A very frustrating end to a very frustrating game as the No. 9 Texas Longhorns were thoroughly outplayed in Saturday’s 29-21 loss to the Florida Gators in Gainesville.
This game
was set to serve as a litmus test to see what this Texas team could be in conference play, and after that performance I came away a lot more pessimistic, all things considered. From the beginning in this one, the Gators set the tone and any time the Longhorns managed to grab some momentum, they found ways to give it right back. One team moved with urgency and energy from the first snap, while the other was on their heels for majority of the game and could never really gain their footing.
There is plenty to be upset about following this trip to The Swamp. This write up won’t be super rosy from my end of things. This one was tough to swallow for a lot of reasons.
Arch was far from perfect, but he showed me something on Saturday
That might have been one of Arch’s best plays under center since he arrived on campus. Has a free rusher coming at him, makes him miss as he climbs the pocket, and he uncorks a beautiful deep ball to hit Ryan Wingo in stride for a touchdown to get them back into the game. When 16 is cooking, that is the kind of stuff that reminds you why Texas is so heavily invested in him as their guy.
Lets talk about the bad, so we can get that out of the way. Arch was locking in on his guys a lot on Saturday. He was also not pulling the trigger on guys that were open either. He also took some sacks late in the game that were cardinal sins when Texas was trying to rally without any timeouts. There were also two interceptions that he logged, but without the All-22 I am not sure which way to lean. On the first pick, some say the receiver didn’t help him out enough and the second one the safety made a hell of a play, though it looked a little underthrown to my eye. I will have to defer on that, but that was on the negative side of the ledger for me as far his play.
On the positive side, I came away more bullish about this road performance from Manning than I did about the Ohio State game. I am going to get into more as we move through this writeup, but Manning was THE reason why Texas even had a chance to drive to potentially tie the game. Well that and Billy Napier being Billy Napier (what the hell was that timeout?).
One thing that can’t be understated is that was a hell of a defense that Manning was having to throw into today. Probably will be one of the best Texas sees all year. Manning was under fire from the first snap to the final one and was pressured and hit as much as he ever has been. But he kept pulling himself up and kept letting that thing spin and didn’t stop battling. I can dig that. I can work with that. You can eventually win with that if you are Texas. The entire offense was on his shoulders today, as he was able to pass for 263 (while leaving some yards on the field) and he was also Texas’ leading rusher by a large margin, but sack yardage took a chunk of that away.
Before you lift your hand to point the finger at Arch, you need to make sure you take a long, hard look at the way people around him performed today. Was he perfect? Nope. Was he at his best? Nope. But he never folded and kept plugging away even when things looked very bleak. If (a very big if at this point) things can get cleaned up around him and the Texas staff can somehow find a way to scheme around the shortcomings upfront, the Longhorns might end up being okay offensively.
Another thing while I am here — remember when the former Texas running backs coach scoffed at the idea of looking to the portal for an addition to his position room? Hindsight is 20/20, but when your RB1 comes back from a three-week layoff and can only generate 11 yards on the ground, that is extremely damning in my book. The offensive line certainly didn’t help, but Manning CAN’T continue to be your leading rusher like he was on Saturday.
That was as bad of a defensive performance as we’ve seen in awhile from Texas
Dallas Wilson might be pretty good, but one thing I know for sure is that the Texas defense was as bad as we have seen them over the past few seasons. The Texas defense held their own in Columbus to open the season against a talented Ohio State offense, but they looked like a shell of themselves on Saturday against Florida. This is the same Florida team that had not scored more than 16 points against an FBS opponent this year. The Texas defense made them look like The Monstars from Space Jam.
Florida opened the game by marching off a 13-play, 84-yard drive that chewed up almost seven minutes of clock. It was a foreshadowing for the rest of the day for the Texas defense, as they were pushed up and down the field throughout the game. Jadan Baugh and Duke Clark combined for 145 yards on the ground and it felt like they were getting clean looks at the second level almost all game long on the run. Looking at the box score, I am surprised it was only 145 yards between the two, because it felt like so much more in real time.
Coming into the game, quarterback DJ Lagway had struggled mightily to throw the football and even despite getting dinged up again in this game, he had one of his best starts since arriving at Florida. Lagway ended 21-of-28 passing for 298 yards and two touchdowns and those numbers included receptions of 20-plus yards to four different wide receivers.
Yes, Manny Muhammad was out, but this was a damning indictment for the defense as a whole. Kobe Black allowed two touchdowns on Saturday, and one of them was the long Wilson touchdown when he fell down during Wilson’s release from the LOS. He wasn’t the only one who struggled, though. The Texas defensive front got pushed around plenty and rarely got the Florida offense off schedule due to the lack of negative plays inflicted. Even when Lagway couldn’t really move, he was rarely pushed off his spot or pressured — the Florida quarterback was never sacked and only hurried five times.
The Gators rolled up 457 total yards of offense on Saturday. Any time Texas seemed to grab some momentum, the defense gave it right back by allowing Florida to go right down the field and score. This was a very sobering performance by this unit as a whole. Incredibly disappointing considering the bye week to prep for this matchup.
The Texas offensive line is a huge problem
I am going to keep this short and sweet about this group. This is not a group you can make a playoff run with and that is incredibly disappointing in a lot of ways. Texas lost a lot of experience and talent to graduation and the NFL, but everyone knew that was happening well before the games started being played this fall. My biggest issue is that the Texas staff did not move with any urgency to try to make additions via the portal over the offseason with this group, instead choosing to stand pat knowing what they had in the talent pipeline. As things sit right now, you are not even playing at a league average level as a unit. The interior offensive line was a massive eye sore on Saturday, as they were the source of a lot of pressures on Manning in this matchup and that makes it incredibly hard to function offensively if you constantly have your guards and center conceding pressure up the middle.
The left guard spot is probably the biggest issue of all five spots right now. Connor Stroh started the game there as he has each game so far this year, but things got bad quickly and we saw Nick Brooks inserted there, where he proceeded to take his whoopings courtesy of the Florida defensive front. During the offseason I was expecting Neto Umeozulu to eventually earn the job at this spot, but I can say safely that it is a damning indictment on the interior line options Kyle Flood has if that was the best they could do. You simply can’t win games or championships with your offensive line playing the way they are right now. This has easily been one of the biggest disappointments for me so far this season.
Expectations coming into this year was playoff or bust with expectations to be in the conversation for the national championship. The lack of urgency the staff showed in the offseason to make sure one of the most important units on the roster was ready to meet those expectations is one of the biggest storylines moving forward this season. Roster construction has been a strength of this staff under Steve Sarkisian, but this is one of their biggest failures to date.
Special teams were NOT special
Woof. A complete protection meltdown that luckily only leads to a safety instead of a touchdown. Not only is it a protection bust, but the punter doesn’t move with any urgency as the pressure is bearing down on him. Not sure if this is something Florida saw during film study to make the protectors bust their assignments, but either way it was a horrific outcome in a time where Texas was struggling to get anything going on offense.
Speaking of punting, Jack Bouwmeester uncorked some damn good punts (when he was protected), but none of them were downed inside the 20-yard line due to the coverage team whiffing on multiple opportunities to pin Florida on their own goal line. Both times the coverage players got in position to be able to down the ball inside the five and both times the ball was able to break the plane and get into the end zone for a touchback.
On top of that, Ryan Niblett was an absolute non-factor in the return game, only generating 10 yards of return yards. Yuck.
Texas was manhandled in the trenches
They say that games are won and lost in the trenches and that was on full display in this game on Saturday. Florida absolutely dominated the line of scrimmage on both sides of the football against Texas and it wasn’t even close. The Florida offensively was regularly establishing a new line of scrimmage and providing run lines for Baugh Clark, and on top of that they held up very well in pass protection for Lagway and allowed him to have clean pockets.
On the other side of the coin, the Florida defensive front was in the Texas backfield on a regular basis. The Gators were credited with seven tackles for loss and six sacks in the box score with 34 total pressures, the most of the Steve Sarkisian era at Texas. It was THAT bad, which is why I was surprised the Longhorns were even in the game as late as they were.
If you have championship aspirations, then you have to build your team from the inside out. Texas spent a lot of resources reloading the pantry on the defensive line this offseason, but seemingly neglected the offensive line and it has shown. This was the first time we saw the Texas defensive line get its ass handed to them in this manner this year, so maybe they can bounce back, but it was extremely discouraging.
Seeing what I saw in the trenches on Saturday (amongst other things) has me completely readjusting my expectations for this team this year. I was feeling like this team could still find a way to make a playoff run post-Ohio State as long as some things got ironed out, but after this one I am not nearly as bullish about this team making the field after how they looked in Gainesville.
Readjust your expectations accordingly after this one folks. This was disappointing for a lot of reasons, but mostly because it revealed that this team is not ready for primetime in a lot of ways. It doesn’t get any easier with the game in Dallas on deck. Who would have thought that Oklahoma would have entered the Cotton Bowl as the favorite coming into the season? The Shootout already had a lot riding on it, but a loss at the Texas State Fair essentially puts Texas at looking towards next season, as that will already be three loses on the ledger only two weeks into conference play.
We are about to see what this team is mad of moving forward, because it is officially gut check time for the Longhorns.
The 24-hour rule is officially in effect. Watch the film and get this one out of your system because the Sooners are on deck.
