Texas Longhorns Football: What Will Go Right

I live in fear of one of Peter’s points though, and that is a slow start by Ash. We need to get Mike Davis in his happy place early on, and keep Case in his happy place (on the bench or playing lasertag).

Oh. It’s May. Shit.

Great stuff though. Fun to think about. Let’s stay off sixth street, boys.

Year 2 of S&C and a more experienced OL.

Hopefully the cumulative effect of more time with Wylie, a better idea of what Searles wants, the addition of Hawkins all equal much stronger OL play.

I think we are still a year away from dominant play (hopefully next year you have a bulked up Estelle, Riser and Hughes all ready to crack the two deep), but I think there is definitely reason for cautious optimism for this season.

Nicely done, as always.

Honestly, I’m as excited about the possibility of what this team might accomplish if things break right as you are. Hook ’em

our biggest contributors at WR, RB, and QB were all true freshmen. I think a year in the weight room helps all of them.

Perfectly plausable points parleyed precisely predict pigskin paradise.

Please pass the pink pince-nez.

But I like it!

No, but it’s not Ash’s stat line against Cal, either, which is what my brain tried to make it into because of the sentence it follows.

Ouch.

Seriously, it’s good to see this as a foil against PB’s Eeyore moment.

I’m most interested to see the manefestation of three things after 1+ year under the retooled staff:

- S&C program improvement under Bennie Wylie
- Growth of David Ash with 1st team reps and coaching interaction
- Cohesion of blocking schemes with the OL

I have no concerns whatsoever about defense.

Great post, Scip. I’ve probably been drinking the Kool-Aid this off-season, but there are two kinds of Kool-Aid. There’s the good, honest Cherry Kool-Aid of anticipation and achievable promise - like the kind you gulp down after your last day of school while looking forward to a summer of fort building, Slip N’ Sliding, rock fights and maybe a fun family trip down to Port A. Then there’s the tangerine Kool-Aid of ephemeral fancy and impossible dreams, which inevitably leads to a slough of despond when fall rolls around and you realize that you did not make out with Brandi Mae Jenkins, you still cannot dunk a basketball, and Marc Singer and Michael Ironside never showed up to help you act out an imaginary episode of V in your aforementioned backyard fort.

I think our brand of offseason Kool-Aid is of the red variety, grounded in objective evidence and reasonable performance trajectories. There are a lot of ways to approach the question of “how much better (or worse) will we be than last year?”, but let’s look at a few:

Out of 22 starting spots are likely to see improved performance? - I’m actually working on a post on this, but you could make an argument that the only spots likely to see some regression from last year are Randall’s DT spot (which could be mitigated by a better/deeper DT rotation) and some combination of Robinson and Acho’s LB slots (where I think #1 candidates Edmond and Cobbs combine to be somewhat less able against the pass while offering an upgrade against the run and a potentially lethal upgrade as blitzers).

How will our scheme and execution compare to last season’s? - It’s hard for this not to look pretty positive. No coach or coordinator remains completely static in their scheme and thought process from season to season, but we’ve seen most of the Big XII firing on all cylinders while our guys - both excellent and widely respected - will be in position to unleash FAR more of their arsenal than they were able to employ in Year One. While lacking the pair of well-rounded TE/H-backs that would open up the full array of nightmarish shit that Harsin was able to pound defenses with at Boise, the Horns offense in 2012 will offer a much vaster array of options. A QB with an order of magnitude greater experience, an improved OL, better weapons at wideout and a neutron bomb in Jonathan Gray will give Harsin a ton of tools with which to stress defenses, gauge their reactions and punish them for their choices. On defense, Manny’s much-discussed ‘100 pages of fire zone blitzes’ will be far more well-worn by season’s end, and what’s likely to be an improved run defense will give him even more license to be creative as offenses get stuck behind the chains. Couple that with a pair of lockdown corners and a Swiss Army Knife like Vaccaro and we’ll be well positioned to disrupt even the wackiest Big XII spreadapalooza.

How stand the health/intangibles of the program? - Sometimes it’s not about the X’s and O’s or Jimmies and Joes so much as whether Jimmy and Joe have their head right with ball. Many a squad has been felled by something rotten in the locker room, whether it’s complacency, disconnect with the staff or good old-fashioned bitch kicking. It’ll be interesting to see how things unfold on the bayou this season with the apparent turmoil that broke out in and around the National Championship game, and the whispers about things being a tad off in Norman gained some more credence with the suspension of basically the whole WR corps. You don’t need to marshal any detailed arguments to convince Longhorn fans that these sorts of things can have a deleterious effect on one’s season, but the good news is that we seem to have undergone one hell of a housecleaning effort. The players are bought in, working hard, and should have the confidence that comes from knowing the coaching staff is putting them a step ahead of the competition rather than a step behind.

Scip already detailed the positive impact of our schedule (both in terms of sequencing and the diminution of our foes relative to last year) and the benefits of a full off-season under Bennie. Add all that up, and what do you get?

10 wins or bust, bitches.

Cotton Speyrer scored on the end around 9 times out of ten plays in the 1969 game.