I have waited to let the dust settle to give another perspective on this season's performance. Everyone is trying to find faults: coaching, play calling, secondary, schemes, etc, etc. I know I will probably get flamed big time for posting this, but here goes. Perhaps the frustration starts with us fans.
What you talking about, Willis? Let me explain.
First, Texas was overrated to start with. Paul Finebaum went on every talk show last summer and said Texas is the most talented team in the country. The media jumped on that. Then Urban Meyer even mentioned that and talked about how good Arch is. When Urban Meyer said that, that was a red flag for me. That was mentioned on other talk shows. I'm not blaming Urban or Paul for Texas losses. I do think they had a personal vendetta, but I'm not going to digress into that. Games are won on the field, not in the media.
Now let's talk about Paul Finebaum's observation: the most talented team in the country. There is a brand new OL. Even here it has been discussed how Arch has had to run for his life. Is this year's OL better than last year's? No. There are brand new WRs. Last year's WRs not only made yards after catches, they made touchdowns after catches. The new WRs are still dropping passes and don't know when to not go out of bounds (Vanderbilt). There are brand new TEs. How do they compare to last year's? This is Arch's first year. He has made improvement, but he is not the Mannings in their prime. The RBs were hurt. There is a brand new DL. Honestly, is this the most talented team in the country? Perhaps next year, but not this year. How did Finebaum get to the most talented team in the country? Mongo don't know.
Now to other media. We all heard how Arch is conducting voluntary practices with long passes. Another media report. He was going to bomb everyone. We all saw that was not going to work with this year's OL. Sark did change schemes to shorter passes. Was Sark perfect? No. I did see he was trying to adapt.
Last summer and at the beginning of the year we are told over and over that Arch is going to be next year's #1 NFL draft pick and this year's Heisman Trophy winner. Not this year. Perhaps the following year. Some on media talked about how some NFL teams are positioning themselves to draft Arch. We were told this is the most talented team in the country. Is that true? No. We had all hoped Texas would go undefeated this year. Media hype and fan hope doesn't win football games. Execution does.
Perhaps some of the fault lies with us
. Honestly, did we really believe Texas was #1 or even as good as last year's team after UTEP or Florida games? No, but we wanted to believe things would change. That wasn't realistic with basically a wholesale change in personnel (as mention above). Don't get me wrong: I want a repeat of 1963, 1969 and 2005 every year and beat every team 72-0.
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