Bunk Moreland

The surprising thing to me is why Brad Spence transferred from Arkansas just to get 5 snaps. Dude could have had a monster year at Arkansas and headed to the league. Hope we have a good plan for utilizing him appropriately this year.

In honor of Gerry promising to not shave until Texas scores in the red zone, here’s my projection of Gerry at about Week 8:

@CJ Vogel would you expect Vasek and Spence to take more snaps when Texas isn’t going big to stop the run like they did against OSU? I was surprised to see those guys with so few snaps. Second question is, were you surprised to see Lance Jackson get more snaps than either of those two? And does that mean he’s taking someone’s job on 2nd team?

Part of the issue is that we don’t know what DeBoer is really capable of when he doesn’t have a deeply experienced qb who is likely the best in the country (Penix) along with a stable of dangerous and experienced WRs like he had at UW. I know he’s won big everywhere he’s been, but he never had to rebuild at UW. He had all the pieces for an elite offense. Even with all the talent he has at Bama, he’s never had a truly elite QB. And aside from Williams, what WR even comes close to the dudes he had at UW? If he’s not able to recreate the same kind of dominant offense that he had at UW, it means he needs his defense to be incredible—and they are far from that. These are the things that concern me about his ability to take Bama back to the heights they reached under Saban.

Totally agree. Sark is excellent at creating amazing game plans when he has film to work with. When he has to adapt and adjust in game, we know that he struggles. I wonder if the reason his script was so uninspired is because he was flying blind with what Patricia would do. I suspect if Texas and OSU play again later this year, Sark will call a MUCH better game with more tape on Patricia’s D.

Completely agree. Simpson might be okay, but for all his uneven play the one thing Milroe gave them was a complete freak with his legs and a devastating deep ball. They don’t have either of those weapons this year, which means they might be average or below-average on both sides of the ball. They might be in trouble. Also, losing Jam Miller just devastates their run game. They will be very one-dimensional on offense.

I think the issue is that DeBoer didn’t make the right hires on the defensive side of the ball. That’s a huge difference between DeBoer and Sark: one still thinks of himself as primarily committed to constructing a dominant offense, while the other has brought in some of the best defensive coaching in the game and generated increasingly dominant defenses. Alabama is a top-5 most talented roster in the country. Losing to Vanderbilt, OU, and FSU is just unacceptable. This is NOT a Saban defense.

Yeah I completely agree that Sark to Bama feels very unlikely, especially after all the sustained success he’s had at Texas. Doesn’t seem like he’d be bored yet since he hasn’t won anything meaningful. And Texas should be able to counter any major financial push that Bama makes. But I have a suspicion they will make another run at him regardless. They will want to get this next hire right if DeBoer doesn’t work out.

Bama fans, administrators, donors all LOVE Sark. I think he’s perfectly happy in Austin and feels like he is better equipped at UT to win big than anywhere else. But I could also see Bama framing it to him as “you could come save Alabama football” and bring in Saban to make the hard sell. They might offer him crazy money and make him say no. I still don’t think he’d leave, but it might be a 50/50 decision if Bama came at him hard.

I don’t think that’s a very fair characterization. Playing at home in your first start against a top-5 opponent is very different from doing so on the road. Quinn Ewers outplayed Bryce Young and looked like a future #1 pick in his second game ever. That was at home and he almost never looked that good again. Raiola, Nico, Kevin Rourke—they all had very similar stat lines at the Shoe. Allar did too and that was at Penn State! I have a hard time believing the qb play on both teams would have looked exactly like that if the game had been played in Austin. I think we need to slow down and see how Arch and Sayin evolve over the season before making strong comparisons.

Just my opinion, but everyone needs to ease up on Arch a bit and stop comparing him with Sayin. You know who else played a much more impressive game at qb in his first major game against a top-5 opponent at home? Quinn against Bama in 2022. That game had little to no correlation to the way he played the rest of 2022. Bama won that game on the road, but it had a 4th-year Heisman favorite at qb in Bryce Young. It is ridiculous to expect Arch, who has never played in that kind of situation, to will his team to victory on the road against a top-5 team with only a fraction the experience that Bryce had in 2022. Arch will be fine. It was our expectations that were way out of whack. We were expecting way too much of a young qb in one of the most challenging situations you can put ANY college qb in. You know who had a terrible game playing at the Shoe last year? Nico. Rourke from Indiana. Allar (at home!). Raiola. Quinn (in Dallas!). Those are all very talented QBs on good teams with more experience than Arch. Let’s please let him grow and develop.

They had a chance to get Branch, Singleton, Concepcion—any number of dangerous, proven weapons who had serious interest in Texas. It’s remarkable to me how little urgency they felt about that position, losing as much proven playmaking as they did.

Part of me wonders if Sark overcorrected a bit with the switch from speedy to big WRs. I do know this: Worthy, Mitchell, Golden all would have been open all day long yesterday.

On another positive note, as least we aren’t OU, who managed 35 points against mighty Illinois State while losing the rushing battle and only rushing for 3.2 YPC. And at least we aren’t A&M, who are allowing 6x more rushing yards (180+) while only rushing for 3.2 YPC at home against UTSA. We might have a LOT to figure out this year, but we stubbed our toe on the road in week 1 against the reigning national champs. I look forward to meeting each of our rivals in coming weeks, each of whom appear to have bigger problems (running the ball, stopping the run).

Sark knows too much about playing the position and developing elite QBs to not notice this and be bothered by it. I am genuinely confused by QB mechanics and development under Sark and Milwee at Texas.

@Jeff Howe I completely agree with your characterization of Sark’s game plan as “arrogant”. I had precisely the same impression that it seemed like he wanted to just line his guys up and see how they performed. That is a fine approach if you’re starting the season against SHSU. Against the defending national champs who just beat you by double-digits six months ago, it’s arrogant to the point of delusion. I understand that this loss doesn’t kill Texas’s chances to get back to the playoff, but the margin for error when you STILL have to play Florida, Georgia, OU, and A&M is now almost zero.

Part of me wonders if this was an experiment by Sark to test his running game, OL, and RBs to see if they could smash OSU without any creativity. In that regard, it actually worked pretty well. But I’m not sure testing your offense is a legitimate reason to not play to win. Very bizarre. It’s clear Sark recognizes they could afford to lose this game, but that appears to have made him complacent. We now have MUCH less margin for error the rest of the way. Hope Sark, Arch, and the whole offense learn from this and continue to get better.

If you had told me that we would double up their rushing yards, hold Sayin to 126, and hold J Smith to under 50, I would have told you that we probably won by 10+.

Dumb question: is it time to take a long look at AJ Milwee? He has had two #1 overall qb recruits, plus two mid/high four-stars in Card and Murphy. Arch had a lot of the same mechanics issues today that Quinn had: side-arming throws, throwing off his back foot, bad footwork under pressure. It’s unacceptable that he has not produced an elite qb in 5 years with all this talent. Not saying Arch won’t get there, but it almost felt like he regressed compared with last year. Milwee (and Sark) are dramatically underperforming relative to other position coaches on campus.

I mean, Dabo and Saban ain’t bad…but he clearly does have trouble scheming his offense against great head coaches with great defenses and equal talent. I am shocked by how conservative he was today. I thought for sure he would try to maximize Arch’s best assets (his legs and the deep ball).

Agreed. This OSU defense is legit, but it’s not as good as last year’s OSU D and I don’t think they’re nearly as disruptive as Georgia’s from last year.

The elephant in the room: Sark has an elite opposing HC problem. He is now 0-6 vs Day, Smart, and DeBoer. I’m sure he will break that streak at some point, but the one constant through all of those losses is Sark. He has won some big games against great coaches, but time for him to evolve as a coach.

This team felt like a reflection of its head coach: a lot of belief that they could just roll in and win.

Some positives from me: Rushing for 166 yards on 4.5 ypc while holding them to 77 on 2.3 ypc bodes very well. Also, it’s not like Sayin ripped us apart. 126 yards through the air against the best WR room in the nation. Held the best offensive player in the country to under 50. 200 total yards. This is championship D. The offense will come together with time. If we are able to stop the run like THAT against OSU, I really think we could be special this year.