I don’t have any more appetite for a blow-by-blow recounting of this one than you have for reading it, and a proper eulogy for the Strong Era is also going to have to wait a bit. Let’s just sum up this T+1 turkey as quickly as possible:
OFFENSE
We ran roughly eight plays all game, blocked about two of them well and may have caused UTEP to set their sights a little higher than Sterlin Gilbert in their upcoming head coaching search.
D’Onta Foreman broke Ricky Williams’ Lost Cause Single Season Rushing Record and looked to get out of the game without injury. We’d love to have you back, big man, but if you opt for an NFL payday it will be well-earned.
DEFENSE
Ripped on the first drive, turned in a game effort for two and a half quarters and then finally ran up the white flag against the run game after our 9th three-and-out on offense.
SPECIAL TEAMS
“Dangerous return man” Jacorey Warrick brought the first kick out of the end zone to the 17 yard line in flagrant contravention of the Ball Catching Man rules so ably illustrated by The Cocksman.
Trent Domingue finally found the bench after his umpteenth missed field goal, and the effort of pushing Charlie Hough knuckle balls through the uprights proved tremendously taxing for Mitchell Becker as his subsequent kickoffs labored to reach the ten yard line.
Speaking of Domingue, the meta game on special teams was more intriguing than the actual game as LSU’s cunning effort to send a broken kicker Charlie’s way as a kind of Metarie Manchurian Candidate may have actually backfired on them in a major way as Domingue’s ineptitude helped close the book on the Charlie Strong Era and may have contributed substantially to the Bayou Bengals losing out on Tom Herman and ending up with this guy:
Speaking of Tom Herman...
TurkeyGate delivered dyspepsia on all fronts Thursday night, as reports of an imminent Herman signing with TCU LSU (run out, unsurprisingly, by the perpetually credulous Chip Brown) managed to:
- Cause Texas fans far and wide to needlessly hork up their turkey and type received wisdom about inept leadership about 35,000 times over a four hour stretch
- Piss off LSU AD Joe Alleva, who was nonplussed to have to issue denials of this phantom deal from the luxury box as the Bayou Bengals were busy thrashing that ol’ Sumblin and treating John Chavis:
like a batch of bad mushrooms:
- Bone Farmer Fran Ed Orgeron, who was on the field engineering said thrashing
- Bone Herman himself, who had the Distraction Dial turned up to eleven in advance of Houston’s Friday morning matchup with Memphis
The upshot of all this panic? The latest reports - from potentially credible media members, this time - are that Herman should interview with Texas either Saturday or Sunday.
Just like you would have figured.
Tom Herman likes Texas, and plenty of Texas power players like Tom Herman. Is he, without doubt, the best possible choice for the Longhorns’ next coach? It’s hard to say. A full-blown, rigorous and exacting evaluation process might (accurately or inaccurately) arrive at a conclusion that puts another guy atop the heap, but Texas’ current ability to execute that kind of process is somewhere betweens slim and none. Even so, the notion that Texas would - or should - simply hurl the keys and upwards of $25 million guaranteed dollars at Herman without so much as an interview was as much agent- and agenda-driven twaddle as the notion that we were in serious danger of re-upping with Charlie Strong even after the Lamentation in Lawrence.
Herman now gets what he’s wanted since he first started coaching - the chance to sit down and convince the Texas decision-makers that he’s the right guy to lead this program back to glory.
What should they ask him - and any other candidate that they decide to sit down with before making a final decision?
More on that tomorrow.
Hook ‘em.
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