Kansas State and Other Thoughts

Mack is 2-3 against Snyder. And 2-5 against K State. He isn’t 2-7

Oh thank God! Football! I am starving from lack of football. scrolls back to top to actually read post

Anybody know who is running the wildcat in practice? Or have we abandoned it? Y2K?

As for Gideon, I think he may have suffered similar flak to GG last season in that lots of times it was on him to save a touchdown, but he couldn’t do it.

I think your description of him nailed it perfectly: he does what he’s supposed to do, and not much more. When he needs to do more, often times he can’t, and it leads to a lot of public outcry.

Gideon sucks

Two weeks ago I was looking forward to this game but now I don’t know how we score. I freakin’ hate K-State.

Here’s the Gideon play I remember most from last week … remember when Kenny V blitzed from the left and hit Franklin in the ribs just as he threw, knocking the wind out of him?

On the replay from behind the QB you can see Gideon sliding over from deep safety to pick up the receiver Vaccaro just left. The defensive play was probably designed for him to come over and make an INT or at least break up the pass when the QB threw to the ‘hot’ receiver. Gideon undercut the receiver’s route and if Franklin had thrown it short or Vaccaro had gotten there a fraction of a second earlier Blake would have had an easy INT and run-in for a score, a big play we badly needed since our O was doing so poorly.

But he gambled and undercut the route a bit too much, Franklin stood in and threw over Gideon for a big gain down the sideline. Vaccaro made a good play, Franklin made a better play, Gideon was in position to make the best play if the ball was thrown short, but whiffed. To me that was the kind of “almost” play that Gideon makes almost makes in key situations too many times.

If he was just a little faster or took slightly better angles or had a bit more luck it would be a different story.

I noticed while watching the KSU-Aggy game on DVR that Klein wears a power balance bracelet. Then I realized that’s the key to the game. First defender to tackle Collin Klein needs to strip off his power balance bracelet, then he’ll be rendered useless.

Seriously, though, why the fuck do people fall for that scam?

Those stats on Gideon don’t show all the times he is out of position, or whifs on tackles, or tries to be a hard ass and gets ran the f over. He is also the king of the jump in for the half tackle. Can you honestly remember a time where it was just him against a guy, 1 on 1, and he brought the guy down?

DKR needs a Gideon Cam, sponsored by FEMA.

Gideon is our Jaxson Appel. He gives you all he’s got but in the end it just isn’t enough. Sports are cruel. Being a good guy and trying your hardest doesn’t make you good enough. If you are not good enough, you lose, and the fans blame you.

Great post. You nailed it on a number of fronts.

Particularly Collin Klein. I chuckle at people who call him slow.
 
I think a good comp for him is also Bradlee Van Pelt – the former CSU QB. Klein is taller, but has very similar toughness/physicality profilesand both had the ability to rise to the occasion in tough spots.

Gideon’s rep was tarnished when his butter fingers cost us an appearance in the MNC in ’08. Not fair to him but it is what it is.

Thoughts?

Any analysis of Snyder’s dominance that doesn’t include the words “Blofeld,” and “white Persian cat” leaves me dissatisfied on one level.

But I enjoyed the x’s and o’s—thanks, NR.

I think a playoff is a better way of determining ‘a best team’, if what you are looking for is the most capable and developed team at the end of the season. I like to think of the season as a journey and not a series of discrete contests. I would be more impressed with a 3-loss team winning a playoff than I would with a regular season champion who was more experienced and started strong and then played the weakest part of their schedule at the end of the year, or even worse a champion who didn’t play any stiff competition but was undefeated while other teams needed some time to develop younger players or went through the grind of facing a half dozen high-quality opponents (or 4 top teams in succession) and subsequently lost a game somewhere during the season.

College football is completely ill-equipped to provide much information about the consistency of any team when compared to all the other teams especially in its current format. Out-of-conference contests generally happen at the beginning of the year when some teams are still finding their way. Some teams use OOC as a pre-season either scheduling patsies or not putting a premium on victory in a more difficult contest and using the game as a way to help them prepare for conference play. Conferences aren’t created equal and add to it the role of the media and the polls add to the level of misinformation about the quality of a team.

A well-designed playoff has the advantage of picking out the most likely ‘best’ teams and then using the regular season as a guide to seed them thus giving some advantage to consistency but at least providing a series of contest to test whether that consistency was earned or was just a factor of scheduling.

We won’t ever get a ‘perfect’ playoff in college football. Conferences will demand a guaranteed seat and so we will have a team or two that compete in the playoff that aren’t as deserving than other teams, but it would be an improvement over what we have now and as you suggest it would be more entertaining for us fans.

All that speculation on teams jumping teams that beat them,remind me of the Tech game. Oklahoma jumped us. That still sucks.We wore Oklahoma down in the 4th quarter, they could not hang. Even my Oklahoma buddies agreed. On to Tech, Gideon dropped the ball. But what really beat us in that game was a beat up Quarterback who played valiantly. He would not run the ball in the first half while i yelled at the tv. He sucked it up in the second half and brought us back. The reason he was beat up was Jamaal Charles had dumped us for the NFL. Had Charles played his sr. year we would have won that game handily. Dang it, Charles you could have been so much more.

 Why is the point spread so high in this game? i think it opened at 9.

Gideon is like the Colonel in charge of a flanked regiment in a losing cause — his mistakes are evident to everyone, but the truth is, it doesn’t really matter a damn. By the time you’re talking about the safety, the game’s already lost.

Don’t have much trouble expressing exactly what you think, do you, Nickel Rover?

I’m right down the line with you on the post-season schemes. I don’t think a playoff system would provide the clarity the majority of fans assume. Super conferences seem to offer the best overall solution.

I also think K State is gonna be a tougher slog than the line suggests. I hate losing to the biggest bumpkin school west of Starkville, so I hope the coaches are thinking like you.

Blake Gideon has never bothered me either, a classic case of a player whose knowledge of assignments compensates for physical shortcomings, allowing him, what? 48 starts when there were more athletic options around. Hello, Christian Scott. If he’d been played ahead of a more productive player, yes, I’d be annoyed like some of the commenters above.

Nickel, how do Vaccaro’s stats measure up? One stat that can’t be measured is the amount of wood that he lays on opposing ball carriers.

OldTimeHorn nails it, it’s hard to name a deserving star talent at safety that rode the bench while Gideon provided an average performance.

Poofy Bevo: I actually did compare Vaccaro’s stats but I didn’t count him as a safety and I measured him against other nickel players like Tony Jefferson, Terrance Bullit, Shaun Lewis, etc.

It’s hard to make a statistics-based case that Vaccaro is better than Tony Jefferson, who’s stats are padded by a 3 interception performance against East Podunk State. Not to say that Jefferson isn’t a fantastic player, but 3 interceptions is a lot and it really skews the numbers.

One place where Vaccaro stands out against the other Nickels in the league is PBU’s. He has 7 for the season. You have to think of Vaccaro in the following way to understand his genius:

There are teams that play a LB/S hybrid as the Nickel and use more zone concepts. They just want a guy who can still play the run and blitz but who won’t get embarrassed in the flat. Roy Williams, Tony Jefferson, Shaun Lewis all fit here.

Then there are teams that play a Corner on the slot to shut him down in man coverage. More and more in the NFL you see teams, inspired by the Patriots, move really good cover corners inside to avoid getting embarrassed by a Wes Welker. Ryan Palmer was more in this camp. Aaron Williams and Charles Woodson could be described in these terms although those guys also played inside because they were more physical than other corners.

Vaccaro can lock down the better slot receivers in the league in man coverage, evidenced by his 7 PBU’s, while also providing similar tackle, tackle for loss, or sack numbers as your LB/S hybrid. He can do it all. He’s a LB/S/C hybrid. Most NFL teams are starving for safeties who can avoid embarrassment in coverage against spread looks but I wouldn’t be shocked to see a team use like the Packers use Woodson and keep him in the slot.

Well, I agree that he’s not that great, but I think you’re underestimating him. When Gideon really puts his mind to it, he can definitely suck.

Unfortunately, Kstate reminds me of Missouri in the fact that they are carrying a distinct identity with their offense. Although different from Missouri, that strong identity may yield a similar result.

I bet Gideon has great numbers on fumbles recovered. He’s always two steps late to every play so is always in perfect position to pounce on a fumble when another defender knocks the ball loose while making the tackle (he always seems to be there for deflections or tipped balls as well as he’s just far enough away from the intended receiver to be in perfect position for a carom).

Of course if the other defender doesn’t knock the ball loose Gideon is in perfect position to either concuss his own player or get a 15 yarder when he spears the offensive player laying on the ground or out of bounds.

I get that others behind him may not necessarily be better than him at this point and might make just as many mistakes this year, but you can’t tell me they wouldn’t benefit from the playing time and make us better at that position in the near future.

I think Scott hurts Texas more than Gideon ever did. There has to be a reason or two Gideon has started for 4 years in pretty good defenses under multiple Defensive Coordinators.

MaxATX: I think probably you are right. Scott looked rangier and better than Gideon as a freshman but since then he seems to have lost a step. Or we just a better look at his overall skillset and he wasn’t that fast to begin with.

Scott is an SEC safety playing in the wrong conference.

lonesome devil: I agree. I’m also struck that KSU has a great offensive identity that can adapt to reflect better talent at RB or QB. The fact that Daniel Thomas left and Bryce Brown didn’t pan out would have seemed to suggest that the wildcats wouldn’t have anything left to feature on offense. Now we see that if Bryce Brown could have been a real replacement for Daniel Thomas we’d all be in trouble.

Hey Man, I remember Jaxon Appel being better than most people seemed to think.
I remember him making seemingly every tackle while holding Peterson to 3 yards per carry in 2004. I can’t see Gideon doing that.

Ricky: The only problem with a playoff is the elimination aspect. There’s a good chance that the best all-around team is eliminated before even the final game. The results of a comprehensive regular season are a better guide to the real best teams. Anyone notice how much better and more fun the Big 12 has been this year with Round Robin scheduling?

I would gladly accept either a playoff system or a better regular season though.

Nickel,
‘Best all-around team’ is a metric that can’t be assessed without playing a 200+ game season of full round-robin, home-and-home series with every team. A playoff is a tool to overcome the fact that most competitions can’t include enough games to equally assess all the participants. Even this season’s Big 12 is stacked with anomalies like who you got to play at home and when you played them during the season.

Who cares if LSU gets beat by Stanford in a first round playoff game? The rules are set in advance and if you can’t win X number of games against the best teams in the country at the end of the year then why do you get to claim ‘best all-around team’? This is especially true since you likely didn’t play any of the same opponents (or if you did one team played them early in the year and other played them later in the year) which means you have no way of knowing who really played the tougher schedule.

Ricky: Well there’s the rub, sports champions are imperfect. It’s impossible to actually know who the best teams are. Some systems are better than others.
I don’t think all 119 schools need to play each other, but it would be nice if the top programs in the land played each other on a more regular basis.
Your example of Stanford upsetting LSU in the first round is a good example.
In such a system it wouldn’t matter that Stanford had defeated one premier program and LSU had defeated several. If Stanford played LSU’s schedule, lost 3 games, but then beat LSU would we say that Stanford was the better team? Or a more worthy champion?

What if it was just a bad day for LSU or they suffered a freak injury during the game?

I believe the champion should be the team that we feel is the best all-around team. If we determine that with a playoff system I would prefer that we not invite more than 8 teams to take part and avoid the March Madness dilemma of the unlikelihood of the best team winning 5 consecutive games against quality opponents.
If we keep determining it with rankings and bowl games I would prefer to see more top-25 matchups so we have a better basis for our judgements. Do you disagree?

Nickel,

I imagine we agree for the most part, but I don’t like getting into arguments about the definition of ‘best’ as the key element to defending our position. The current system is ruined by its love of ‘perfection’ to the point that a team is potentially better off not playing any tough games since being unbeaten is ‘better’ than being a ‘great’ team that played a bunch of great games but may have dropped one. I would prefer a set of rules that make competition the key arbiter. If you want to argue ‘best’ after the fact then fine, but one team will have played enough quality opponents in a relatively common setting that I wouldn’t have a problem in most years feeling the team that won deserved it.

I think college football needs to get down to about 40-60 teams and not allow teams to play games outside of that group. If it ends up being superconferences fine, but it could also be 4-6 10-team conferences. Then you pick the top 8. I agree that 8 is the optimal number, but I would also be OK with the NFL model just to give a bigger incentive for teams to try and secure a bye week by playing their best in the regular season.

I also wouldn’t discount a team losing in a playoff as being such a bad thing. If playing a ton of premier programs is supposed to make you a better team then prove it and continue your consistently high level of play in the playoff. A consistently great team shouldn’t have any bad days. If LSU goes undefeated for 12 games, wouldn’t losing on the 13th just prove that maybe they weren’t as consistently great as we thought they were? A key injury is likely going toss a team out of contention anyway, so why does it matter if it happens in a playoff rather than in game 2 of the regular season? At least the team with the early injury has a chance to get healthy or develop another player and still get into the playoff.

A playoff sets a standard at the beginning of the year. If you want to be in the playoff you have to perform up to certain specifications to get invited. If you want to win the championship you have to perform up to a certain standard in the playoff, ie not losing. Our current system has scheduling, public relations, computers, voting and other non-performance related elements that play too big a role in determining who gets a shot at the title.

Mack is 2-3 against Snyder. And 2-5 against K State. He isn’t 2-7

Just makes it that much worse…Mack was 0-2 against the woefully inept Ron Prince.

I don’t think we are too far off in opinion save for in one regard:

I dont’ think that losing your 3rd game should be so preferable to losing your 13th. Especially if the 3rd game was lost against a weak foe and week 13 was against a strong team.

That’s the price you pay for an entertaining playoff system and I’m mostly willing to pay it. But it’s no less subjective than other methods of choosing a champion and more so than some.

One thing missing from the article was the fact that for some reason when we play KState we almost always play one of our worst games. And at the same time the stars line up for our worst performance, those stars line up to allow KState the best game they play all year. But with last weeks uninspired lackluster dreadful game out of the way maybe there is a chance.

Littlebigman: that’s what I was trying to account for.

I think you nailed the K-State defense, but I’ve got a few qualms with the offensive breakdown. First of all, I don’t think this offense is better than the one UT saw last year, and the stats agree. Klein is certainly improved as a runner and as a passer (how much on this front depends on how much stock you place in his unprecedented performance against aTm) but the dropoff from Thomas to Hubert is huge. Plus, especially now without Tyler Lockett, the receiving corps isn’t as good as it was last season.

Prior to the game last week, K-State basically didn’t have a downfield passing game. I’d still say Texas’ best option is to key on the running game and dare Klein to beat them deep, while trying to make him pay and provide some evidence that he is human every time he runs. Texas’ corners are a lot better man-to-man than the ones at A&M, and even some of the long bombs last week didn’t have great accuracy.

Two final thoughts:

1. I’m a little surprised to see so much written about K-State and its recent dominance over Texas with nary a mention of special teams, considering the history.

2. Who is Colin Hubert? :)

I think it’ll be a close one Saturday, probably with very few points or passes.

Hongabear: I think perhaps your offense looked better last year statistically because you didn’t have to play all the south teams. Could be wrong though.

You are absolutely right about special teams, I’m ashamed I missed that. Although in your 45-42 upset we got some points from a blocked punt so it hasn’t all been one way.

I think we could play man-to-man and get away with it but it would be nice to mix in Fire Zones and base Cover-3 as well and see if we can get an INT or mess up your protections/run calls.

I’ve thought your deep passing game has been solid all year. You tormented Kansas with it, anyways.

I still think a playoff is less subjective than the current system by an extreme amount. Add to it the increased entertainment value and I don’t see any reasonable argument for keeping the current system. Now obviously, if we do get a playoff, the selection criteria will be subjective and likely more imperfect than I would like, but it would still be worth it. The only way to get a decidedly less subjective system is a long season of round robins.

Ricky, I definitely agree.

“I also have a slight fear of OU sneaking back into the title game but this is mostly negated by the fact that Landry-to-Broyles was one of the most dominant pairings in league history. I don’t think OU can hang against a Top-5 Pokes squad without Broyles in the lineup.”

If Heupel gets creative with formations and playcalling and all of the WRs we do have (namely Stills) can stay healthy, we’ve got a puncher’s chance at Okie State. OSU’s defense isn’t as good as their stat line, and their offense was held in check quite well by the one good defense they did play (you guys). Now, if Kenny Stills is still playing hurt….yeah, we’re fucked no matter what.

That said, I wouldn’t vote for OU to go to the BCS title game even if we did win out. Losing our #1 RB and probably the best WR in OU history doesn’t scream “contender” to me.

You are underestimating OSU’s defense. They’re good at every position in the secondary, which makes a tremendous difference in this league, and they can rush with 4 pretty well.

Unless I misunderstand the OU offense, you guys used Broyles to move the chains (and occasionally break big plays) and set up defenses for deep passes. Teams are going to find it much easier to keep up with Stills deep without worrying about Broyles in the middle of the field.

To say we “held in check” the OSU offense is pretty misleading. We held their passing game down and in doing so gave up over 200 rushing yards. Anyways, you don’t have the personnel to emulate what we did, you’ll have to do it your way.

I think the one thing that could lead to Sooner victory is that you guys play the screen and quick game better than most teams. I don’t know how you deal with Blackmon though.

Questions for the football wonks:

On D: does the answer to KSU’s use of the running QB lie in DT discipline and DE alignment, or does the numbers advantage of running the QB mean that the answer has to come from the next level? It seems to me that borrowing from our back 7 is what the opponent wants, and since the running QB isn’t a lightning threat, backside pursuit would be unusually useful.

On O: might one answer to cover 2/cover 4 be routes that look like two seam/post/corners but that actually turn into three verticals after the break? Or is Texas’ reliance on the running game supposed to put stress on KSU’s dropping LB’s the way play action would on safeties, opening up the intermediate range? Why not both?

Dunno. Just off the top of my head and I don’t know much about football. Appreciate any thoughts.

It seems to me that both of the defenses will come in on Saturday with lots of reps against something like the offense they’ll face, resulting in a tense, low-scoring game.

I got the impression that Texas held Ash back in the running game and didn’t risk Brown and Bergeron because losing on the road to Missou now is better than losing at home to KSU (again) later.

DT’s and DE’s are integral to option football defense. They need to be disciplined, take away the inside runs and draw it out. The thing with KSU is that the option is only part of the package. They also run Power, draw, and zone.
If our DL play fundamentally sound, eat up blocks, and make gaps small, that’s half the battle. If they can get some tackles for loss that put KSU behind the chains on a consistent basis then we could hold them below 20 pretty easily.
Since we brought our safeties to help against OSU I feel confident that we would do the same thing against KSU who doesn’t have Justin Blackmon on their roster. The benefit of that is mostly in limiting the distance of runs though, not getting tackles for loss.

Cover-4 has 2 major weaknesses: The flats, which the linebackers are responsible for, and the seams if you catch the safeties being over-aggressive.
It’s a defense that’s designed to keep you in front and tackle well but they give you decent space underneath to get the ball into the hands of playmakers.
Many cover-4 teams tend to be aggressive when you throw it short or run the ball over and over and it’s possible to draw the safeties in and throw it over their heads with a pump fake or play-action. If the corners are really poor you can pick on them on the sideline also, but usually they are leveraged over the top.
You can try and run deep mesh patterns to get the safety and corner to switch assignments and get people free downfield that way but that’s asking a lot of your protection and your QB’s arm.

Our best bet is to take the easy yardage in the flats and see what Davis can do there and to run the ball effectively and see if we can draw the safeties up enough to get the ball deep over the middle.

They play Cover-2 as a change of pace and it eliminates a lot of your short passing game, takes the safeties out of run-defense position, and forces the QB to make difficult deep throws. It’s the bane of college quarterbacks. If they can run Cover-2 that means our running game isn’t really threatening them at all and they don’t need their safeties to shut it down.

Thanks, NR. Sounds like we’re fucked and we know it.

Using statistics to measure the value and effectiveness of a defensive back is akin to using fielding percentage in baseball to determine who should win the Gold Glove at a given position. It doesn’t indicate how many times he gets caught out of position or fails to make a play due to a poor angle

In regards to naming the lack of players who sat behind Blake on the bench the recruiting at that position between 2005-2008 did not exactly turn out a plethora of talent. I won’t put Blake on par with Blake Mitchell who started last year because Texas’ lacked any offensive tackles, but I wonder some time how Akina does not get held accountable for the drop off in talent in the Texas secondary.

Let’s see we had Ishie Oduegwu in 2005 who was never healthy. 2006 brought us that stellar duo of James Henry and Robert Joseph. Earl Thomas was great, but the other two in the 2007 class were Scott and Ben Wells. That is 6 safeties signed before Gideon in 2008 with 4 leaving the team for varied reasons, 1 safety’s career sidetracked due to academic problems, and 1 straight running bad ass.

2008 brought us Blake and Nolan Brewster. Kenny came the next year and then Adrian Philips in 2010. I guess one could say that the Horns two best safeties would be Brewster and Philips, but unfortunately the lack of quality corners has kept Philips at that position.

Stats in football are pretty imperfect but the point was that they tell us that Gideon is average in production. It’s possible that the stats are greatly misleading us but I don’t have access to more complicated stuff. When I’ve watched tape of him average has seemed like a good description.

Akina gets a pass because he corrected his mistake and because he churns out better players than perhaps any other DB coach in the country. And because fans don’t often notice things like that.

I bet we have averaged a net 3 or 4 turnovers lost against KState. Uncanny how we cough it up against them.

I am done whining about Gideon. If we had recruited anybody better they would have played. He isnt our damn problem right now anyway. We have plenty of other holes.

Looks like another tough matchup for the good guys. At least it is in Austin if that means anything.

Does he churn out talent or does he recruit better talent?

Earl was a diamond that was developed, but Curtis, AJ, and Chykie were all highly regarded coming out of high school.

Two other guys I would think would fall into the category would be Huff and Vasher. Both weren’t highly regarded and excelled in college.

Most of the other guys were highly regarded recruits and in terms of the numbers of players he has had drafted during his time in Austin. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t do a good job, but I think at times he gets a great deal of credit when there are other programs that have had a similar number if not more drafted during the same amount of time.

Off hand I would say programs with comparable numbers are Miami, USC, OU, Nebraska, UF, Bama, South Carolina, and Ohio State.

He does both. We’ve been playing man coverage the last 4 seasons in the league with arguably the best WR play and we’ve done it with underclassmen as often as not.
Just because a kid has 4 or 5 stars next to his name doesn’t mean he’s capable of doing that.

Actually it has been basically the same 4 guys with one safety position switching out over the last 3 years and I think I have been a bit biased based upon how that group played ending the year last year.

I guess what bothers me most is the lack of depth in the secondary has happened before in 2007 when the Horns started Foster and Palmer at corners and Ma. Griffin and Ishie at safety in the bowl game. No NFL quality talent and what might be the worst Texas secondary in Mack’s time in Austin. Different DC’s in 2007 and today, but the same secondary coach.

2007 was a low point but we got by without any NFL guys because Akina turned Griffin, Palmer, and Foster into respectable starters.
2008 we played man with Palmer, sophomore Chykie, sophomore Curtis, freshman Williams and beasley. Then we got to keep those guys for the next few years although Aaron was a starter and key contributor the following season as a sophomore.
Now we’re starting a freshman and a sophomore and have as good a secondary as anyone in conference.

What could akina be doing better?

That 2007 secondary got lit up for over 2,000 yards and 20 touchdowns in the last 5 games of 2007. Considering Nebraska with Sam Keller and A&M with Stephen McGee threw for around 300 yards each I am not sure that would be considered a respectable secondary.

 Not a knock on Akina and I don’t think it is a matter of what he could do better as much as the fact I don’t think he is a guy who is developing talent head and shoulders above any other program in the country. The other concern is not solely his, but twice during his time in Austin the team has been caught undermanned in the secondary.

 I am not sure if there is a secondary I would consider very good this year in the Big 12 and think the improved play of the defensive line really has helped the secondary out as much as anything this year.

It’s easy to blame the 2007 secondary but we had slow linebackers covering inside receivers that season, 2 enormous DT’s, a DE that would be converted to DT the next season, and an injured Orakpo. They weren’t as bad as people think.

Schematically we have placed Diggs and Byndom on islands and they’ve performed. That’s not all from improved DL play. Akina dropped the ball bad in recruiting but he gets the most out of players. The things he’s done with Vaccaro are amazing and our ability to play at a high level in the secondary with underclassmen, however talented, is really impressive.

So you can pass off the 2007 secondary for getting torched in 2007 on issue in the front, but then you down play the impact of an improved pass rush over the past few weeks.

The front 7 for 2005 was Robison, Okam, Wright, Crowder, Killebrew, Harris, and Bobino.

The front 7 for 2006 was Robison, Okam, Miller & Lokey, Crowder, Killebrew, Bobino, and Derry

The secondary lost Ced Griffin and Huff with Ross moving into Ced’s spot. Performance dropped off dramatically in the pass defense in 2006 with Mi. Griffin and Brown falling off from where they were in 2005.

The 2007 front had Okam and Lokey (I would not call Lokey enormous by any stretch of the matter), Orakpo, and Houston. Houston had 4 1/2 sacks and 21 pressures which was comparable to Crowder.

I understand the fall off of the secondary in 2008 with all of the new players, but in 2006-2007 the group first did not perform near to their same level in 2006 and the talent was just not there in 2007.

I would also say that the effort at times we saw from some of the seniors in 2006 mirrored what we saw last year in the secondary from Chykie and at times AJ.

The 2011 Texas pass rush didn’t have the recovery speed and technique to swat away and nearly intercept consecutive fade routes to Justin Blackmon. That was Carrington Byndom, pupil of Duane Akina.
Lokey was a nose tackle, not a pass-rusher. Okam was supposed to be the pass-rusher but he had grown to 320 pounds or so and wasn’t moving that quickly. No one could run on us though, except Option-A&M.
I love lamarr houston and he was a great power end and a better DT but his impact in the pass-rush in 2007 was not comparable to Tim Crowder who had 10 sacks in 2006.

Our 2006 secondary struggled with assignments, nagging injuries, and the fact that neither of our safeties and none of the LB’s could cover the slot receivers whom all the league teams had started using. Also, 2006 and 2007 had no depth at DB because of the poor recruiting there that you rightly criticized.

I have no idea what you’re talking about when you say that AJ had a poor effort in 2010. He forced 3 fumbles, broke up 12 passes, and made 5 tackles for loss. Aaron Williams was a boss. If he struggled at all it might have been after getting completely knocked out by Gideon.

Take Orakpo, Lewis, and Houston’s sacks and quarterback pressures and I think you will find that there are very similar to Crowder and Robison’s sacks and pressures for 2006.

The pressure and sack numbers for Okam, Miller, and Lokey in 2006 are similar to the pressure and sack numbers posted by just Lokey and the balloon Okam in 2007.

Your right. The pass rush didn’t knock away consecutive fade routes and I never said Duana doesn’t do a good job or hasn’t done a good job. I have simply said that this concept that he puts more talent into the NFL that anyone else isn’t correct and that I believe that for a couple of years the level of play for his secondary slipped, but this is just like the thread where three of us tried to explain that a team you had never seen before might be better than one we had all seen. I noticed after srr50’s response there was no witty reply.

It is obvious you are right I am a freaking idiot for even questioning you.

I hope I haven’t sounded arrogant in my arguments but it seems that I have. Definitely didn’t want to be a prick so I’m sorry if I have come off that way. I don’t remember saying that 09 was better than 81 or 83, which seems to have irritated you, but I do think it was one of the better all-time Texas defenses and I think statistical comparisons to a unit that faced different offenses is going to yield results that aren’t objectively fair to the 2009 group.

Did you look up the numbers for the 06 or 07 DL’s or were you going off of memory?

It’s interesting that you want to count the production of 3 players in 07 vs. 2 players in 06. Rather a transparent attempt. Anyways, when we do that we get:
Crowder/Robison: 15.5 sacks, 35 pressures.
Houston/Lewis/Orakpo: 12 sacks, 46 pressures.
Fairly comparable. However. Lewis and Orakpo played significant minutes in 2006 as well. And since our goal is to compare the team pass-rush it’s worth noting that.

If you combine the ends who played significant time and the tackles who played significant time in 06 and 07 you get the following results:

2006 (Crowder, Robison, Orakpo, Lewis, Okam, Miller, Lokey): 29.5 sacks, 82 pressures
2007 (Houston, Okam, Lewis, Orakpo, Lokey, Miller) 19 sacks, 83 pressures.

That’s definitely a stronger rush in 2006. Additionally, we blitzed much less frequently in 2006 with Chizik in charge, which lent more support to the secondary and required our DL to put up those numbers without frequent assistance from stunting linebackers (whatever that was worth).

What was the point of all this? Oh yeah. 2007 had inferior talent than 06 or 08 at pretty much every defensive unit. A lot of that was Akina’s fault for recruiting poorly but given what we were working with, I think the 07 secondary was better than the numbers would suggest and I believe that’s because Akina milked guys like Foster and Griffin for all they were worth.

A better study would be how many DB’s he’s put in the NFL as opposed to other major programs. Maybe I’ll look that up later. Surely there’s no dispute that we consistently have the best DB’s in the conference right?

Nickel Rover, appreciated your analysis of KSU.

On the playoff front: to borrow from Churchill, a playoff is the worst system in the world for determining a champion, except for all the other systems. As to this point you made:

“I dont’ think that losing your 3rd game should be so preferable to losing your 13th. Especially if the 3rd game was lost against a weak foe and week 13 was against a strong team.”

. . . we can agree on this, and can also probably agree that the current system suffers from, and any superconference system without a bona fide playoff likely would still suffer from, this problem, just replacing week 13 in your example with, say, week 9. You are absolutely right that a playoff can easily crown a champion that happens not to be the best team. That regularly happens in all sports. But I agree with Ricky that in the absence of a statistically significant number of games, which you’ll never have in a sport as violent and exhausting as football, even a regular season schedule filled mostly with legit teams won’t do the trick in determining the true “best.” You’ll still have some high quality teams not play each other due to scheduling randomness, and you’ll still have Iowa State beating Oklahoma State and Tech beating OU in flukes that, over a 100-game season, wouldn’t be fatal.

The bottom line is no one bitches about Rollie Massimino’s #8 seed Villanova being the hoops national champion in 1985. They won all their games in a playoff. Anyone who thought they were better only had to do one thing, which was beat their opponent.

I genuinely don’t understand why a college football playoff is even remotely controversial. We hand out national championships in every college sport, men’s and women’s, through head to head competition among some culled group of the “best” teams. Sometimes the culling is subjective, like the at-large bids in the hoops tourney, and sometimes it is objective, like in track and field and golf or with conference championship bids in many sports. And I’ll be the 8 millionth person to say it works beautifully in college football in all three divisions that aren’t the ridiculous FBS division.

Take the regular season back to 11 games, invite the top 16 to play in a four-round tournament, and be done with it. Use the bowl system as the venue for the playoffs, and still allow non-tournament qualifiers to play in bowls. Yes, there will be some dispute about the #12-#20 teams, but that will be vastly preferable to a dispute about the #1-4 teams that we have now.

You make good points Major.

I hope no one thinks I’m against a playoff system, or that I think a playoff system would be worse that what we have now. Ultimately what we need, in whatever form this may be possible, is for more games between the nation’s premier teams. The problem of the 12 game sample size could be greatly lessened by the replacement of crappy foes with stronger ones.

The real purpose of sports is for entertainment, not determining the true champions, but this would also be significantly increased if Texas played someone that could compete on a week to week basis.

Magnificent submit, very informative. I wonder why the opposite experts of this sector don’t realize this. You should proceed your writing. I’m sure, you have a great readers’ base already!|What’s Going down i’m new to this, I stumbled upon this I’ve discovered It positively helpful and it has helped me out loads. I’m hoping to give a contribution & assist other customers like its aided me. Good job.

Usually I don’t learn post on blogs, however I wish to say that this write-up very forced me to take a look at and do so! Your writing taste has been amazed me. Thank you, quite nice post.