Last night, for
the first time since 2003, a revitalized Texas Longhorns team managed to beat
Kansas State by ten points. Texas's offense, led by QB David Ash, who had
sat out last Saturday's match against Ole Miss because of a concussion, had 452
total yards (225 passing, 227 rushing) and a 17-point lead over the Wildcats
until the fourth quarter. Texas's defense, under recently hired
coordinator Greg Robinson, forced three turnovers and limited Kansas State's
offense, which averaged 4.9 yards per rush prior to last night's game, to 3.0
yards. With yesterday's win in Austin, Mack Brown not only beat a team he
had struggled with for nearly a decade. Consequently, he also avoided the
distinction of being the first Texas head coach since 1956 to lead his team to
a 1-3 record. Had this outcome occurred one could argue that the media,
given its current focus on Coach Brown's future with the Longhorns, would increase its calls for Texas’s athletic department to begin searching for a
replacement.
In fact,
yesterday's game revealed that some Longhorn fans were already considering the
idea of a Texas football program without Mack Brown. On ESPN's post-game
analysis website there is photo of a fan wearing a
"Saban 2014" T-shirt. The possibility of Texas hiring current
Alabama head coach Nick Saban came from an Associated Press report discussing how two regents (one current,
one former) from the University of Texas had contacted Saban's agent last
January about the idea of him taking over the Longhorns football program after
Mack Brown retired. While subsequent discussions between the two parties
failed to produce anything significant, (Coach Saban on his weekly radio show
even said that "I'm just too damn old to start all over some place else")
the AP story only added to the overall speculation about Mack Brown's future at
Texas. Indeed, the AP article and Saban's response simply begs the
questions of (1) Why Texas would consider replacing Mack Brown and (2) Who
would be the candidate to take his place? At this point in the season, there
does not seem to be any answer to the second question. By contrast, we
can provide some answer to the first.
Mack Brown is
currently in his sixteenth season as head coach of the Longhorns. Under
his leadership, the Longhorns have accumulated an 152-45 record. This
figure includes nine consecutive seasons with 10+ victories (2001-2009), two
postseason Cotton Bowl wins, one Fiesta Bowl win, and two Rose Bowl victories that
include the 2006 BCS National Championship game. Coach Brown even lead
his 2009 team to a second BCS National Championship appearance, which was a
game Alabama won 37-21. That game might have had a different outcome (I
am not saying the Longhorns would have won) if Texas Senior QB Colt McCoy had
not been injured during the first quarter. Unfortunately, the seasons
following that loss have not been what Texas fans and media pundits have come
to historically expect from Mack Brown's teams. In 2010 Coach Brown had a
5-7 record, his first losing season since he became head coach of the Longhorns
back in 1998. Seasons subsequent to that year have been a little better
(2011: 8-5 overall, 4-5 conference; 2012: 9-4 overall, 5-4
conference) and, in all three years, Texas has not been able to beat its main
interstate rival Oklahoma. In the 2010 Red River Rivalry Texas lost
28-20, but in both the 2011 and 2012 editions of that match-up, the results were
not as close. Texas lost to Oklahoma by a score of 55-17 in 2011 and the margin of loss in 2012 was wider, 63-21. It is also important to
mention that Mack Brown's record in the Big XII after 2009 has only been
12-15. Hence, it is because of the Longhorns performance of the last
three seasons that fans and pundits have expressed doubts of whether Mack Brown
can restore Texas football its earlier prominence.
Mack Brown
attempted to reverse the decline of his program after the 2010 season in part
by making changes in his staff. Four members, including Offensive
Coordinator Greg Davis and Defensive Coordinator Will Muschamp, left the
program after the Longhorns went 5-7 that year. Their replacements, including
Manny Diaz (Defensive Coordinator), Darrell Wyatt (co/Offensive Coordinator),
and Major Applewhite (co/Offensive Coordinator) enabled Texas to earn two more
winning seasons and postseason victories in the 2011 Holiday Bowl and the 2012
Alamo Bowl. However, the start of the 2013 season revealed that Texas was
not in a position to build on the modest success of the last two seasons.
In the Longhorns' losses to Brigham Young and Ole Miss, the team's defense gave
up 822 rushing yards and 306 passing yards. But, in all three games (including the win against New Mexico State) the defense gave up 1474 total yards, the 2nd most allowed yards in the
first three games of a season in the program's history. As a result, Coach Brown fired
Manny Diaz and replaced him with former Syracuse head coach Greg Robinson, who
had previously worked under Brown as Defensive Coordinator during the 2004
season.
Based on the results of yesterday's
game against Kansas State, it would appear that adding Robinson has helped
revitalize the Longhorns' defense. And the fact that Texas was able to
defeat Kansas State, an opponent that it has not beaten since 2003, provides
Coach Brown and his team with a much-needed rise in morale.
Unfortunately, it is still too early to tell if Texas can accomplish its goal
of winning the Big XII regular season championship. The rest of its
schedule includes ranked opponents like #11 Oklahoma State (Nov. 16th), #14
Oklahoma (Oct. 12th - Cotton Bowl Stadium), #19 Baylor (December 7th), and #24
Texas Tech (Nov. 28th) as well as away games at Iowa State (Oct. 3rd), Texas
Christian (Oct. 26th), and West Virginia (Nov. 9th). Texas has a
formidable schedule ahead of them, but starting a season with two losses is not
the worst thing that can happen to a program. For instance, back in 2011 the Georgia Bulldogs under Mark Richt lost
their first two games, but then they won the rest of their regular season and
subsequently played in the SEC championship game. Can Texas do something
similar? It would make an interesting news story if the Longhorns could
go 10-2 for the regular season. At this point though, Texas has two weeks
before it plays its next game against Iowa State. But the Longhorns' upset
of Kansas State may give the media something else to discuss about Texas
football, at least in the short-term, rather than simply focusing on Mack
Brown's future in Austin.
No comments:
Post a Comment