Texas Longhorns: Back to the Future, Horns Looking Ahead with Energizing Spring

With spring practice coming to a close, and summer workouts on the horizon, there are still a lot of unanswered questions facing the Longhorns. Prominent among these questions are who will start at quarterback, will new Co-Offensive coordinator Bryan Harsin's offense work, and how will the the defense fare without Will Muschamp?

Firstly, the QB race is wide open, but we did glimpse some encouraging signs during the Orange-White game. My front runner for the competition AT THE MOMENT mind you, is sophomore Case McCoy.

McCoy, forever chasing the legacy of older brother Colt McCoy, had a good spring and an even better showing in the Orange-White spring game with a couple touchdown drives. He did show a tendency to throw off his back foot a bit, but the thing that stood out most to me was his decision making. He didn't stare down his receivers and made the smart throws, and that's something the Longhorns lacked last season at quarterback, smart decision making.

Now I think that junior Garret Gilbert is still in the race, and he could pull ahead with a good summer workout. The thing he has going for him is his in-game experiences. He's played the games before and knows what to expect and does have a rocket for an arm.

After the anger and upset feelings after last year wore off most Longhorn fans were able to look at the games again, and understand that the whole debacle that was the 2010 season was not all Gilbert's fault.

Does he harbor a lot of the blame? Yes and rightfully so, but the stats don't always tell the whole story—how many times did we see an open receiver drop a pass, or let it bounce off his hands into another defensive backs hands?

Gilbert can win this race if he changes his bad habits—he has to make good decisions and go through his check downs if the first receiver is not open. IF he doesn't learn that skill, he is out at quarterback and Mack will not hesitate to yank him.

We got our first look at Bryan Harsin's new look offense this past spring and what I saw was promising. A lot of motion before the play snaps and even some trick plays were shown in the spring game. If that doesn't get your burnt orange blood flowing with excitement again, I don't know what will(except for another national title of course).

The offense played with energy and the offensive line showed vast improvement over last years dismal squad though, honestly, it won't be hard to top. The running game showed improvement as well, bit its about to get deadly with the addition of incoming freshman from Cibolo Steele Malcolm Brown. Receiving corps looked fine as well, expect Mike Davis to have a monster season

Lastly, the defense looked good as well, though its hard to really evaluate that because new defensive coordinator Manny Diaz installed a really vanilla defense for the spring game. Defensive end junior Alex Okafor showed us glimpses of a bright future for him this year as well during the spring game, showing us a dominant performance.

Expect him to be our Sam Acho/Brian Orakpo of the year. Coach Diaz's real defensive game plan will include a lot of blitzes, with the main focus to get to, or harass, the quarterback. Pressure will be the focal point of this years defense, though that will leave the DB's on islands at times, and they will have to step up this year if the Horns are going to be successful, look for senior safety Blake Gideon, and junior safety Kenny Vacarro to lead this squad.

Overall, I expect good things for this longhorn team coming into the new season. A lot of questions still remain unanswered, and only time will tell if these Longhorns will bring back the success and glory of years past.