Football is a 60-minute game, but Texas has yet to fill the span this season.

After the Longhorns first 1-2 start since 1998, the team is preaching inconsistency as the root of their issues. 

Texas exhibited erratic play in its blowout of New Mexico State the first week of the season, and it’s only gotten worse. 

“What I want us to do is put 60 minutes together,” co-offensive coordinator Major Applewhite said. “We haven’t done that. We put halves together, drives together, but we haven’t played 60 minutes together and been explosive for 60 minutes.”

The 2013 Longhorns hyped the season up with BCS potential, but they’ve managed to be more bipolar than successful thus far.

It took Texas more than 27 minutes to score against New Mexico State, but it produced 56 points over the next 33 minutes.

Against BYU, Jekyll and Hyde showed their faces once again. Texas had spurts when it was able to move down the field, but it didn’t produce consistently. The Longhorns started the game with three drives, which failed to gain more than nine yards, but, their fourth drive resulted in 63 yards of movement.

In the second quarter against the Cougars, Texas started with a three-minute, 76-yard drive, which ended with a Johnathan Gray touchdown. But the Longhorns couldn’t keep the momentum as their next drive ended after losing five yards.  

Last Saturday, with a coaching change and a supposedly revamped defense, the Longhorns couldn’t produce more dependability on offense to compensate. Texas gave up 14 points to the Rebels over their first two drives but showed enough resiliency to fight back and score the next 23 points. Once again though, the team couldn’t keep up it’s momentum, and failed to score in the second half.

The lack of consistency baffles even head coach Mack Brown.

“You have three great drives against BYU, it looks easy,” Brown said. “All of a sudden it’s like you go to sleep for a while.  All of a sudden, same thing the other night, second quarter, we’re running up and down the field. Things are great, we’re scoring every time we get it. They’re tired in the third quarter. Why do we just stop?”

For the Longhorns, execution is the stated cure for this consistency.  

“I think there are times when we have a play and formation and we need to execute,” Applewhite said. “When you go back and look at a loss, it’s usually the same thing. Execution here, better answer there for us.”

Applewhite added that a large part of consistency is responding to adversity and that personality plays a large role in that as well.

“Down 14-0 to start the game and we respond with 23 points. Then they catch up, go up 24-23 the second half, where is our response there?” Applewhite asked. “That’s what we challenged ourselves as players and coaches. The moment that horse pulls up alongside of you, you accelerate again. That’s what we’ve got to do in those situations.”