2013 Longhorn Football Prospectus: Thinking Texas Football

Introduction

Greetings friend,

Welcome to the inaugural 2013 Longhorn Football Prospectus: Thinking Texas Football.

This book is a Texas football preview, a season companion and reference guide, and a resource for the entire football season. Our goal is to present a rational, entertaining assessment of Longhorn Football, Texas opponents, and the Big 12 Conference, while imparting a more comprehensive and deeper understanding of the game, so that you can enjoy game day, and our Longhorns, all the more.

We wrote this guide because we believe it fills an important, underserved niche in the market. Like many passionate football fans reading regional or national publications, we realized that we knew more about our team and conference than the experts. And most of their previews might better be termed historicals - as they are written in late April for June publication. We targeted an August release to include the most recent developments: transfers, injuries, off-season intelligence, and staff hires.

Local media vary widely in talent and intellectual curiosity and even the best of them are constrained by the need to fit formulae into a 800 word column, catering to sports section readers that their editors believe operate at a 8th grade reading level. Thinking Texas Football, in deference to its name, is written for an intelligent football layperson. We won’t insult you by writing down to the lowest common denominator nor will we try to overawe you with technical babble.

The internet has several fantastic resources - public and pay - but they (where we write included) serve a reactive news cycle and rarely have the chance to be comprehensive and develop deeper themes. It’s the difference between books and newspapers. We like both.

Our best ambition is to provide you with different tools - while plainly communicating an awareness of our own biases and blind spots - so that we can drive a conversation that mutually enriches our shared passion.

Hook ‘em!

- Paul, Jason, Scott

Understanding the Longhorn Zeitgeist

The Optimist's Perspective For 2013

Why is a fan base with so many positive preseason indicators reluctant to commit to a shared faith that the Longhorns will have a big year in 2013?

Consider:

Phil Steele’s College Football Preview Magazine - which has become something of a preseason college football Bible - ranks Texas #4 in the country and picked the Longhorns to win the Big 12 conference outright, which Steele hasn’t done since 2009.

The respected Football Outsiders - analytics nerds supreme - took a break from a Battlestar Galactica marathon long enough to conclude that Texas is the clear favorite to win the conference while ranking Texas 7th in the country.

Finally, the Las Vegas sports books offered these preseason odds on Big 12 conference champions:

Las Vegas is not a place known for its misplaced sentiment, beyond that husky woman in a tube top crying through her eyeliner, a portly mascara-raccoon balanced on six inch stilettos, wobbling outside of Circus Circus.

Money talks. BCS hopes walk.

Many Longhorns don’t know how to process the high expectations that were once our birthright. It makes us confront our own potential for disappointment. Why the caution, the hesitancy, the still simmering anger over the program neglect that sank Texas in 2010, and forced the Longhorns to blow it up and start over, awkwardly, painfully, in 2011 and 2012? What’s preventing us from forgiving, and letting belief follow what the trend line points towards so clearly? If we may frame the question in a manner that is succinctly Texan: What’s up with our zeitgeist, y’all?

The optimist says forget the journey of the last three years. Forget recent history. Forget your issues with Mack Brown or DeLoss Dodds. Wash it away. If recent history were predictive destiny, 2008 and 2009 assumptions would have assured the 2010-2012 Longhorns of going 12-1 every year. If that had happened, our preview would be nothing but pictures of Mack Brown cradling Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, with fawning headlines that would make Pyongyang propagandists cringe.

What does dispassionate inference tell us? Forget the baggage associated with the Texas program. Consider the blinded resume of a college football team - let’s call them the Tejas Bigracks - that enters 2013 with these attributes:

Admit it, that team looks poised for something big. Let’s look at who they will compete against, in order of last year’s conference finish. (Names may be slightly altered to blind bias)

Conference Co-champions

Oklahoma City College Weakchins.  Only 11 returning starters. Replaces 4 year starter at QB. Loses 7 of 11 defensive starters. Head coach known to wear a visor during night games.

Central Kansas Incontinent Wizards.  Only 9 returning starters. Must replace 9 of 11 starters on defense. Loses Heisman finalist starting QB. Ranked #122 in returning starters in FBS.

Tied with Tejas last year

Oklahbro Dayglos. 14 returning starters. Possible QB controversy. Head coach also wears a visor during night games and combs his hair with Castrol GTX.

Losing conference records last year

Fort Worth Needle Exchange.  16 starters return, including 9 defensive. Team enjoys Bob Marley. A lot.

Greater Mart Holy Rollers.  13 returning starters. Must replace starting QB, most of OL, and best WR. Thinks defense is just a pee break between offensive series.

Muleshoe Dry Wall Contractors. Must replace starting QB, 3 OL starters. Rains mud there.

West Appalachia Varmint Stompers.  Must replace multi-year starting QB, three best offensive players, 3 OL starters. 117th in the country in returning starters. Good whitewater rafting, also: meth labs.

Corn State Tractor Fondlers. Tied for 117th in country in returning starters. Responsible for high fructose corn syrup murdering us all.

Basketball School Gastric Bypassers.  11 returning starters. Head coach referred to team as a pile of crap. Is correct.

You may have figured out some of these teams. Do you like how Tejas stacks up against them? Of course you do. And now for the big reveal...the Tejas Bigracks are the Texas Longhorns! You never suspected, did you?

Prediction: The Texas Longhorns will win the Big 12 outright, go to a BCS bowl, and Mack Brown will notch another bowl victory (at Texas: 10-4 in bowls, 3-1 BCS bowls) raising the final Longhorn record to 12-1 and a #3 final ranking; while his detractors slink away, reminded that a head coach doesn’t go 150-43 at Texas without knowing how to run a football program.

Now, we have to offer equal time to an unpleasant sort...

The Pessimist's Perspective For 2013

I thought Mr Optimist would go for an emotional appeal, as his kind is wont to do, but instead he championed the opinions of math nerd contrarians and stumbled into the tiger pit dug by degenerate gamblers looking to lull Texas fans into sucker bets, all bulwarked by some meaningless comparative depth chart data.

The optimist disguised the team names in that little exercise because he had to disguise the history, the context, the coaching, the obvious spirit of a program, that numbers and trends simply can’t adequately describe. Texas isn’t a program on the rise again - it’s a program leveling out to perennial 9-4/8-5 Bobby Bowden-on-life-support-Florida-State levels. Look at the clear parallels: the sudden decline when a dominant senior class graduated, the embarrassing cronyism, the politics, the staff turnover and finger pointing, the lazy development and recruiting. Texas football isn’t about excellence anymore - it’s about job preservation.

Reality check: Texas was a butter-fingered Kansas defensive back interception away from losing to the 1-11 Jayhawks last year. Oklahoma won again by their expected six touchdowns. It’s the new normal in Dallas. Kansas State trounced Texas again - how unexpected! - and TCU won in Austin, giving fans a preview of the next Purple team that will dominate this coaching staff. Texas lost to a West Virginia team at home that proceeded to lose its next five games.

Even the alleged big wins were dubious - squeaking by 8-5 Oklahoma State’s 3rd string QB, edging 8-5 Baylor at home while giving up 50 points, and then notching another minor bowl victory.

Want numbers and trend lines?

Mack Brown has 2 conference titles in 15 years. That’s a trend. A clear one. With the best resources in the country at his disposal. Is is it coincidence that both of those conference championship teams played for the national title? He needs overwhelming talent to win anything of consequence. The 2013 Texas squad is overwhelming?

Over the last three years, Texas is 11-15 in conference play. And the optimist is confident about going 8-1 or 9-0 and winning the league? Really.

The Texas defense was a sieve, allowing 29.2 points per game and 5.9 yards per play. How can returning several starters be good news? As for NFL quality defenders returning from injury injecting new life into the 2013 defense - did Okafor and Vaccaro make a difference last year?

The Texas offense is in its third system in three years (Davis, Harsin, Applewhite). Isn’t consistency important for an offense? And in each system, the Longhorns have managed to feature positions where recruiting or player development has been substandard. We’re excited about an offensive coordinator who cites Greg Davis as his primary career influence?

Talk about trend lines, returning starters, and statistics all you like. The cautious Longhorn fan zeitgeist is attributable to one thing and one thing only: we’ve lost confidence in Mack Brown. In a conference dominated by cutting edge coaching with head coaches that could coach their offense or defense better than their own coordinators, Mack Brown is an anachronistic figurehead representative of a dying age.

This Texas team will be fortunate to go 9-4 again. A bad 9-4. With blowout losses to the usual suspects and at least one humiliating road upset to a losing team. But it will all be forgotten when the Longhorns edge unranked Purdue in the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl. Rebuild complete. When is the parade?

Another Perspective For 2013

There is another perspective: Ours. And it acknowledges the truths on both sides of the coin while not glossing over the inconvenient contradictions inherent to either side. We strive to present data and evidence, acknowledge uncertainty, and let the facts fall where they may.

We hope you enjoy it.

2013 Texas Offense

Overview

Offense is not a zero-sum game. Success in one area enables more success in another. Good offenses worry about growing the production pie any way they can - ruthlessly exploiting mismatches until the defense overcompensates, then counterpunching with lesser offensive players given easier opportunities afforded by defensive inattention. When that offensive pie grows big enough, everyone eats their fill. And no one is left pouty in the locker room cuz they got no dessert.

Bad offenses view the game as a series of individual play calls, each disjointed and removed from any interrelationship with a greater whole. The players and coaches can’t see the interconnectedness of it all. As the production pie contracts,