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Following a loss to West Virginia on Saturday, the mood around the program wasn’t what it has been after recent defeats. The feeling was that Texas played well in a lot of aspects, but they just made a few too many mistakes against a talented, experienced, well coached team. This was a solid loss that the program could handle in year 3. The problem is that when you throw it in the batch with losses to the likes of Cal, Kansas State, and the debacle in Stillwater, it’s hard to tell the difference. We reported last week that 7-5 was starting to look like the bar for Charlie Strong’s return. As has become a common practice each week, we took the temperature of several people around the program to see where things stand now.
1) There’s a sense of optimism, even following a loss that this team is growing positively. Texas leads the nation in starts by underclassmen. Shane Buechele is in the middle of a terrific freshman season. Many analysts feel that Texas is on the verge of an explosion in the next year due to the young talent on campus.
2) Despite all of those things, we’re told that 6-6 will not get it done for Charlie Strong. It feels like the goal posts move on Charlie’s job expectations, but the people we talked with felt strongly that the Longhorns would need to win out in order to save Strong’s job.
3) The Louisville/Houston matchup this week will have a ton of eyes on it. There’s still a strong liking for Tom Herman, and if the Coogs put on a good show against a top team like Louisville, it could jump the expectations up even more.
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Here are some leftover quotes from Saturday’s post game media scrum.
Charlie Strong
On what went wrong:
Well, you look down in the red zone and around the 20-yard-line area. We just didn't get the touchdowns
that we needed. We missed some field goals and we had the ball down there again and the guy comes
off the edge and creates a fumble. And so there's two scores there. And then when you hit a field goal,
you like to get touchdowns there. But you look at our guys, and what you look for is how they just
continue; Shane goes down, gets back up and comes right back in the game. But it was just one of
those -- the pass, I would say, when it was 24 to 13, it could have been ugly for us, and our guys just
continued to fight.
On the turnovers:
I just know at some point we gotta hit it. We didn't hit it today. Defensively we were able to get some
turnovers, and we gave up some on offense. But you like to capitalize. And that was a good defensive
football team. I don't want to take anything away from them. But it was there for us and we just didn't
take advantage of it.
On Tim Cole’s father’s health:
Well, what happened before we got here, we were on our way to the stadium, Tim Cole's father had an
issue and I think now he's in the ICU. And we told Tim -- actually told the whole team before we played.
On if he considered going for it on the fourth down before the half:
What I wanted to do, to try to get it to one. I think we were down four. Just try to get it to one when we
go in. We hit the field goal, it was 17 to 13 and just didn't want to take points away from us, because if
you don't get it, then you're second guessing yourself. And even at 17 to 13 and going in at halftime
where we'd fought back, hit a 10-0 run, you'd like to sit here and say you know what could have been,
but I'm glad we got the points where we were.
On if he’s satisfied with the effort:
We battled. We played hard. You get down 17 to 3, you battle back and then you're 24 to 13 and you
battle back. Even to the end we had the ball and had a chance to win it. Throw the Hail Mary and had
the chance to go win it. We kept taking our punches and kept just coming back, and that's really what
you like. You look at a young team, it's very easy, like I said, in the pass it could have gotten ugly, and
it didn't get ugly. We just continued to hang in there.
On the frustration of not converting turnovers and on what D’Onta Foreman said to him before the half ended:
I told him -- the second part it was five seconds, nine seconds. I said, even if we get the first down, we
probably won't be able to line up because we had no more timeouts and get a play ran. The clock would
have ran out. And I said let's take the points. And then there's a frustration, we gotta convert on third
down; and the defense, we gotta get off the field. And you look at them today, they made some key
third downs, but we were able to get the pressure, the one big sack by Jay Hall forced it to get the third
down. With the third down I know on offense we can get it corrected and on defense.
On if there is progress despite the loss:
You look at it and you don't ever want to lose a game. It burns. It's burning them right now in the locker
room, but we still have two left and we'll see how we take this game and use it to our advantage and
just continue to get better. You look at us the No. 10 team in the country you can't make mistakes when
you're playing against a good football team.
On the secondary in the third quarter:
The ball, what we did was man because we covered pressure the last three or four times, with zero
blitz, forced him to throw one high and Haines came away with it. And then the next one he was able
to get -- Wheeler did -- I mean I'm sorry. Freeman did an unbelievable job. He kept running and hitting
the ball in the middle between the hashes, and he was able to flip and make the ball be thrown so wide
that Haines came away with it, but you need to make those plays, especially on third down, to get us
off the field, and I was happy to see him come down with the two interceptions.
On if he feels the team has progressed despite the 5-5 record:
I do. I really do think we have a really good football team, and I think we've made a ton of progress.
You look at it, and not to make excuses, if you look at a freshman quarterback and a freshman center.
You look on offense, you have Perk starting as a senior offensive lineman, and then everybody else
are all young guys. Then on defense you're looking at Haines as your starter, your only senior back
there. So you have a young group and a young group that continues to get better, and as the season
goes on, we have gotten better.
And like I said, we're a different team than we were at the beginning of the season, and it showed today.
When you're playing against a good football team and you go down 17 to 3 and you kind of hang your
head and usually guys say, okay, here we go again, but it wasn't one of those here we go again. Okay,
we're going to take the ball on offense and going to go score, which we did, and we're going to go stop
them on defense and then we're going to get the ball back for our offense. And even coming out at
halftime, I said, it's one of those games, guys, we gotta go take this game. They're not going to give it
to us. We have to go take this game, and we come out there still had the opportunity there at the end
there to go. You look at it, if you break down the second half and you're like, it was there for us. We
needed seven points. And just to get them back and see what they would have done.
On the speculation surrounding his job:
I just look at just this team and what we've done. I can't worry about that, and I really don't worry about
that. I just worry about the next game. I have a really good group of guys, and I know they're going to
play for me. They're going to battle. They're going to give everything they've got.
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Recruiting
Not much going on in recruiting (as is the case most weeks), but our ears did perk up when we were tipped off to something this weekend that could be pretty big. We can’t get into a lot of detail at this time, and the timetable is still a few weeks off, but we were told that a highly ranked player in the state was making indications behind the scenes that he was ready to make a commitment to Texas. The information we were given says it could happen in the early part of December, but we will be watching this particular player closely in the coming weeks.
