Practices: Days Thirteen and Fourteen

You mean having Tyson King, Dwight Kirpatrick, Kyle Richardson, Brandon Nava, and Dusty Renfo doesn’t count as quality linebackers?

Given our troubles actually running the football, and our staff’s desire to incorporate a true hurry up offense, I wonder if losing D.J. Grant and forcing our hand with Matthews wasn’t a kind of blessing in disguise. Exchaning a guy who could stretch the field and block a little, for a guy who can really block and stretch the field a little, might not be a bad thing. Sucks that it takes a terrible injury to a good kid for our offensive coaches to come to such a conclusion. Such is life I guess.

P.S. I totally said “staff’s desire”. Am I the only who finds that funny?

Yes? Well then screw you.

I keep reading the Johnson is huge every other day, but I haven’t seen him yet. Which of the pictures is he in? What number?

first pic of aug 21 (the first pic link), derek is no. 98 in the center.

also, click on ‘view other galleries’ in the upper right of that page. go to aug 20 pics and he is on the far right of the first pic. kinda fish eye lens so it’s exaggerated, but look at his calves. reminds a little of stoney clark.

somebody name the five linebackers.

Muck, Norton, Robinson, Acho and probably Ernest. I doubt he’s referring to Tariq Allen, Ryan Roberson or Nkwopara. Kindle is a DE now so not him.

Muschamp’s response to keeping players motivated in camp was dead on. He gets it.

In fact, why even ask that? What do you think he’s going to say? On Thursdays we have special berry flavored gatorade- it’s a super way to connect with the kids and get buy-in, then we might bring in motivational speakers from Six Sigma, or tell ribald skirt chasing stories from last year and maybe shave half of Blake’s beard off while he’s asleep?

I was hoping he’d just say “This is Texas, motherfuckers” then uncomfortably stare down the room in silence like an intense emotional pistol-whip about the face and head until everyone broke eye contact out of shame for being present when such an asinine question was asked. He went with the PR version of the answer, but it’s still affirming to hear.

you nailed my sub-question, t-son. i’d like to know who the fifth guy is.

Dustin Earnest. He’s apparently been impressing in camp.

Scott is indeed a thoroughbred. Moreover, he’s a big thoroughbred. He practically dwarfs Thomas in that shot where they’re taking down Buckner. Tough to tell from one photo, but he looks like he might be carrying more than his listed 210. This guy is going to hurt people.

John Chiles looks fat

He’s not fat, he’s just big boned

good to hear about earnest. thank you.

It’s encouraging that Muschamp feels good enough about three DTs to say so in public. I have been worried that we wouldn’t find two.

We really don’t “have” to have a solid 4th or 5th DT until mid/late October (read: at OSU), and I think that one of the new guys (probably Howell) will start to figure things out by then.

Five championship-quality LBs? Holy shit.

i for one am fine with visors

Put me in coach!

I cannot wait to see Scott on the field this season. Adding him to the starting lineup will pay HUGE dividends. He really is in the 210 – 212lbs range tho.

I guess detached TE equals flex TE, while attached TE equals TE lined up pretty close to the OT. Is this terminology unique to UT or is it also used elsewhere?

“We would like to play more 11 personnel (one running back, one tight end) than we were able to last year, but at the same time, you want to play to your strengths. Colt (McCoy) is an extremely accurate thrower, and when you put Dan inside you get some matchups there that are pretty good.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it."

Except that they are “fixing it” by moving Ship to outside wide receiver and replacing Ship at detached TE by Dan Buckner. Buckner (about 25 to 30 pounds bigger than Ship) should be able to block LBs and might even be able to chip block DEs (to help out the attached OT), tasks which Ship should not even attempt.

Another example of fixing it, is that they say they will run a lot more hurry up this year from the I formation (with Colt under center).

We’ll see what actually happens but it will be hard to stand pat with the offense. A key part of the possession passing triumvirate (Quan) is gone. Defenses (especially OU) will have studied the 2008 UT possession passing offense and will be prepared with counter strategies such as pressuring Colt’s primary possession receivers (such as Ship) at the LOS and having DL attempt to block passes at the LOS. OU was so devastating with their hurry up offense last season that Mack is very likely to want to copy it (if he has the players to do so) at least part of time.

A key part of OU’s hurry up offense was that they can create/sustain favorable matchups because they could both run with power and pass efficiently with the same personnel. It is not clear to me that UT will be able to do that. Is UT going to be able to run downhill and powerfully enough to force OU to defend UT with 4 true DL and 3 true LBs? It does not seem likely so UT might be running the hurry up versus OU without favorable matchup mismatches (i.e. the key aspect of the OU hurry up offense that made it so productive last season).

I think both UT will respond to the OU type hurry up offense by replacing an LB with a safety who can both run stop and cover a TE. That guy for UT is Christian Scott.

"A key part of OU’s hurry up offense was that they can create/sustain favorable matchups because they could both run with power and pass efficiently with the same personnel. It is not clear to me that UT will be able to do that."

Absolutely agree here. I do hold out hope in this regard in the development of Barrett Matthews. He’s young and he’s got some learning and growing to do, but I think eventually he’ll be the key to UT running a formidable hurry-up offense. The question is how long "eventually" winds up being.