Greg Davis draws his other colt

Is anyone else worried that Malcolm “Stonehands” Williams is our #1 playmaker next year?

I’m not, because this is the time of year that I love so much – long enough from the bowl game and long enough before spring practices that I can talk myself into believing that This Time It’s Different with respect to the running game and OL.

I will have my expectations dashed soon enough, and I might have them last even longer this year with CTJ on the cusp of new daddy duties. That has to distract him, right?

The one, true, non-sarcastic hope I have for the offense is that this is the third year in which they’ll be facing a Muschamp defense in practice – surely that has to lead to some sort of improvement, even if it’s on the margins. And not just the Boom scheme, but a lineup that is slowly but surely seeing appropriate talent spreading across the field.

In that vein, I think the Fall practices are going to be fascinating.

You guys have running backs?

Edmond is a supreme talent, but I don’t know how he gets to the field sooner at MLB. Where’s Tevin Jackson going to play?

We’ve come a long way from starting Derry, Killebrew, and Foster .

What about me?

“Coaches I’ve read from that timed their backs found that the running back hit the line of scrimmage as quickly from the shotgun as they did from either the pistol or under-center sets.”

Care to share some more info? I know that we rabble readers aren’t supposed to question the veracity of what the writers post (or why else would they be writing?), but I’m not buying that the afore-quoted is absolutely true.

As one stranded in the middle of bucknuts country, I vote for the Big 10. But I agree that the Pac 10 would be more interesting. But like PB over at BON, I don’t see either of them happening unless the Big 12 starts hemorrhaging other teams.

And Seeing Red, sure we have running backs. Don’t you see them running back to the sideline after each and every one of our successful running plays?

TXinDC: http://forums.hornfans.com/php/wwwthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=football&Number=6141349&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=0&fpart=2&vc=1
You can see HPslugga discuss how they timed it at wichita st. here.

The deciding factor is that in the shotgun the ball is delivered almost instantly to the running back whereas in the pistol or under center the quarterback has to take a few steps first.
Teams have run power from the shotgun or draws where the running back had no trouble getting downhill. It’s the nature of the zone to be slow developing, not the shotgun run.

Texas’ problem isn’t that the back doesn’t get to the hole fast enough. If anything, it’s that he gets there too fast and runs into the linemen. Our timing is all wrong.

HJ, its hard not to get “there toof fast and run into the linemen” when they are getting knocked on their ass or belly flopping 2 yards behind the LOS.

There are problems with our scheme. It’s not just the players.

Leverage and timing. We don’t do either one very well.

HenryJames nails it. Trying to create “downhill” momentum for our players is not valuable within the zone-scheme we’re using.
What’s far more promising to me is that the coaches clearly want to emphasize the running game this fall and will consequently dedicate the necessary practice time (you would think) to become more efficient in the scheme.
Pistol, under-center, or shotgun is far less important to the running game than simply practicing the basic plays over and over again.
There have been several issues with the running game including timing/execution, interior OL play, and predictability. The Pistol doesn’t necessarily address any of them.

I think we may be placing a little too much emphasis on the run game. We clearly need some improvement there, but it’s not the cause of all our problems. It seems like everyone thinks we needed to be Alabama or Stanford, but that’s just not who we were. We were a pass heavy team, everyone knew we were pass heavy, and we lost two games in the last two years. Two. The simple fact is that GD has done a better than average job of molding the scheme around the players we had for the last few years. I hate the damn bubble screen like everyone else, but it’s hard to argue with results. GD will screw up 10 different things next year that are seemingly obvious to the rest of the world, but at the end of the day the offense will be fine (whether it’s run heavy, pass heavy, both, or neither). His early years were rough, but lately GD has done a more than decent job. It will be fine. We are Texas. And we have Boom, so the offense won’t have be spectacular anyway.

lazer,

I agree that on the whole we’ll likely be fine. The reason to talk about the running game is that it could help more this year than the last two years. We were lucky to have a QB that could throw mid-range lasers that only the WR targeted could catch. I have not doubt Gilbert is going to be a great QB, but his strengths are different from Colt’s. I don’t think we want to rely on Gilbert being our “run game” with short passes. Though playing in the title game helped a lot, it still doesn’t make up for a whole season’s worth of experience. He’s going to struggle at times, when that happens it will be very important to have a serviceable run game to wear down the opponent and give our defense a breather.

When Colt struggled in his 2nd year (vastly in part to the new O-line) I remember Jamaal Charles blazing speed being our season saver. We would have lost to NU and OSU without him that year. Of course, that was a case of talent overcome scheme to a degree, but the coaches did see how to best set up Jamaal half way through and put him in good position as well. If we can set up our backs to actually move the chains and take some pressure off Gilbert, our season will be better than many expect.

“We’ve come a long way from starting Derry, Killebrew, and Foster .”

Please never again remind me of the Scott Derry era. Also, Reed Boyd.

You guys have bled a lot for this blog but I will bench you if you keep bringing those guys up. It’s wrong in a variety of ways.

The scheme is a problem no doubt. However, its also a lovely combination of poor running back and Oline evaluation. Basically lets not leave out anyone to share the blame. I see 100% improvment if McWhorter somehow “retires” Let the bleeding for the blog begin

Not a good sign when the best memory you have of Scott Derry is riding the metro with his family and doing Texas Fight chants on the way to the red river shootout. That was my introduction to the fact that he was a LB for us, it all went downhill from there.

As far as downhill running I believe this to be an urban myth in football these days. Coaches I’ve read from that timed their backs found that the running back hit the line of scrimmage as quickly from the shotgun as they did from either the pistol or under-center sets.

Doesn’t that analysis miss the point? From that perspective, the best formation would line up the running back on the line of scrimmage – it’s physically impossible to get there any faster than already being there. I think the whole “running downhill” argument is one about momentum, not timing.

Out of the I formation, the running back gets to the line of scrimmage at damned near full speed. All other things being equal, it’s generally better for your running back to be moving as fast as possible. So, assuming the I and the option spread result in the same time to scrimmage, but the I-formation running back hits the line at a higher speed, then that’s an advantage to the I.

Wookiee,

I agree with you on pretty much all of those things. I’m just saying that (cringe) I have faith that GD will put it together. I’m not a big fan of his, either, but he has done an excellent job with the QBs at Texas. Yeah, we can talk about Sims et al, but by and large our problems have not been with quarterback play. Although he seemingly can’t count the guys in the box at times, he does a good job coaching up the QBs. In fact, I am hard pressed to think of a school with better overall QB play than Texas over the past 8-10 years. USC and maybe Florida? Give GD talent (like Gilbert) and he usually turns it into something productive.

On a side note, I have myself called for GD to be fired many times. However, when I try to think of who I would replace him with, I usually have a hard time coming up with viable candidates that are better than GD. My theory is that we suffered through his long ass learning curve, and now that he has improved we should keep him. So, I’d be interested to hear some suggestions of guys who could replace GD with if he was fired today. And don’t name some head coach at a Big 6 school. Real guys, that would take the job, who are GD caliber or better. Thoughts?

Wookie-

I took a piss next to Tre Thomas’ dad at DKR during the infamous 1995 Richard Walton Baylor-UT game. That’s my brush with Longhorn Greatness, other than meeting Earl, which I think everyone whose spent more than fifteen minutes in Austin has done.

I did not look down.

I was on a Rockin R bus or one of those other companies in New Braunfels when I looked over and saw a head about a foot higher than everyone elses. It was none other than Longhorn great Chris Mihm. He was on the Celtics by this time. I was left with only one choice. Me and my boys started up a “Let’s go Celtics” chant. Not surprisingly the entire inebriated bus followed suit. We got a chuckle out of the halfway naked and fully intoxicated girls chanting with us having no idea why on Earth we were doing so. Then we just all poured beer on eachother.

lazer,

Never meant to come off as downing GD. I have come around to the fact that as long as Mack is our HC (good thing) he is our OC. I’ve made my peace, we went to the title game last year and were an injury away from winning it all IMHO. As for offensive coordinators? I think it’s possibler there are guys out there who would do a better job at mixing it up. I wouldn’t mind GD taking a look at Chip Kelley and how he does things at Oregon. There’s a lot of innovation out there, not to mention fundamentals we have been sorely lacking in regarding the run game. I don’ t think my lay of the offensive coordinator land is strong enough to give you names. There is one Mike Leach who is without a job at the moment whom I’d be okay with having around.

Bates,

hell of a story. Far better than mine. Me and my friends noted that the family had pins on for number 33 or whatever Derry wore. They started chanting Texas and we happily yelled fight back. They screamed OU and we happily belted SUCKS! Then came one I hadn’t heard yet, Derry’s dad turns to us and yells “Blow me!!!” at which point I must have given the deer in the headlight look. Some other folks chanted “sooners!” while I sat there wondering what the hell I was supposed to respond to that with. Good times.

I grew up in Austin, and before I even knew the game of football my parents had taken me to a signing with Earl. Don’t remember it, but that certainly reinforces what you said.

Does anyone remember when Fred Akers used to let you come up the upper deck before fall practice and get autographs from the team? I think there were typically 500 people there and I got a lot of autographs. I liked Fred. Shoot, I still do. He was a fumbled punt away from retiring at Texas. Actually he kind of did anyway.

I choose to believe we’ve got the OL and TE personnel to expect a better running game this year. A lot hinges on if someone can emerge in the hybrid TE/FB/HB role that Irby had. That person would be most likey Barrett Matthews but Trey Graham could be a possiblity. That position returns some of the flexibility and permutations that moving away from the zone read costs you.

Just curious. Greg Davis talks about being under center and then you spend time talking about running out of the “pistol” formation. Did I miss something or did I have too much red wine too early in the day?

Brickhorn: The running back may be getting there with more momentum but I doubt it considering that he can only go fast enough to receive the handoff and read his blocks. And of course, with the zone running game the goal is not to give your running back loads of momentum heading towards the LOS but to create creases for him to find and THEN accelerate through.
If Texas takes advantage of the Pistol to run some more counter or power plays that’s great but so far the clues suggest that is not the case.

voiceintheback: the comment that leads me to believe the pistol is worth discussing was regarding “playing with running back’s alignments in the gun” which I read as using the pistol formation. Maybe they’ll just move the runningback a little further back from the QB like Florida but I suspect the pistol. OU tried the same thing this year but Texas stuffed it because they couldn’t block Lamarr Houston.

“It seems like everyone thinks we needed to be Alabama or Stanford, but that’s just not who we were.”

I’d settle for being Utah or Boise State.

Or is that setting the bar too high for our offensive personnel and coaching expectations?