Texas vs the SEC’s spread offenses

For the last few seasons, Texas has had a very different experience from the old norms of the Big 12 conference. In the previous decade, the Big 12 was stocked with lethal spread teams, operating with tempo and RPOs designed to cross up, isolate, and exploit slow defenders. In 2020s this was diminished and some of the better Big 12 offenses included bigger, power-oriented teams like Kansas State or Iowa State.

The Longhorns got a few tastes of that old style facing Dana Holgorsen’s Houston Cougars or certainly against Oklahoma when Dillon Gabriel was healthy. Otherwise the asymmetric, up tempo spread was a relic of a former Big 12 and most of the best teams no longer employed that style.

Well, that’s changing in 2024 with Texas’ admittance to the SEC. In addition to Oklahoma, the Longhorns will draw the Mississippi State Bulldogs, who hired OU offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby as head coach. For their part, Oklahoma is going to maintain the system with co-coordinators Seth Littrell (spent 2023 in house as an anlalyst) and Joe Jon Finley (an Art Briles acolyte). Both run Briles’ “Veer and Shoot” offense. Tennessee’s head coach Josh Heupel also runs the offense and lurking elsewhere in the SEC are heavily Veer and Shoot influenced spread teams such as Lane Kiffin’s Ole Miss Rebels and Hugh Freeze’s Auburn Tigers.

Since Steve Sarkisian and Pete Kwiatkowski came to Austin, the Longhorns have faced this style four times. At Arkansas in 2021, against Oklahoma in 2022 and 2023, and against TCU (coordinated by Kendal Briles) in 2023. In the three games where the other team had a functioning quarterback (in other words, excluding the 2022 Sooners), Texas is 1-2.

How do you defend these teams and what does Texas need to change?

The challenge of the RPO spread

There’s a simply, underlying challenge to defending offenses that spread a defense out and run a lot of RPOs (run/pass option). You just can’t be everywhere at once when Veer and Shoot challenges the defense with wide splits for their receivers and ultra-quick tempo.

For instance, Lebby’s Sooners:

The slot receivers are lined up almost all the way to the numbers while the outside receivers are hugging the sidelines. This fails to maximize space for the outside receivers, but it does put extreme stress on the linebackers and safeties trying to balance run game responsibilities in the box with covering the “inside” receivers on a pass. The Veer and Shoot will trade space for the outside receivers in exchange for maximizing the spacing and run/pass conflict for the inside defenders.

Then you dial up an RPO and hit em where they ain’t.

On this play the Will linebacker steps inside to help defend the run and no one covers the stop route by the weakside “slot” receiver. Oklahoma made the problem even worse by lining their outside guy in the slot and putting the tight end (Y) Austin Stogner outside. Such a move gives away their intent but also complicates the matchups and spacing for the defense. The Longhorns end up with a cornerback covering the tight end and the conflicted linebacker trying to cover the superior wideout.

Texas’ two-high Match Quarters coverage is really up against it handling four-wide sets like this. PK’s preference for having two Edges who are in position to keep runs inside the box combined with the need to play two safeties back means the defense runs out of people to fit interior gaps while also covering the slots. The Longhorns often asked their safeties and outside linebackers to try and split the difference. Against Veer and Shoot spacing, the wide swathes of grass were too great and they couldn’t really defend one or the other but just hoped to limit the damage if a run broke past the D-line or a pass outside was completed.

The other challenge of this offensive style is the tempo. Against a lot of Sooner opponents a year ago, Lebby would turn to unique formations after the offense was already moving at tempo and blister teams with basic runs before they could adjust on the sidelines. Texas was hard to attack in that fashion because of its elite D-tackle tandem, but the Longhorns did struggled to maintain their wind and alignment in order to tackle the OU wideouts in space or to contain Gabriel on scrambles.

So why even line up with two deep safeties against a team that will stress you horizontally like this? Because the other concept Veer and Shoot offenses major in is play-action shots down the field whenever their receivers are given 1-on-1 matchups. They excel at catching safeties in bad matchups and hitting bombs over the top. Those completions will break down a defense much faster and more consistently than pitch and catch tosses to the perimeter mixed with inside runs.

Breakdowns in the Texas defensive approach

Texas’ approach to this style of offense obviously needs some tweaking, but there aren’t easy solutions. The problems they’ve had countering it were shared by Gary Patterson’s 4-2-5 defenses at TCU, which were overhauled after Baylor erased a 58-37 deficit in 2014 by running the same RPO over and over again to beat the Frogs 61-58.

For a while Patterson just started running cover 1 man, including against the Veer and Shoot Longhorns of 2016, but eventually he managed to adjust his preferred two-high quarters to better hold up. The Longhorns got the benefit of Patterson’s revised strategies when he joined the program as a consultant in 2022, but the uber stress of this offense still presents problems.

Texas tried to counter Oklahoma with a blend of the two approaches. They’d play two-high quarters and hope to hold up when the Sooners were able to catch linebackers or safeties in no-man’s land like on the play above. Then they’d try to obscure when they were leaving guys out to dry by mixing in single-high safety man coverage and blitzes.

When Texas played man coverage things worked out fairly well. Gabriel burned them on a few scrambles but also missed some high leverage 3rd and 4th down throws when forced to beat tight coverage. As a base quarters team, the Longhorns aren’t really designed to rely on man coverage as an every down solution. They need answers in two-high or else to change the base defense. Oklahoma exploited two-high coverage too many times for the change-ups to carry the day.

The plan in 2023 was obviously to trust in Texas’ superiority in the trenches while the safeties focused on keeping Oklahoma out of the end zone. Leave the back end over exposed against short passes but stuff the run, make tackles, and keep OU out of the end zone. This plan probably would have worked if not for an adjustment by the Sooners to pull undersized left guard Troy Everett out for blue chip freshman Cayden Green, allowing them to function along the O-line against the Texas tackles.

Against the Frogs, Texas had a similar plan which had some similar breakdowns. TCU hit a number of big passing plays when the ball was successfully completed into space and the Longhorns struggled to make tackles. The Frogs were also able to get a run game going for some steady gains and conversions, especially later in the game when they could lean on Texas with tempo.

When Texas plays against these styles in the SEC, these issues will be exacerbated. The quarterback play is going to be better than they faced from Gabriel or a redshirt freshman Josh Hoover (TCU). The advantages Texas had in the trenches with T’Vondre Sweat and Byron Murphy going against Big 12 interior O-lines is also going to be diminished on both sides of the equation. Aside from the fact Texas is losing their D-tackle tandem, the SEC squads running this style will tend to at least match the better Big 12 O-lines while often exceeding them in size, physicality, and athleticism.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about adjustments in philosophy Texas could take to counter the threat of SEC teams attacking them with Big 12 tactics executed by bigger and more talented players.

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