There’s no denying it — the hours from 11 a.m. to about 2:30 p.m. on Saturday were not Texas football’s finest hours.
After being slated as the No. 1 team in the preseason AP and Coaches’ Polls, this loss feels like a far fall from grace in the eyes of fans, the media and fellow college football teams.
“Let’s finish the book before we judge it,” head coach Steve Sarkisian said during the post-game press conference. “This is one chapter. We’ve got a long season to go play.”
But there’s no reason to freak out yet. It’s important to remember that the Longhorns faced a tough opponent in defending national champions Ohio State, yet they still managed to hold their own defensively.
Texas and Ohio State parted ways at 7-14, just one scoring drive away from even.
Ohio State was kept to just 203 yards as a whole. Scoring twice on a little over a couple of hundred yards is efficient, but the Longhorns weren’t letting the Buckeyes just run up and down the field.
Most importantly, Ohio State’s star player, sophomore wide receiver Jeremiah Smith, logged just 43 yards throughout the three-hour game. Smith has been rated as the best overall player in college football, with potential to win the Heisman — yet he saw virtually no action against the Longhorns’ secondary.
“I was proud of the effort defensively,” Sarkisian said. “I thought we held Jeremiah in check as best we could, who’s a fantastic player, but we’ve got to score more points at the end of the day if we can hold a team like that to 14.”
Defensively, it was a well-fought game. Offensively, it was a different story.
There were several reasons the Longhorns struggled to get the ball rolling, and although it’s easy to blame sophomore quarterback Arch Manning for the lack of offensive rhythm, there are more pieces at play.
This offensive line is young, and with Texas losing a lot of its big guys, four out of the five in the trenches against Ohio State were making their first start as members of the first string. Sophomore left tackle Trevor Goosby was the only returning starter, so it’s not a surprise that Manning had less time to sit in the pocket and that false start penalties cost the Longhorns extra yards.
Similarly, the receiving room is full of young guys. While there’s a lot of talent, there aren’t as many veterans, and both junior receiver DeAndre Moore Jr. and sophomore receiver Ryan Wingo made their first plays today as wide receivers one and two. Even junior tight end Jack Endries, while having a little more experience on the field, has been practicing with Texas for less than five months.
“From a receiver standpoint, I think we’re going to be good,” Sarkisian said. “Like I said, that cohesiveness with Arch and those guys is only going to get better as we keep moving forward in the backfield.”
The last issue at hand? The play calling.
Offensive play calling, especially in the red zone, has long been an issue for the Longhorns in high-pressure moments. Both losses at the Southeastern Conference Championship and the College Football Playoff semifinals last year can be blamed in part on bad play calling.
There were several opportunities where Texas could have kicked for an extra three points, but instead decided to attempt a fourth-down conversion and lost possession after the botched attempts. For example, in the last drive at the eight-minute mark on the Ohio State ten-yard line, the Longhorns sat at fourth-and-three. When Manning’s pass to sophomore Parking Livingstone proved incomplete, Texas sat at the same 0-14 mark with just two more potential possessions left to put points on the board and even the score.
That’s a lot of pressure.
Poor play calling also lost Texas the middle eight, which is the last four minutes of the first half and the first four minutes of the second. The middle eight is proving to be increasingly important to winning college football teams, as popularized by Bill Belichick during his time with the New England Patriots. This pattern gives teams an advantage in terms of field placement when re-entering the game after halftime. With a turnover of possession to Ohio State in the last four minutes of the first half and no possession during the start of the second, the Longhorns set themselves up for failure.
“We’ve got to keep digging into our ability to score when we have our opportunities to do so,” Sarkisian said. “And we gotta make a couple throws, we gotta make a couple catches, we gotta make a couple better calls.”
There’s a lot of work for Texas to do, especially if Manning relies on the run game to even pressure in the backfield. But a loss on the road to the defending national champions is not an omen of disaster.
It’s just a reality check.
