Coming back to the middle

by RolloTamasi on Jun 24, 2011 2:05 PM CDT in Texas Longhorns and Other Football

Listening to Ari Tempkin of all people, defender of Greg Davis, I overheard a fascinating point and stat about our 2010 Texas Longhorn football team that offered some intense insight into our horrifyingly bad offense.

Tempkin claimed that Texas' tight ends last season accounted for 6 catches. 6. For the entire season...

Now it so happens that he's wrong, between Barrett Matthews, Greg Smith, and Dominique Jones, Texas TE's actually hauled in 21 balls for 121 yards and 2 TD's. In other words, slightly more than Shipley offered us at the position every saturday in 2009 and even greater still than what David Thomas averaged in 2005.

Tempkin was pretty far off (or I misunderstood) but the fact remains that Texas drew little benefit last season from deploying a tight end on the field. It's easy to see where that took its toll on Gilbert's effectiveness and a great starting place in understanding how that hamstrung us is Burnt in NY's post-game writeup from last year's RRS.

The sideline-to-sideline passing/rushing attack of Texas last season was in fact comprised of plays that had challenged opponents in previous seasons and players that are extremely dangerous on the edge. Malcolm Williams IS a dangerous player down the sideline, Kirkendoll can in fact run a 4.4 40, Marquise Goodwin does star in track in the offseason. What made those plays and players like that dangerous on the sideline in the past was the abundance of space that could be found there as defenses were forced to cover the expansive area of the field around the hash marks.

It was easy to scream at the TV or field last year for more pass calls to the middle of the field but far fewer answers on how exactly this could be achieved. It's not as though Davis is completely oblivious to the need to threaten that area of the field, even if he was clueless/uninterested on how to achieve such a feat.

Keeping Gilbert interception-free might have been part of the equation...a failed one we might add, but the lack of targets has to be another. We could rehash how much Matthews disappointed, Smith was useless, and Jones underused and unheralded or ponder the lack of an effective slot receiver who could find space against a zone but I'm ready to move on to better things: answers, hope, Blaine Irby.

The recovery of Irby to something near his early-2009 form is like Bono's miracle drug for the Texas offense. The odds of that actually happening aren't too great, regardless of what you may have heard on the rumor mill. The level of route running and timing Irby had developed and was approaching with Colt McCoy isn't going to rematerialize with Gilbert/best challenger after 1 offseason of practice that was taken slowly to protect his knee. Assuming, of course, that he can even recover physically to his pre-injury athletic form. The most we should hope from Blaine though might still approach the total production from the position last year with Irby finally having a shot at reaching his potential in 2012 after receiving a medical redshirt.

Barrett Matthews was a mule that I and many others attached much of our hope and heroin to for last season only to see him be catapulted into the middle of a minuteman meeting. Personally I don't think Davis put him in positions to succeed last year alternating between calling no plays for him, throwing it to him at a standstill against zone defenses, and then using him as a 3rd down target in crucial situations where he inevitably failed.

What's he capable of in the new offense? More, I'm sure. Mcfarland, Jones, Howard, Terrell, they'll all have their chance. The fact that HarsinWhite moved Malcolm Williams to halfback reveals that the staff sees the need to threaten the middle of the field and are going to look to use his size and speed wherever it's needed rather than as an occasional heat check for funsies or late game hail marys.

The Power-O series which LonghornScott detailed for us here (intro), here (responses), here (strongside complement), and here (weakside complement) are going to do a lot to open up the middle for us to launch the play-action attack off the Power-O series which will be detailed in a promised LonghornScott post on the subject (we're all waiting LS). To summarize the non-existing post, the goal is to suck in the linebackers who have never been particularly aggressive or punished for the way they've played our zone running game the last 3 seasons, and then punish them.

The most likely answer to the vacuum Shipley left over the middle though is the same answer to "who will step up and become a weapon for Texas on offense in 2011" or "who is going to be targeted on those play-action tosses?" Mike Davis. Post-routes, drags, PA Waggles, Davis' change of direction and speed coming over the middle in a healthy 2011 campaign is what will rejuvenate the Texas offense and open up the sideline game for screens, outside runs/sweeps, and set up the running game to overhwhelm outmanned fronts.

As fall practices approach and the season slowly paces its way up to us I believe that the mirage of an oasis we behold in the Texas heat will materialize to be MikeD on horseback offering us a canteen. Drink up, Judah Ben-Hur.

Tweet Comment 17 comments | 0 recs |

Do you like this story?

Comments

Mike D is going to have to be the hero on the horeback regardless of how he’s deployed. He is one of probably 3 guys we have on offense that have Texas-level talent.

/justgrousing.

by PatronSaint on Jun 24, 2011 2:52 PM CDT reply actions

… and then there was Greg Smith in the East-West Shrine Game.

He had four receptions for 77 yards, including one for 35. That’s 19.3 yards per catch. Apparently, GDGD didn’t even know he could catch a football. Amazing …

by VirginiaLonghorn on Jun 24, 2011 4:36 PM CDT reply actions

The Greg Smith Shrine game has been misleading multiple fans it seems.

I watched every game of the season repeatedly, I can assure you that Greg Smith is at least as horrible as most people thought he was. He was a poor blocker and when he demonstrated the skill of catching a football he always followed it by demonstrating the skill of falling down like a sack of potatos as soon as a defender touched him. He had no speed and no elusiveness in the open field, as you might expect from someone who began his career here trying to fit on the offensive line.

That’s to say nothing of his volleball sets. I don’t know what happened at the shrine game but at Texas Greg Smith was a very below average player and it wasn’t because of Greg Davis.

by Ian Boyd on Jun 24, 2011 4:46 PM CDT reply actions

Meanwhile Austin Seferian-Jenkins has apparently slimmed down to 250 lbs and is turning heads as a sure handed pass catching TE at UDub. He just made this Sports Illustrated list of “Ten early enrollees who made an impact during spring practice” (Diggs is on the list too).

Couldn’t we have maybe had this guy if we had recruited him as a TE instead of a tackle? Or were his hands too soft?

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/football/ncaa/05/23/impact-early-enrollees/index.html

by desert fox on Jun 24, 2011 5:03 PM CDT reply actions

Good thoughts, Nickel Rover. The problems we faced in 2010 did not come about abruptly although the pattern is always much clearer in retrospect.

In 2008 Shipley was able to make hay in the middle of the field after we lost Irby. Shipley and Colt’s ability to use option routes to threaten the center held the safeties and linebackers where they belonged and gave Quan room to work one on one on the outside. In 2009 some teams compensated by only devoting 4 or 5 to the front and then pushing the safeties out and pulling the corners back and forced us to play underneath. This was partly in response to no Quan but more in response to seeing just how much wasn’t there in the running game. Colt and Ship were still efficient enough to survive but not much more than that. We tried to use our wide receiver screens to create outside pressure on the linebackers to open up the inside zone but teams just backed off their coverage to avoid the screen blocks and widened their safeties to give them an easy clean up on the screens. Enter 2010. We bring the tight end back to try to diversify sparse run game but then we don’t actually allow that run game to develop through game-planning. We don’t have a siamese brained QB-WR pair to still threaten the middle of the field and we are actually afraid to run routes over the middle of the field. Safeties go so far as to line up well outside of the hashes in cover 2 on us and they just run downhill on all our underneath passing. The rough equivalent of 5 basketball players standing in the paint on defense because they know your team can’t hit a 3 to save it’s life. Embarrassing for sure.

The new offense will challenge the middle from any position and usually Harsin is going to try to pull those defenders away from the middle first (with play action and alignment) and then hit em. He also loves to HI/LO the safeties (with routes and with play action) so I think it’s safe to say that we won’t see teams aligning their safeties outside the hashes anymore. One play that Harsin has loved against cover 2 is the classic PA Pass with a 989 route combo (Go routes for the wideouts and a Post route for the tight end). That’s a play where we definitely need our tight ends to step up in the passing game and be able to pressure deep (they weren’t there yet in the Spring Game).

I regret that I haven’t been able to come back to the series, work has taken over my life recently. I’m hoping I can carve out some time in the next two weeks to get things going again. Glad you posted.

by LonghornScott on Jun 24, 2011 5:05 PM CDT reply actions

Kinda hard to fathom less than 2 catches per game to your TE. There are at least 50 offensive plays,usually quite a bit more. Dragging the line of scrimmage with a TE, even a ham handed one, is a great safety valve for a QB in danger of getting decapitated by a joker. How is that possible, unless you had a 2,000 yard rusher in the backfield.

Oops……

by wbt5845 on Jun 24, 2011 5:15 PM CDT reply actions

I guess what I forget to explicitly say above is that your post is extremely well-named. More than any other strategic factor, our inability/unwillingness to threaten the middle of the field led to our offensive collapse last year. I am extremely confident that will be addressed in the running game, passing game, and their interplay in the new offense.

by LonghornScott on Jun 24, 2011 5:17 PM CDT reply actions

Can you explain who Ari Temkin is?

by Scipio Tex on Jun 24, 2011 5:38 PM CDT reply actions

The real challenge will be transforming Garrett Gilbert from being – Garrett Gilbert – into a competent quarterback. That has to handicap a lot of what Harsin wants to do with this group. Our other QBs are also such different animals in what they bring to the table, complicating the picture if we need to bench GG (or if he loses out in some mythical QB competition this fall).

by Mad Clapper on Jun 24, 2011 6:37 PM CDT reply actions

radio guy, scip. he’s the on-air partner to sean adams here in austin. sean is an orangebloods guy and is a real winner. don’t know much about temkin unless he invented some bearings in an earlier life.

by ari scoop on Jun 24, 2011 7:08 PM CDT reply actions

Irby would require a hardship to play in 2012, as it would be his sixth year (he was a freshman in 2007). Not to say he won’t get it because his would be kind of the classic case, but it’s not a given.

by Guh on Jun 24, 2011 8:21 PM CDT reply actions

Ari sounds like a guy who can bend spoons with his mind.

by KilgoreTrout on Jun 24, 2011 9:14 PM CDT reply actions

no, kt, but he can bend minds with his spoon. close enough?

by nupe on Jun 24, 2011 10:01 PM CDT reply actions

Did you know the middle of the field is the shortest path to the end zone. I swear to God – take a tape measure to it.

by wbt5845 on Jun 24, 2011 10:39 PM CDT reply actions

Why was DJ Grant not mentioned in this article? Isn’t that his name?

by Young Williams on Jun 26, 2011 1:13 PM CDT reply actions

LS: thanks, we all look forward to your extra bits. Your point about teams playing cover 2 with the safeties playing outside the hashes and the corners giving a big cushion is a strong point.

Davis’ beloved WR screen, hitch, and curl game was demolished by that strategy and makes it hard to know how good our WR talent really was. Fans pushed the need to get guys on the field there that could “make something happen” but all our guys were facing a stacked deck when they tried to do that.

Young WIlliams: yeah maybe DJ Grant plays a big part there. We have about 20 guys on scholarship that could play slot, TE, or HB, didn’t really want to spend time examining all of them when most are question marks. After fall practices, if they are open, we can talk more about which guys are actually going to make a difference.

by Nickel Rover on Jun 26, 2011 8:03 PM CDT reply actions