Texas Football: 5 Ways the Longhorns Must Improve in 2015
Improvement won't be easy for the Texas Longhorns in 2015.
Just five games into the season, Charlie Strong's team has been through the full gamut of anguish. It started off with a blowout at Notre Dame, continued through consecutive home losses and then hit a new low in a 50-7 loss at TCU.
And those are just the on-field issues.
Behind the scenes, there's been a major power struggle between Strong's hand-picked freshmen and the upperclassmen he inherited from Mack Brown. The timing couldn't be worse, as the Longhorns have to bounce back from all of this for the Red River Shootout against No. 9 Oklahoma, which should be treated as a de facto bowl game for the 1-4 Horns.
No matter what happens in that game, the key areas of improvement are painfully obvious. On the field, the Longhorns must at least do a better job both protecting their quarterback and getting after the opposition's. Nothing else matters if these two things can't be accomplished.
As for the bigger picture, Strong needs to focus on finding leaders among the young players who will determine the future of the program.
Pass Blocking
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Texas' offense has cratered in its last five-plus quarters of football, and poor pass blocking is the chief culprit.
The injury to Kent Perkins has sent the once-surging Longhorns offense into a tailspin. Since he went down with 4:56 left in the loss to Oklahoma State, the Horns have scored seven offensive points (in garbage time), averaged 3.4 yards per play and have given up eight sacks.
Quarterback Jerrod Heard has especially struggled in Perkins' absence. He's been the one taking all of the sacks, and he has watched his downfield game disintegrate. The redshirt freshman who was averaging 11.7 yards per attempt with Perkins in the lineup is managing just 2.3 yards a pop since the right tackle went down.
It's inexcusable that the loss of one lineman could undo so much offensive progress. Heard's 11.7 yards per attempt would rank second in the nation, as would the team's 8.1 yards per play, according to CFBStats.com. Instead, the Longhorns are putting up numbers in those categories that would rank dead last in the country.
All of this pressure has also robbed Heard of his ability to create with his legs. Opposing defenses are able to spy Heard when they can pressure him with four pass-rushers, robbing the dual-threat of any ability to make an explosive play.
Until Texas can fix its pass blocking, these pathetic offensive displays are going to continue. And with Perkins' timetable still unclear, according to the Austin American-Statesman's Kirk Bohls, the improvement has to come first and foremost from his backups.
Rushing the Passer
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Texas' defense is rife with issues. The team is liberally playing four true freshmen in the secondary, its second-leading stopper is true freshman Malik Jefferson and tackling has been wildly inconsistent.
But the biggest issue, by far, is the Longhorns' inability to get pressure on the quarterback.
Per CFBStats.com, the Longhorns rank 101st in the nation with 1.4 sacks per game, which is second-worst in the Big 12. For reference, last year's unit ranked No. 11 in this stat with over three per game. To nobody's surprise, that unit ranked in the top five in passing yards allowed per attempt.
This boils down to an utter lack of playmakers up front. Hassan Ridgeway busted through against Oklahoma State, but he's just one guy. TCU easily handled him, as noted by 247Sports' Bobby Burton, and none of his teammates were able to make a play.
They didn't, and Trevone Boykin toasted the Horns for 332 yards and five touchdowns.
As noted in this posting on Burnt Orange Nation, it might not be the worst idea for Texas to switch to a four-man front. That would cost Strong his flexible "Fox" end, but it would be worth it to get something going in the backfield.
As long as Big 12 quarterbacks can stand in and pick apart this young secondary, the Longhorns are going to be out of games before they can ever get into them.
Leadership
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A gross lack of leadership has become apparent on this Longhorns team.
On the heels of a three-point loss to the Cowboys, Sedrick Flowers calling out fellow senior Marcus Hutchins seemed mostly innocuous. The Longhorns were showing improvement, and a well-received team meeting appeared to give everyone a better understanding of each other, according to Chuck Carlton of the Dallas Morning News.
Turns out, that was just the beginning of a major problem coming to the surface.
Since going into halftime down 37-0 to TCU, things have unraveled. Freshman Kris Boyd's now-infamous retweet got it started, and safety Dylan Haines' comments on Monday fanned the flames:
"A lot of people want to talk about these freshmen and this freshman class coming in and us playing a lot of freshmen. And that's great for them. But the team starts with the seniors and the juniors. They can't win the conference on their own. So we have some juniors and seniors trying to lead those freshmen, and some of them are resistant and hesitant to change because they haven't been a follower before. . . . A lot of them want to go out and play, and that's all they want to do and that's all they know because that's all they did in high school.
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Charles Omenihu, one of Texas' many talented first-year players, took exception to those comments. Later, fellow freshman DeAndre McNeal chipped in and discussed his frustration with the growing divide.
Upperclassmen Ridgeway and Paul Boyette would later try to downplay the situation, but it's out there—there's a disconnect between the nation's No. 10 class and the upperclassmen.
There are a couple of ways to look at this. The first being that these freshmen have gotten ahead of themselves and are already acting like they're running the show. With 17 of them seeing the field against the Horned Frogs, per 247Sports' Chris Hummer, that doesn't seem too far-fetched.
Even if that were true, Haines aired out a team issue to the media. Instead of squashing public suspicion, he fed it and threw his young teammates under the bus in the process. That's not leadership.
The fact is these upperclassmen are Mack Brown recruits who entered the program under much different circumstances. There's a strong hint of entitlement in Haines' words, and there's no room for that on a 1-4 team.
These freshmen are Strong's first hand-picked group, brought in with the expectation of stirring the pot. And when they're playing better than the upperclassmen, which they have consistently done, it's up to the latter to take the high road.
To prevent this off-field drama from impeding any possible progress, a group of leaders must emerge. Heard and Jefferson, the faces of their respective sides of the ball, would be a good start.
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Playing the Best Players
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Playing the best players seems like a given in any sport, but it's been difficult for the Longhorns to commit to doing so. That's because it would mean benching more upperclassmen.
So far this season, we've seen two true freshmen in Connor Williams and Patrick Vahe take over for upperclassmen along the offensive line. On the other side of the ball, Jefferson has taken command of a middle linebacker spot that could have gone to a senior like Peter Jinkens. It also took one game for Texas to promote redshirt freshman Jerrod Heard to be the starting quarterback over junior Tyrone Swoopes.
This youth movement is a weekly storyline. And, at 1-4, there's no reason to slow it down.
Running back should be the next domino to fall in a younger player's favor. In a game where Johnathan Gray managed 55 yards on 15 carries, sophomore D'Onta Foreman rumbled for 112 on just three more attempts. He should at least be the primary early-down option moving forward.
In the secondary, senior Duke Thomas was beaten or out of position several times against TCU. Freshman Holton Hill, as noted by Burnt Orange Nation, needs to be the guy holding No. 1 receivers from here on. Lone Star Radio mentioned blown assignments by Thomas and fellow senior Taylor Doyle against TCU.
Wherever it's close, the younger players need to be the ones on the field. They're the future of the program. And with a bowl game pretty much out of the question, Texas can afford to let its best young players take their lumps to make them more prepared for next season.
Riding the juniors and seniors to a 4-8 record helps nobody.
Recruiting
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Recruiting top talent has been, and will to continue be, a struggle for Strong's next class.
Last year, Strong could point to his culture change, a ravenous defense and an offense that was getting the spread makeover.
This time around, that culture change is making Strong's players famous off the field, while both the offense and defense are struggling to find an identity. Most of all, this team looks like it's going to lose a lot more games, while its competition for elite recruits is doing the opposite.
For that reason, the Horns don't even have a top-50 class in 2016, according to 247Sports. Worse yet, their top targets are cooling on the program, as noted by 247Sports' EJ Holland, which carries the risk that current commits will start looking elsewhere as well.
Strong and his staff have to prevent that from happening. Because with the depth issues this team has, at least some of the 2016 class will have to contribute immediately.
It won't be easy, but the sell is pretty straightforward—there's plenty of room for early playing time, and the guys who have earned it in 2015 look like future stars. From there, Strong can just point to Jefferson, Williams, Hill and the other members of his first full class who are making an early impact.
Unless otherwise noted, all stats and information courtesy of TexasSports.com.
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