Unfortunately, most articles about the game have used this phrase as their driving theme. No more bowl-less seasons! “Our defense settled in in the second half enough for our offense to extend itself and score some more points and we didn’t execute well enough in that phase”. “And special teams we weren’t able to flip the field like we thought we could”. “Drue needs to understand what is expected and come through for us”.
Advertisement
As documented in this morning’s release, the streaming audience for the Longhorns’ 50-47 victory set new ESPN records for a regular season college football game, with an average minute audience of 194,000 and a total of 786,000 unique viewers viewing 49,900,000 minutes overall. Texas fans like I didn’t understand how to feel. Let’s take a few moments to ground some of the potential takeaways from that game in realism. They also won the national title. He caught a 68-yard pass from Buechele on Sunday night. His form on drop-backs was not especially crisp, and he missed several open receivers.
On defense, the Miners all but shut down the Aggies’ running game with star running back Larry Rose III on the bench still recovering from hernia surgery. That coincided with Notre Dame scoring 17 unanswered and taking a 35-31 lead.
“The Texas wide receivers are dynamic!” I’ve been through this before if you remember a couple years ago.
Like UTEP, Texas hired a new offensive coordinator in the offseason in Sterlin Gilbert; and Gilbert chose a new starting quarterback during fall camp in freshman Shane Buechele.
Time will tell if Texas is truly on its way back, but the Longhorns created a great deal of optimism in their opener.
Texas has been excited about quarterbacks in recent years only to be disappointed. Their problem has never been talent; rather, they have lacked consistency. “I guess they’re going to be reaching out to them to find out why that wasn’t reviewed, but clearly, win or lose, player safety should be at the front of this game, and we don’t believe that that was the case in this instance”.
“Our defense challenged on of the best offenses in the nation!” They played at a fast pace and Notre Dame couldn’t keep up. Kizer cut the deficit to 10 on an impressive 29-yard touchdown scramble and then found Torii Hunter Jr (Son of former LA Angels star Torii Hunter). That rarely happened in Strong’s first two seasons, but Texas looked like a different team when moving the ball against Notre Dame.
Okay, I’ll Be Positive NowWith all that said, Texas fans should be feeling optimistic after Sunday night’s victory.
As bad as the defensive statistics looked against Texas, Kelly is right. All that he has left to prove is that he will improve rather than hitting a plateau. Kelly said the media was “jumping the gun” by criticizing VanGorder or the state of Notre Dame’s defense. Many of Notre Dame’s drive started with advantageous field position, so the total number of points surrendered has to be taken with a grain of salt. As of now, this isn’t a huge concern. That won’t be easy with Ohio State and nine conference games looming. Running back Aaron Jones showed no ill effects from last season’s ankle injury as he ran wild over the NMSU defense aided by phenomenal blocking from a beefed up offensive line.
Advertisement
You want to talk about a selfless kid that will swallow any amount of pride for the benefit of his team?
