Bunk Moreland

Self-inflicted wounds. Penalties, turnovers, and drops. Those drops from Wingo and Washington were so bad. They look incredibly sloppy.

What I want to know is how Sark thought it would be wise to come into the season surrounding his inexperienced qb with a bunch of inexperienced receivers. Wingo looks RAW. We had a chance to go get some electric dudes out of the portal. Outside of Livingstone, Arch doesn’t have any reliable or explosive receivers to throw to right now. Inexcusable.

Shame on you for using a clean-shaven photo of Gerry. Gerry’s already looking rough and SJSU hasn’t even stopped Sark’s first RZ attempt yet.

Daddy Bobby doesn’t give CJ the keys to the lambo

I honestly expected more from him. He’s clearly very talented but has a long way to go to be a 3-down DT.

For what it’s worth, here’s how I would do the rankings (clearly could change by end of year): 1. Collins 2. Brevard 3. Broughton 4. January (2025 version) 5. Lole 6. Kanu 7. Norton 8. Shaw I think by end of year, Watson could be much higher on the list. But he didn’t play great against OSU and showed some concerning tendencies.

Based on what we saw against OSU, rank your top 8 interior DL off the combined 24/25 teams.

Does Jonah Williams return punts/kicks in any of the next three games? Is there anything he can do to win that starting role by the UF game?

The ridiculous thing is that we didn’t want to “throw away” a scholarship at Zion Branch, but we ended up with a free scholarship over the summer that we gave to a non-contributing walk-on LB (no offense to him). Maybe Sark didn’t buy into Branch or didn’t think he fit his system, but that feels like a huge missed opportunity given the lack of explosiveness in our offensive skill talent.

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).