. TCU 17 - Texas 10 (insert wet fart noise). Yeah, welp, that was disappointing.

A perfect day morphed into a nightmare evening for the Longhorns and their fans as the Texas offense face-planted against TCU last Saturday. Texas wasted an all-time defensive performance which included five sacks and an otherworldly performance by nickel Jahdae Barron, who scored the Longhorns’ only touchdown. College Gameday, Kirk Herbstreit and dozens of four and five-star recruits descended upon Austin to watch Texas play #4 TCU, but everyone knew what this really was supposed to be. It was meant to be a Texas coronation, Steve Sarkisian’s signature moment. The 40 Acres was ready to come apart at the seams in excitement.

I don’t think I’d ever seen a pregame energy and hype like the one Saturday night. It was clear during the first TCU series that the fans inside DKR were ready to come unglued. Texas’ defense put a shift that should have resulted in a 45-10 victory, but they left the field on Saturday feeling scorned after the Frogs held Bijan Robinson and Roschon Johnson to 43 rushing yards combined. However, the story was Quinn Ewers and Sarkisian, who both turned in abysmal performances. What’s worse, Texas lost control of its own destiny in the Big 12 title race and now must rely on others losing, while they need to win out themselves. It was a face plant of epic proportions and at the worst possible time. But, Sark and the Longhorns have to finish the race strong. They must pick themselves up off the ground, dust themselves off and win their last two games, and if things truly have changed in Austin, then they will.

Here are some thoughts heading into a revenge game against Kansas…whatever.

-Since 2010, Texas is now 1-6 in Top 25 matchups in Austin after the Red River Shootout. Every time we seem to be ready to anoint the Longhorns, they cut off fans’ hopes below the knees. Maybe that’s the problem though. With Texas it’s always about the bigger picture, when sometimes it should just be about taking the next step and winning the game. I’ve definitely seen progress this season and I know Sark preaches process, but it can’t be easy to block out the noise if you’re a player. Last weekend became about a resurrection of sorts and I was guilty of framing it that way. It should have been about taking the next step on a flight of stairs. I’m bad at seeing things that way though. Most fans, hell most people are. We’re a sucker for narrative, for drama. I want to stop giving Texas the benefit of the doubt in these massive October and November games, because the program hasn’t proved to me yet that they can win them. I tell myself I won’t get so invested in the outcome of these matchups, but I know that next time there’s a huge game under the lights at DKR, I’ll be rapt again.

-You don’t understand how important baby proofing is until you have a child who starts crawling and pulling up on stuff and you realize everything in your house can kill your kiddo at any moment. When you baby-proof, you’re settling for less than your ideal version of your home, it sucks. It also keeps your kid from sticking a Power Ranger sword in a light socket and killing themselves.

Sarkisian’s ideal offense is based around the deep ball. He has a “throw it deep to set up the run” philosophy and the deep ball is being attempted at the highest rate in a Sark offense in four years. The problem is, it hardly ever works. There was a video circulating on Longhorn Twitter over the summer showing all of the times Xavier Worthy was missed on the deep ball last season. The video was about 90 seconds and Texas fans furiously chimed in that if we hit half of those shots last season, we would have won 10 games in 2021. It was inconceivable then to think that Texas would actually be worse on the deep ball this season, but they have been. Ewers and Worthy haven’t connected on a deep ball since Alabama, but they continue to go back to the well, despite it being bone dry.

Now, even though he won’t want to, Sarkisian has to baby-proof his offense from Quinn Ewers, because he’s dying out there. Since Oklahoma, Ewers is completing only 51% of his passes. Honestly, this season is the exact opposite of how I expected Ewers to look. I expected something more similar to Sam Ehlinger’s freshman year at Texas, with not only many amazing throws and playmaking, but also incredibly poor judgment. I expected lots of no, no, yes! mixed with yes, yes, NO!

Instead, Ewers looks to be overthinking everything and because of that, he’s over-relying on his “arm talent” at the expense of his mechanics and the offense’s production. It’s resulting in a mass of incompletions and missed reads. Sarkisian is an offensive mastermind, but I fear he’s falling into the same trap that many of us did with Ewers, and he’s seeing him for what he could be and not what he is right now. Sark has to accept that he’s not going to get the ideal version of his offense or his quarterback this season.

He has to make the decision to baby-proof the offense for Ewers, because for whatever reason, he’s shown that he won’t substitute Ewers for Hudson Card, even if it's just to eke out a win and calm Ewers down. Against TCU, Quinn Ewers and the Texas offense looked much more comfortable when Jordan Whittington and J’Tavion Sanders got involved in the short and intermediate passing game. That has to be the Texas offense’s bread and butter in the air going forward.

Tom Herman’s offense was defined by stubbornness. Herman used Sam Ehlinger as a battering ram and continually pounded his quarterback into opposing defenses almost to prove a point. Herman wanted to break his opponent, but Texas often broke first. Herman also blamed his players for his offensive failures, chalking it all up to a lack of execution. In reality, Herman was out of ideas and a vain, meathead game of chicken was the only way he knew how to play. Sark is a better coach than Tom Herman. He’s self-assured, likable and has a real offensive system at his disposal. Because all those things are true, Sark needs to stop trying the Herman bit of doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.

-Texas lost to Kansas last season. Maybe you don’t get the newspaper and didn’t realize that. But, they did and everyone memed it and made fun of Texas for being the Jayhawks’ only Big 12 win last season. It was one of the lowest points in a dark 12 years for Texas football, losing at home to college football’s worst program of the last decade.

Now, Kansas is bowl eligible and Lance Leipold is one of the hottest coaching names on the market. It’s been a remarkable turnaround in Lawrence. The Longhorns’ loss to Kansas last season came a week after the drubbing they received from Iowa State in Ames where Texas flat out quit in the second half. Afterwards, defensive line coach Bo Davis had his epic rant that was secretly filmed and posted by a Texas player who is no longer with the team. The profanity-filled tirade encapsulated how all Texas fans felt about the state of the Longhorns’ program and how the team seemingly cared far less than the coaches and fans did. The video going viral inspired a social media movement and some rah-rah moments, but in the end, Texas lost to Kansas.

It took a year, but Davis’ words have taken hold with this Texas team. Even through the disappointing losses, they’ve never quit. They’re strong in the trenches and building towards a cohesive vision on both lines of scrimmage in their recruiting and development. The offensive line has improved dramatically behind freshman phenom Kelvin Banks. The defense has swarmed to the football all season and always has showed relentless effort. All the ways in which Texas was soft last year, they’re not anymore. The effort and intensity show that Sarkisian and his staff have buy-in from their players. Texas hasn’t quit, even in losses. But, people aren’t going to keep applauding close losses, the players included and nobody cares about almost in football…that’s not what any of us are here to see. Scott Frost was just fired from Nebraska with 22 one score losses on his resume, even Tom Herman lost a lot of one-score games while in Austin. Eventually, a truly successful culture and superior talent should get you over the hump. A one score defeat or a hard fought loss does nothing for Texas this week. Lawrence isn’t the time to have a lapse in effort or show a rift in the Longhorns’ resolve. Yeah, Texas lost to Kansas last season, now they need to make everyone forget.