Jameson McCausland

In the times Ford has played leading up to today it has not looked promising. Very slow to react and was taking himself out of plays a lot. I think the coaches had good reason for not giving him significant snaps. Maybe the lightbulb is starting to the come on though after a strong performance today. Would be a nice development.

Another week, another heartbreaking loss for Texas Let's start big picture. Steve Sarkisian said something after the game that I had not crossed my mind previously. He mentioned Texas has a mental block when it comes to making the plays necessarily to put a team away in the second half, and it is his responsibility to help them get over that block . When the Longhorns jump out to an early lead or are off to a good start, it is like the players are almost waiting for something bad to happen. This program has played in so many nail-baiters over the last 3-4 years that it almost seems like an expectation to a lot of players. Let me be clear, this is not an excuse for Texas losing games and there are many more issues that need to be addressed but it is just something additional to think about when looking back on the the last two weeks. In terms of the on field performance, let's start with the defense. Pete Kwiatkowski came out with a pretty good game plan and Texas played winning football on defense for about 3 and a half quarters. The dam eventually broke the last few possessions after they had been on the field nearly the entire second half, but the overall performance should have been good enough for a win. Kwiatkowski opted to operate out of 3-man front for the majority of the game with Alfred Collins anchoring one of the edge spots. This turned out to a smart decision. The stats show Texas allowed 220 yards rushing, but about 90 of those yards came on the final two possessions (excluding the possession that ended in a kneel down) when Texas was completely out of gas including the drive when the Longhorns effectively let OSU score because they had to get the ball back. DeMarvion Overshown exited early in the contest with a concussion, and Jaylan Ford saw extended action in Overshown's place and played well. Ford ended up leading Texas in tackles with 12. Offensively, Texas started out by marching right down the field on their opening drive and it slowly went downhill from there. Casey Thompson had by far his worst performance of the year (15/27 179 yards 1 touchdown and 2 INT's). His first INT was a pick-6 as Texas was driving deep into OSU territory to potentially make it a 20-3 or 24-3 game. Instead, OSU got to go into the locker room only down 17-13. The second half performance from the offense was awful. Texas scored on their first drive and then did not record another first down. 6 straight drives that ended in 4 plays or less. That's hard to believe. We will likely never know how much Thompson's thumb injury was bothering him, but if I was Steve Sarkisian I would have made a quarterback change at some point in the 4th quarter. The Longhorns offense needed some sort of spark and Oklahoma State was pinning their ears back knowing Thompson couldn't push the ball down the field. Kyle Flood opted to play musical chairs with the offensive line for much of the afternoon. Tope Imade started at LG but ended up splitting a lot of time with Hayden Conner. Christian Jones started at LT but ended up sharing a lot of snaps with Andrej Karic. I would expect those battles to continue throughout the bye week and into the Baylor game. As a whole, the offensive line spent much of the second half on roller skates for the second straight week. Oklahoma State was more physical up front and it showed. Texas needs to be in the market for at least a tackle and a guard in the portal once the offseason hits. They simply can not afford to waste Bijan Robinson's final year on campus with below average offensive line. Overall, it was another disappointing performance and now Texas is going to have to sit on it for two weeks with the bye week upcoming. This team has a lot of holes and the coaching staff has to find a way to scheme around their deficiencies better. They are doing it in the first half regularly, but the flood gates have now opened in the second half in back to back weeks.

Texas misses Ossai more than any other player from last years team. He covered up for a lot of mistakes on the DL in both the run and pass game.

It was a wild day at the Cotton Bowl. Let's jump right into some quick thoughts and takeaways: Texas was the better team for about 3 quarters, but the Longhorns faltered in the 4th quarter and that was the difference in the game. There is a lot of finger pointing that can go around, but the bottom line is Texas allowed 662 yards total yards, including 339 yards via the ground. You are not winning many football games giving up those numbers. The Longhorns defense collapsed in the second half and could not contain Kennedy Brooks, who ran for 217 yards. Pete Kwiatkowski and the Texas defensive coaching staff appeared to have a solid gameplan in place for Spencer Rattler and the Oklahoma offense, but once Lincoln Riley chose to make a quarterback switch it was all downhill for Texas. Caleb Williams brought a different dimension to the offense with his legs and the Longhorns were never able to adjust. All around, it was not a good performance for Texas defensively. The blame can go to the players or the play caller, but the bottom line is it was ugly. The number of missed tackles had to have been close to 20. The defensive line seem poised for a big day early, but after Williams entered the game they were a complete non-factor. Switching to offense, Texas did enough to win the game. Yes, the Longhorns went through a scoring drought in the second half, but if you would have told me before the game that Casey Thompson would throw for close to 400 yards and 5 touchdowns, I would have said Texas won the game by double digits. Steve Sarkisian had some excellent play calls early in the first half to get the Texas offense going, and credit to Casey Thompson for connecting on several deep shots. The Longhorns offensive line spent much of the second half on roller skates. Both tackles struggled mightily and the run game disappeared at a point in the game when Texas would have been happy to hand the ball to their Heisman caliber RB. Speaking of BIjan Robinson, he finished the game with 20 carries for 137 yards. The damage could have been far worse, but Alex Grinch decided in the second half that he was bringing extra men nearly every play. Robinson had what could have been a Heisman moment on a beautiful 50 yards run the second quarter that was nearly a touchdown, but is performance will be a side note considering how the rest of the game unfolded. Xaiver Worthy bounced back from a rough game in Fort Worth to haul in 9 receptions for 261 yards and 2 TD's. Worthy is a special WR and stepped up in a big way for Texas. Joshua Moore also a good game with 4 catches for 70 yards and a pair of TD's. Overall, it was a solid day from the Longhorns WR's. Texas had a huge special teams play early when they blocked an Oklahoma punt, but the lasting special teams play in people's minds will be Worthy running out a kickoff deep in the endzone which resulted in a fumble. Texas was not generating any momentum in the kickoff return game and Worthy has to know to take a knee in that situation if the kick is into the endzone. This is going to be a tough pill to swallow for Texas. The Longhorns could easily be 3-0 in conference play and be in the driver's seat in the Big 12. Instead, they now have to turn their attention to a huge game against Oklahoma State next Saturday. If Texas is able to pull out a win, they should feel fairly confident heading into a bye week. A loss would be a huge blow to their hopes of making the Big 12 championship game.

Let's jump straight into it as the Longhorns moved to 4-1 on the season and 2-0 in conference play. Steve Sarkisian was the first person to admit after the game that Texas was very sloppy at times today. The Longhorns settled for field goals far too often in the red zone and struggled mightily to get the passing game going. Despite all that, Texas was able to beat a team they were 2-7 against the previous 9 years. TCU made their fair share of mistakes as well, but this certainly felt like a game Texas would have lost in previous seasons. Bijan Robinson put the Texas offense on his back. The sophomore carried the ball 35 times for 216 yards and a pair of touchdowns. He was the best player on the field and Steve Sarkisian showed no hesitation in putting the ball in his hands with the game on the line. If Robinson continues to build on what he's done through the first 5 games of the season, he should be in New York in December. The Texas receivers struggled today outside of Jordan Whittington. Xavier Worthy had several drops and was a non-factor for most of the afternoon and Joshua Moore was only able to catch 3 passes for 13 yards. Marcus Washington played a good amount and continues to show excellent effort as a blocker, but Texas will need more consistency from the position group moving forward to help out Casey Thompson. Speaking of Thompson, he experienced some struggles today for the first time in his career. He completed 12 of 22 passes for 142 yards and a touchdown along with a bad interception. The interception was a bad decision to throw into triple coverage down the field to Xavier Worthy. Worthy was being held on the play and it probably should have been a flag, but Thompson simply can not make that throw. He also forced several other throws into tight windows that could have been picked off. He did rebound nicely to throw a touchdown to Whittington on a RPO early in the 4th quarter. The Texas offensive line had an up and down day, but the biggest storyline was the injury to Denzel Okafor. Once Okafor went down, Kyle Flood opted to slide Derek Kerstetter inside to LG and insert Andrej Karic at RT. Karic had several nice blocks in the running game and appeared to play well off the bench. Pete Kwiatkowski and the Texas defense did enough to get the job done. The Longhorns forced 2 defensive turnovers (the 3rd turnover came on special teams) and should have had another when both DeMarvion Overshown and Luke Brockermeyer had their hands on a Max Duggan pass. Kwiatkowski appeared content with getting TCU to dink and dunk their way down the field while waiting for a mistake and limiting big plays. The plan worked for the most part as the Horned Frogs were unable to push the ball down the field through the air. The lone sack for the defense came on a strip sack from Anthony Cook on a beautifully called nickel blitz. Cook had another outstanding game and might be the best player in the Texas secondary right now. The defensive line was asked to contain Duggan for much of the game and try to shut down the running game with Zach Evans. Duggan's longest run of the day was 10 yards. Evans had a good game (15 carries for 113 yards) and probably should have received more touches. The one aspect the Texas defense is lacking right now is consistent pass rush from their edge players. It is not likely something that is going to change over the course of the season, so the coaching staff is going to have to make do and lean on their interior defensive line to try to get to the quarterback. Outside of Bijan Robinson, the MVP for the game should go to Cameron Dicker. The senior was 4/4 on field goals and also averaged 46.5 yards on his two punts. Dicker had been inconsistent to start the year, but Texas needed him to come through today and he delivered.

Steve Sarkisian said earlier this week that Texas needed to learn to hate losing more than they liked winning. The Longhorns appear to have taken that message to heart for at least one game as they took out a lot of anger on Rice Saturday evening. Here are some thoughts and takeaways from the blowout win: It’s hard to truly gauge a lot of what we saw considering the opponent, but it should be stated Texas was 26 point favorites according to Vegas. It was expected the Longhorns would win rather comfortably, but this game turned into a route early. Texas came out with a high level of intensity from the opening kickoff and Rice never really had a chance. A week after the Longhorns’ offensive line was whipped in Fayetteville, the unit helped pave the way for a 426 yard rushing performance. Steve Sarkisian appeared to lean more on outside running schemes and was rewarded with huge performances from Bijan Robinson, Roschon Johnson and Keilan Robinson. Texas pretty much abandoned the outside run at Arkansas, so it will be interesting to see if Sarkisian continues to emphasize the running scheme his lineman and running backs appear to be most comfortable with. Casey Thompson turned in a good performance in his first career start. Thompson finished 15 for 18 for 164 yards and a pair of touchdowns. He did toss an interception in the first quarter as he was hit releasing a deep ball. Outside of the interception though, it was a clean performance and Thompson earned another start next week against Texas Tech. Back to the offensive line for a moment. The unit still has major issues when Texas operates a traditional drop back passing game. Christian Jones was beaten badly and called for a holding penalty in the second quarter in addition to the interior of the offensive line allowing a lot of pressure up the middle early in the game. At this point, Steve Sarkisian is going to have to scheme around the weaknesses his offensive line has. Keilan Robinson showed how electric he can be with a 65 yard TD run in the third quarter. Texas is going to need to find a way to get him 5-8 touches a game and utilize his speed. He also had a textbook blocked punt in the second quarter. Defensively, there is not a whole lot you can take away from this game. This was a terrible matchup for Rice, who emphasizes trying to win at the line of scrimmage and running between the tackles. The matchup was made worse when the Owls had to turn to their 3rd string QB before halftime due to injuries. The Texas pass defensive honestly hasn’t been tested too much through the first 3 weeks of the season due to the style of opponents they were playing, but that is set to change next week. Texas Tech is coming to Austin and the Red Raiders are not afraid to throw the ball all over the field. Overall, it was the performance Texas needed after what happened in Fayetteville. The Longhorns dominated from start to finish and now have to turn their attention to conference play.

They were 3 TD’s better than a decent Louisiana team just 2 weeks ago

Texas will attempt to clean up a lot of mistakes on both sides of the ball when they welcome Rice to DKR on Saturday night. The Owls enter the contest at 0-2 on the season after opening with a 38-17 loss to Arkansas and a 44-7 blowout loss to Houston. Let's take a look at what to expect from Mike Bloomgren's team: Offense Let's cut right to the chase, Rice is awful offensively. The Owls are a power running team who loves to get under center and run the ball between the tackles. The problem is they struggle mightily to run the ball at all. Against the Razorbacks they averaged a horrible 2.1 yards per carry and improved to 3.5 yards per carry this past weekend versus Houston while only scoring 7 points. Quarterback is a revolving door. Rice brought in Nebraska transfer Luke McCaffrey prior to the season, but he has already thrown 3 interceptions. Fellow QB Wiley Green has thrown 3 interceptions of his own. The duo is combining to complete 48.1% of their passes. If Texas shuts down the running game, the game could get out of hand quickly. Up front, Rice has allowed 6 sacks already on the season despite being a team that has only attempted a54 passes. This should be a game where the Texas defensive line is able to control the line of scrimmage and pin their ears back on 3rd down. Neither McCaffrey or Green are much of a threat to run the ball so they will not have to worry about the QB run. Defense If Rice is to have any shot in this game, their defense is going to have to play nearly perfect and carry them. They held Arkansas in check for about a half in the season opener before the floodgates opened (with an assist from the poor Rice offense setting the Razorbacks up with short fields). They have an experienced defensive line, led by DT Elijah Garcia, who has a chance to be an all-conference type player for the Owls. Garcia will be a good test for the interior of the Texas offensive line that struggled in Fayetteville last weekend. On the backend, safety George Nyakwol is a good player and is someone to keep an eye on. The Longhorns will want to get the passing game in sync with conference play approaching, and they will have a good opportunity to do so with how Rice has looked through the first two weeks. Final Thoughts This game is more about Texas taking a good first step towards correcting a lot of what went wrong a week ago. The Longhorns have a lot to clean up and they likely won't get all the answers they need due to the quality of the opponent, but building some much needed momentum heading into conference play would certainly be ideal. If Texas is able to play a relatively clean game along the offensive line and Casey Thompson is able to consistently move the offense down the field, Steve Sarkisian should walk away from the game pretty pleased. Defensively, Texas needs to minimize the missed tackles and show some signs of life along the defensive line. The spread for for this game is Texas -26.5 so if all goes accordingly to plan, the Longhorns should be emptying the bench in the 4th quarter.

Steve Sarkisian announced during his weekly press conference that he was making a QB switch. Casey Thompson will start Saturday's game against Rice after coming off the bench to lead a pair of scoring drives last week at Arkansas. Sarkisian also said Card will play. On the decision, head coach Steve Sarkisian had this to say: "Well I think Casey has performed well... In the Louisiana game, yeah I think three drives and scores 10 points. Came in against Arkansas, put 14 points on the board. Bottom line is, it's not always about how you execute every play, it's about are you maneuvering the offense down the field to score points. And I think Casey has put himself in a good position to do that." Hudson Card will plays as well, as was mentioned by Sarkisian at today's press conference.

While I wouldn't be surprised if they made a few tweaks along the OL, replacing 4 of 5 starters probably isn't happening. Kerstetter has probably been the most consistent lineman through 2 games. Him and Majors are probably both safe. Christian Jones could probably improve in the run game but his pass protection looks improved from a season ago. Sarkisian and Flood are going to have to decide if they want to sacrifice some run blocking for pass protection. Junior Angilau and Denzel Okafor have been the two biggest liabilities when Texas is dropping back to pass but are also supposed to be their two best run blockers.

We will never know if the outcome would have been different with Thompson, but what we do know is Texas gave up 333 yards rushing. You aren’t winning any football game getting gashed on the ground like that. It makes it worse that a large chunk of those yards came when everyone in the stadium knew the ball was being handed off in the second half.

Let's jump right into it. The performance on Saturday night wasn't pretty in all phases. Offense As I pointed out in the game preview when discussing the Arkansas defense, Steve Sarkisian was well aware of Barry Odom and his reputation as a defensive playcaller. It is widely known that Sarkisian was very interested in potentially bringing Odom to Austin when he took over in January. Despite the familiarity and Sarkisian having faced Odom last year at Alabama, the Longhorns offensive gameplan had to be tossed in the trash several drives into the game. Odom rolled out his 3-down front with speedy LB's and DB's roaming behind the defensive line, baiting Texas to try to establish the run, and the Longhorns took the bait. Texas totaled 5 total yards of offense on their first two drives of the game while trying to hand the ball to Bijan Robinson between the tackles. The Longhorns did not have a drive with more than two first downs until their 11th (!!!!!!) drive. Texas faced 3rd and long repeatedly all night, allowing Arkansas to drop 8 and blanket throwing lanes to receivers. The Longhorns never really got the running backs involved in the passing game and decided they did want to try to move the ball with the short passing game on early downs. This leads into the conversation of how the QB's played. Hudson Card received the start and struggled, finishing 8/15 for 61 yards. It is obvious Sarkisian has drilled into his young signal caller to only use his legs as a last resort. As the Razorbacks rushed 3 and dropped 8, Card never really seemed comfortable taking off and running, instead opting to hold onto the ball and attempt some low percentage throws. Casey Thompson took over late in the 3rd quarter and rushed for a pair of touchdowns while completing 5 of 8 passes for 57 yards. Thompson is much more comfortable using his legs currently than Card and it shows. Texas loses this game regardless of who starts at QB, but Thompson's legs could have certainly allowed Texas another avenue of moving the ball early in the game when nothing was working. To the credit of the Texas wide receivers, the Longhorns had several chances to connect on big plays in the passing game. Xaiver Worthy broke through the secondary several times but Hudson Card was unable to deliver a catchable ball. Joshua Moore also had a time or two where he was behind a defender. Outside of those two, it was a tough day for the rest of the group. Jordan Whittington dropped several passes and did not look anything like the guy who had a big week 1. To say the Texas offensive line played poorly would be an understatement. Early in the game, the line allowed several 3 man rushes to get to Hudson Card. Denzel Okafor and Jake Majors allowed a linebacker to run through the line untouched for a sack on 3rd down during Texas' second drive of the game. As run blockers, they were repeatedly blown off the ball and had to be saved several times by Bijan Robinson. I'm not sure much more needs to be said. Kyle Flood has a lot of work to do with this group. Defense/Special Teams It is safe to say Pete Kwiatkowski never faced the veer and shoot at Washington. Kendal Briles put together a solid game plan and Arkansas rushed for 333 yards while averaging 7.1 yards per carry. As expected, the Razorbacks ran KJ Jefferson a lot and asked him to not be a hero in the passing game. The Texas defensive line had an awful game. They had no sacks, were driven off the ball frequently and failed to stay in their lanes in the running game. Remember at the end of the 2020 season when the Texas offense found a lot of success running outside zone? Arkansas used the same type of running schemes to go up and down the field against the Longhorns. DeMarvion Overshown and Luke Brockermeyer were active early in the game, but once the defensive line wore down they had little impact the rest of the way. Overshown looks like a complete different player and is playing the linebacker position at a solid level. Texas needs more guys to take the same step he took. On the surface, the pass defense didn't seem to be an issue since Texas only allowed 138 yards through the air, but the play of the secondary left a lot of be desired. Josh Thompson and D'Shawn Jamison played okay. Brenden Schooler did not start the game, but saw some playing time early and missed several tackles. Jerrin Thompson started in Schooler's place and had 5 tackles. BJ Foster had the play of the game with an impressive INT, but he still has a tendency to launch his shoulder anytime he wants to tackle someone instead of wrapping up. Hindsight is 20/20, but imagine if Texas retains possession on the muffed punt early in the 1st quarter. The Longhorns would have had the ball inside the Arkansas 5 and in all likelihood go up 7-0. The crowd is taken out of the game early, momentum is on the Longhorns side and the offense sees the ball get punched into the endzone. Instead, a small step out of bounds when attempting to make a recovery cost Texas an extra early possession. Jeff Banks and the coaching staff need to seriously think about using someone else at punter. Cameron Dicker is currently handling placekicking, kickoffs and punting duties and is not off a good start. He is 1/3 on field goals for the season and had a punt blocked last night after bobbling the snap. The Longhorns have two other scholarship punters on the roster. One of them needs to step up and allow for Dicker to focus solely on kicking. What's next? It is back to the drawing board for Steve Sarkisian. It appeared the Longhorns took a good first step last week in beating a solid Louisiana team, but all progress was lost just a week later. The gameplans were not good on both sides of the ball, the players did not perform well and as a result the Longhorns got their butts kicked. Arkansas is improved from where they were a few years ago, but it was a still a game where Texas was favored by a touchdown. Texas will host Rice next Saturday at DKR before conference play starts the following week. Several positions, including QB, appear to be up for grabs. For all the negatives that came out of the performance Saturday night, the one positive is the top of the Big 12 appears to be wide open after Oklahoma. Iowa State was beaten soundly by Iowa in a game where Brock Purdy was benched, TCU found themselves in a nail-biter with Cal, Oklahoma State struggled mightily with Tulsa and Texas Tech barely escaped Stephen F Austin. Texas can still reach many of the goals they have for this season, but a lot is going to have to change from what they showed Saturday night.

Texas opened the Steve Sarkisian era with a solid victory over Louisiana, but now all the attention turns to big matchup in Fayetteville this weekend. The Longhorns have not traveled to Arkansas since 2004 and are not likely to get a warm reception when they trot onto Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium on Saturday evening. Let's a take a look at what to expect from Arkansas: Offense A familiar face is coordinating the offense in Fayetteville. Longtime Baylor assistant Kendal Briles is in his 2nd year as the Razorback's offensive coordinator and brought the veer and shoot to a program that was searching for an offensive identity. Briles relied on Florida transfer Felipe Franks to operate the offense last year but handed the reigns over to redshirt sophomore KJ Jefferson this season. Jefferson is built very similar to former Texas QB Tyrone Swoopes. Standing at 6'3 245 pounds, Jefferson brings a unique skillset in the running game and isn't afraid to lower his shoulder for extra yards. As a passer, Jefferson leaves a lot to be desired, which forces Briles to be extra careful when calling a game. The arm strength is there, but the accuracy is inconsistent. Jefferson completed 12 of 21 last week against Rice including an interception where he forced the ball along the sideline instead of throwing it away. As with any Briles offense, the Razorbacks will spread out their receivers with wide splits to allow for things to open up in the running game. Redshirt junior Trelon Smith will receive the bulk of the carries. Smith had 22 carries for 102 yards against the Owls and is a shifty back who has good acceleration. Treylon Burks is the clear #1 receiver for the Hogs and clearly was not on the same page with KJ Jefferson week 1, which contributed heavily to the offensive struggles the Razorbacks had. Burks is a true playmaker out of the slot and led the team with 51 catches for 820 yards in 2020. If Texas is able to slow him down, the Arkansas offense is going to be in trouble. Along the offensive line, the Razorbacks start a veteran group comprised of 3 redshirt seniors, 1 junior and a redshirt sophomore. Left tackle Myron Cunningham is a future NFL player who has only allowed 3 sacks in 21 starts. He is well regarded as a pass blocker and will likely find himself matched up with Ovie Oghoufo frequently. Defense A lot has been written about Arkansas DC Barry Odom over the last year. The former head coach at Missouri was connected to the Texas DC opening at one point over the offseason and is highly thought of throughout college football. For the second week, the Texas offense is going to face a defense filled with veteran players. At least 8 or 9 starters on the Arkansas defense will be seniors. One of the few non-seniors will be redshirt sophomore Jalen Catalon, who is among the best safeties in the country. Odom will move Catalon all over the field and he has an excellent nose for the football. Two of the biggest storylines heading into Saturday is the health of DT John Ridgeway and Arkansas being without starting LB Bumper Pool due to a targeting penalty in the second half against Rice. Ridgeway is a graduate transfer from Illinois State who was supposed to fill a big void at NG but was unavailable against Rice. It is unknown if he will play Saturday. Pool's absence in the first half could prove to be big considering the 2020 All-SEC second team member had over 100 tackles a season ago. Final Thoughts The game will likely come down to the ability of the Texas offense to consistently move the ball against the Arkansas defense. If Sarkisian can scheme up some easy passes for Hudson Card and establish the running game early with Bijan Robinson, all the pressure will shift to the Razorbacks. Pete Kwiatkowski would be smart to deploy a similar gameplan to the one he showed against Louisiana: limit big plays, slow down the running game and force the quarterback to beat you through the air. Arkansas is very likely to come out fired up and playing with a lot of emotion considering the history they have with the Longhorns. If Texas is able to withstand the initial surge and limit mistakes early (turnovers and penalties) then they have a very good chance of leaving Fayetteville with a victory.

Catalon is someone Texas wanted badly a few cycles ago. Outside of Bijan, he might be the best player on the field Saturday.