Texas Longhorns Insider: Is It Time for Mack Brown to Go?

You can’t deny it.  The 2010 College Football season was a very disappointing one for the Texas Longhorns.  After going to the BCS title game just a year before, Texas failed to get to .500 and even failed to make it to a bowl game after playing in the biggest bowl game of the year in 2009.  

So what has gone wrong in Texas with the Longhorns?  Does it have more to do with their coaching staff or was it just a bad year with a new quarterback at the helm?  Is this something that can be fixed or will the Longhorns struggle again next season?

Let’s find out.

To start, the problems that the Longhorns experienced this year do come as a result of their success in 2009.  With the team playing some games tight and not being able to get some of their younger players in there to get some valuable playing time, the Longhorns were unable to prepare the next group of guys for the coming 2010 season.  While that may seem insignificant, it is important that those younger guys get as much experience in live game action as they possibly can.  Unfortunately for the Longhorns, that may not have happened enough for them in 2009.

Quarterback Garrett Gilbert did get some experience in the BCS title game (after starter Colt McCoy went out with an injury) but that situation wasn’t nearly as ideal for developing a young quarterback as regular non-bowl game action would have been.  Imagine if Gilbert had gotten some exposure in mop-up action?  He would have been better prepared for this season.

The coaching staff clearly didn’t have Gilbert or the rest of the team prepared for this season.  Rumblings around the program prior to the start of this season showed some concern as to how the team would perform after seeing them participate in spring and fall practices.  If the problem was there early on, then why didn’t it get fixed?  That one is on the coaching staff.

It’s more than obvious that the coaching staff didn’t have this team prepared for this season.  They didn’t have Gilbert ready to go at all.  They failed to solidify the offensive line enough to help protect Gilbert and give him opportunities to throw the ball down the field and make a play.  The running game also struggled at times thanks to the problems on the offensive line as well as some concerns at running back.

The defensive issues could be considered much more interesting than those on offense.  This unit had lost some of its key players last year (guys like Sergio Kindle, Lamarr Houston and Earl Thomas to name a few) but it appeared to have enough talent to be able to overcome those losses and the coaching staff told fans and the media not to worry.  The defense would be ok.

We all know what happened to the defense this season.  Despite the fact that they kept opponents from racking up a lot yards (the Longhorns defense allowed opponents to rush for an average of 129 yards per game and pass for an average of 164 yards per game) but what really brought them down were the big plays that they allowed teams to get at critical times.

It was the big play that really killed the Longhorns on defense and cost them games.  There were big plays in the UCLA loss that killed their chances of winning the game and there were some long runs in their last game of the season against Texas A&M that hurt their chances to win.  Had they been able to stop some of the big plays over the course of the season, they may have won more games and we might be singing a different tune.

Players can only do so much.  They can execute exactly what the coaching staff tells them to execute on the field and they will make mistakes but it’s up to the coaching staff to help them learn from those mistakes and make it so they don’t do it again.

So what point am I driving at?  The Longhorns difficulties this season can be directly related to the way that the coaching staff prepared the players from before the season all the way though it to the end; so that is who should take the blame for the Longhorns troubled season.

What should the athletic director do to ensure that next year isn’t a repeat of this year?  Firing Brown is probably not the answer this year.  He will be given one more chance to make things work and if he can’t next year then he will be gone.

Greg Davis is gone.  Mack could very well be next.

The Longhorns are too good of a team with too many good players to not get above .500 and not to get to a bowl game.  They shouldn’t have fallen that far this season.  Let’s hope that they make the changes needed to ensure that this won’t happen again next season.