The New Texas Recruiting Strategy

For all the valid criticisms of a Head Coach and staff that brought us 5-7, Mack deserves credit for turning the ship around.

Good times to be a Longhorn fan.

Does this rumor that Iowa is looking hard at Greg Davis for OC have legs?

What a perfect state for a lazy 60 year old.

is more thorough evaluations — both on individual players AND in looking at additional players. In stead of looking at two games per player we’re looking at 10 games per player. And instead of looking at 40 or 50 players, we’re looking at 200.

Dunno why the dunce that is me sat here from 2007 until the meltdown in 2010 and couldn’t figure out that TCU was winning with guys we never looked at BECAUSE the TCU staff projected 17- and 18-year-olds to what they could be as fourth-year juniors instead of what they had already done as high school juniors.

It’s why — much as I love the current staff — Mack NEEDS to bring in a new face every year or two. Doing that would help assure he (or his successor) wouldn’t need to bring in a whole new staff at some point.

That’s GREAT, Scip! So we suck all the oxygen out of the room leaving our rival schools gasping for breath until they pass out, collapse, suffocate and DIE! And we stand over their lifeless prostrate bodies with torn tunics emitting primal screens until… until…

hmmm… if we breathed all the oxygen out of the air, what are we breathing now? Did we like put it in a cylinder that we’re breathing from? Or do we know where a little trickle of fresh air comes through some vent or something that we can sniff? And, come to think of it, if we kill all our rivals, who are our superior recruits gonna play when the season rolls around? Zombies? I don’t know… the more I think about it, the more I like the old system. Ha ha ha.

Are you seeing an emphasis on Power over Finesse in the kids we’re recruiting? Besides the schematic fits in our scheme it feels like we are seeking out kids who will impose their wills on the opponent with physicality rather than running circles around them.

I’m still seeing some speed takes but mixed in with bigger kids.

There is certainly a more coherent thought process now in practice.

Thing I loved was the depth. Texas always has gotten their share of the big boys. The Grays, Browns, Estelles.. The thing that struck me this cycle was Ridgeway, Blueitt, and Colbert. Ridgeway was a great evaluation. JR day people were OK with him, nothing great. Then you saw his senior film. Blueitt was a reach. Then you saw his senior film and saw his versatility and you were damn happy his was a horn. Colbert does not happen 2 yrs ago. That is eval and hard work. I haven’t even mentioned Shiro. Great classes aren’t defined by 1-5, they are built buy the second half. That is what hurt Texas in the past.

5-7 was the culmination of getting old as a coaching staff. The former regime reached the mountain top in 2005 after a long struggle. They burned out and started mailing it in, most acutely on offense and in S&C.

The changes in recruiting strategy are of a piece with more accountability in S&C and coherent and innovative schemes on both sides of the ball.

I love that we’re not taking guys that have already maxed out physically, finally. That’s the key to having upperclass talent, IMO, and the biggest problem with our OL development. Turns out most highschool OTs turn into OGs, and not the big balla kind NWA was always on about.

It’s a refreshing thing and it’s building for the future. We might not see the dividends until 2013, but it’s going to pay big.

are great to see. I’m 33 now but going back to at least the days my fellow UT alum friends and I were still in school, we were dumbfounded by the coaching staff’s rigidity, conservatism, lack of innovation, and apparent inability to make quick/significant adjustments. We wondered how we could possibly seem so much smarter/more competent than them despite our collective lack of a serious football background.

Some of us at least played in high school, however, so we were pretty familiar with that (now increasingly) old-guard style of football coach: wears Bike coaching shorts, thinks that blind confidence, acting tough, spouting cliches, getting up ridiculously early, praising Jesus translates to “success in life” regardless on on-field results, etc.

It’s since become clear that too many of those guys were/are mostly style and very little substance, quite lazy, and perhaps simply too stupid to have any lasting and noteworthy success. It boggles the mind to consider how some of these guys made it as far as they did (i.e. college, NFL, etc.), at least before one remembers that football coaching, while an honorable enough profession, doesn’t exactly attract the very best and brightest; the competition, while plentiful, isn’t exactly killer and, more significantly, politics very often trump merit.

In any event, it’s really good to see that Mack is apparently adjusting/rising above all that by finally trying to weed out those to whom he was too loyal for a few too many years.

I was wondering what was wrong, but this makes total sense and I am glad to see it. A&M seems to have adopted UT’s old strategy. Very curious how the QB works out and passing on the Colleyville Heritage kid who will surely get a TCU offer. The DFW kids can now play Big 12 and advantage TCU (DFW airport). Aggies SEC isnt a problem but it is a concern - you can see it now with the Ag commits early. I hope the late offers work. Wylie is the key, he is with them all the time. We will know more Spring Game.