Texas Football: It's Way Too Early to Declare the 2011 Season as Disappointing

The only thing more frustrating than last year's Texas Longhorns season is the waving of the white flag by many critics of this year's squad.

Many writers, including some on Bleacher Report, are declaring the 2011 season as leading the pack in disappointing teams.

But what exactly is this based on?

Texas is currently on a two-game losing streak but those losses were against their fellow conference foes that are No. 3 and No. 4 in the BCS poll. While a loss is unacceptable to fans, it's certainly nothing to be disappointed about. The Longhorns are a young team and losses against highly-ranked, experienced opponents should be expected.

Let's examine the numbers and the talent producing them. Here's a quick offensive breakdown of the first six games in the last two seasons:

	Passing Yards	Passing TDs	Rushing Yards	Rushing TDs	Interceptions	Fumbles
2010	1213	4	858	11	5	10
2011	1221	8	1091	11	6	11

While these numbers don't look promising on the surface, there are many good things to take away from this data.

The Longhorns are definitely more multiple than they were last year. If you looked at some games from 2010, Texas was way too dependent on one side of the ball. This year's team is utilizing the running game more and increasing the efficiency of the passing game.

Turnovers are a bit troubling but just like last year, Mack Brown is making his quarterback do on-the-job training.

Case McCoy and David Ash are pretty much the starters and were good enough to put Garrett Gilbert on the bench. Unlike Gilbert, there isn't much consistency with these turnovers, so we're seeing games where the majority of these numbers originate.

Ash has made some poor reads, but not at the level of Gilbert, which is very promising for the rest of the season.

True freshmen Jaxon Shipley and Malcolm Brown have been having wonderful seasons despite their youth. Brown is leading the team in rushing and Shipley is second in team receiving yards and tied for first in touchdowns.

Expect these two young players to have a breakout game against Kansas next week.

Here's a quick look at how the Texas defense is performing:

	Points Allowed	Interceptions	Fumbles Recovered	Rushing Yards Against	Passing Yards Against
2010	106	3	5	645	828
2011	131	6	7	731	1298

Those numbers look pretty bad,' but considering the thrashing Texas took against Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, they aren't as bad as they could have been with an under-performing team like last year.

Here's a scoring breakdown against the common opponents, comparing last year's season with this year's season:

Texas	Rice	UCLA	Iowa State	Oklahoma	Oklahoma State
Points For	0	+37	+16	-3	+10
Points Against	-8	-14	-14	+27	+5

Oklahoma is really the only bad game the Longhorns had all season. Oklahoma State was a very winnable game and the others were complete 180-degree turns from how they performed in 2010.

Is this season great? No, but it's certainly not a disappointment. Texas could lose to A&M with Kansas State being a wild card. A four loss season is a vast improvement over a seven loss season, though.

There is absolutely no reason for Longhorn fans to wave the white flag so early in the season.