2023 Wyoming Post Mortem: Offense

A largely awful performance by the Texas passing offense (specifically the skill guys) and play caller (a reverse pass on 3rd and 1, Sark?) was offset by good defense, a 4th quarter commitment to running the football against deep safeties and some individual playmaking by Worthy and Brooks.

Texas totaled only 316 yards on 52 plays, but explosives by Brooks and Worthy moved an otherwise moribund 4.1 yards per play average up to 6.1 yards. Outside of those 4th quarter explosives, every down success rate was poor, particularly in a pathetic passing game.

Oddly, that’s despite a fairly successful running game and a Longhorn offensive line that surrendered only two tackles for loss (including one sack).

If you can win by 21 points against a likely bowl team despite playing bad ball, you’ve probably got some big upside down the road if you can clean up the nonsense. The “they came out in a novel look so we were paralyzed for three quarters” act has run its course in Austin and it will get Texas beaten against better opponents. I’m not sure if the adjustment issues are upstream or hitting a player brain dam downstream, but it’s time to pour some Draino into the “oh my, they’ve dropped three safeties” clog.

Quarterback

Ewers was 2 of 9 on pass attempts greater than 10 yards from the line of scrimmage for all of 30 yards. Subtract out the Worthy touchdown where Xavier did the work and Ewers was 10 of 20 for 82 yards. Ewers threw five bad balls, had one turnover worthy play and threw into double coverage at least twice. In one instance, he threw to Gunnar Helm in double coverage while a wide open Sanders was running seven yards inside of him on the same vertical. At halftime, Ewers was 8 of 17 for 57 yards and Texas was 0-6 on 3rd down. At that point, his longest throw was a 16 yard swing pass to Keilan Robinson.

#3 was pressured only three times in all of his drop backs and one of those was a sack. The other two pressures led to a back foot throw that almost resulted in a pick and a sail over the receivers head. He missed at least one RPO read where Brooks would have gone for 12-15 yards on the handoff.

He didn’t turn the ball over.

Running Back

Brooks ran his blocking better than it was, particularly in the second half. He was decisive and shifty, totaling 164 yards on 21 carries. I’ll take 7.8 yards per run.

Subtract out his 61 yard run on 3rd and 1 and #24 still averaged over 5 yards per carry. Which makes one ask why Texas wasn’t more persistent with the running game earlier in the contest? Fair question. They should have been, but procedure penalties are good at screwing up run downs and Ewers and the receivers botched multiple chain movers that would have allowed Sark to run the ball with a new set of downs. Offense is a virtuous circle and if your passing game can’t covert 3rd and 4, you lose out on all of the potential runs (and wear and tear on the defense) that might have come after.

With CJ Baxter out, this was a big opportunity for Jaydon and he Blue it. Fumbling is never good. Fumbling when the offense is finishing the game in the 4 minute offense is even worse. Fumbling when a -28 cover is on the line inside of the opponent 40 up 31-10 is unforgivable. Some will say it was just a meaningless late game turnover, but others know it was a personal attack on their children’s dissipated college fund.

Savion Red came in at RedCat and had two third down conversions. The first was a piece of art titled “Please run up the field, ******.” On his second conversion, he ran up the field. Good job.

Offensive Line

Outstanding pass protection headlined by Majors, Jones and Conner. The lone sack was on DJ Campbell not responding to Christian Jones’ line call when the Wyoming DE took an inside rush and Jones picked up a blitzer outside. Campbell trying to block the guy and actually pushing him into Ewers was amusing on rewatch. Campbell is at his best when doesn’t have to think and can just fire out on someone in front of him. He’s a very poor decision maker on the pull, highlighted by a goal line play where he managed to bypass the only viable tackler and double a superfluous end.

Cole Hutson going out with a leg injury at the end of Q1 is terrible and it makes me sick for him. Prayers for a quick recovery.

Run blocking wasn’t really all that good until the 4th quarter, when the OL started firing out with real intention and sticking on their blocks longer. Our run game isn’t very timed up through three games and that needs to improve dramatically. The OL isn’t exactly a bunch of slavering wolverines out of the gate either. The run game was still effective because Wyoming played an honest box and runs a little small. Brooks also maximized most of his runs.

This unit has made strides in pass protection from the opener, but pure run blocking and unit coordination in the run game has major room for improvement.

Three false starts. One on Jones, two on Conner. Conner false started on the first play of the game. He’s closing in on double digits for his career.

Wide Receiver

Xavier Worthy housed that on pure talent. Amazing play. Counting on that bailout against higher order defenders is more of a wish than a plan though.

Unfortunately, catching the ball doesn’t require talent. Just hands and focus. The Longhorn wide outs and tight ends dropped four balls (five if you include a higher level of difficulty). The drop load was shared equally at least. Cook and Whittington even dropped balls on back-to-back plays in a display of inept one-upmanship.

Everyone played poorly. Did hesitancy about how to attack the scheme contribute? I don’t know. They need to spend an hour after practice with Byron Murphy on the JUGS machine.

Final

This offense seems determined to keep Longhorn fans from ever feeling real confidence in their consistency week to week, but the areas for critical improvement are hopefully as obvious to the coaches as they are to internet casuals. The question is whether Texas can build up the competency to execute and adjust to novelty in the time span of a series rather than in a half. Speed of adjustment remains a residual question from 2022.

3-0 and on to Waco.

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