Bunk Moreland

We all love it here because from the beginning it’s just been a bunch of folks who want to talk about Texas sports without any drama or conflict. That’s what makes this place special (along with the best-in-the-business content). I think 99% of users fully support this message and your board moderation policies, Bobby. Keep up the amazing work!

There is no doubt that Sark built something special that was on the verge of being a machine like Ohio State and Georgia. But it’s also extremely clear that Sark got complacent amid all his success, and he took it for granted that it could just keep rolling on auto-pilot. His complacency led to hubris and arrogance, which led him to not self-evaluate, particular on the offensive side of the ball. He implicitly trusts guys like Flood and Banks, and he let them coast, which led to dramatically underperforming on offense and special teams. He thought his roster was set, ignoring the red lights in the offseason and the incredible team youth, and did not adequately address needs in the portal. I also wonder if becoming a dad has affected his drive and obsession that shaped his first 4 years at Texas. That’s not a knock against him—my productivity nosedived when I became a dad. But if so, it really shows how bad he was at delegating control. Regardless of the answer, he’s going to need to do a lot of soul searching and self-evaluation after the season.

Yes, but at this point I don’t think we only lose 2 games. If this o-line doesn’t get any better, we are losing 4 games. We might lose more if the defense is this bad again. To be honest, THAT was the most shocking part of this loss for me. I expected us to struggle against that Florida D—not in a million years would I have expected us to look so terrible stopping the run and explosive pass plays. Finally, WHERE IS THE PASS RUSH???? Most of us thought this team would be the most explosive pass rush defense at Texas this century. They have been completely absent.

I was originally going to pick something like 38-13, but I chickened out and went 9-6. Talk about extreme waves of emotion leading into this game…

Texas 9-6. It’s gonna be wet and sloppy in the swamp.

It would be pretty entertaining if we had Silas Bolden slipping and sliding around in Gainesville.

CJ when people insult Mateer on the board

The closer we get, the more convinced I am of this. Bring it on—it’ll feel that much sweeter when we beat their ass.

I will follow the old saying “beware Gerrys bearing links” and stay away.

Joe Z is injecting this into his veins

The key to beating them is getting pressure on Reed and stopping the run. If he has all day, Reed can hit some big throws. But he turns it over if you can pressure him. Their D was better against Auburn than I expected, but they also got shredded by Notre Dame. I still like our chances, especially in Austin.

That was my first thought too, but I think Quinn might have better BGO than Sorrell.

Also, I keep saying it but we all collectively need to stop judging Arch as a college football player. The time to do that will be the end of 2026, when he’s had two full years as a starter to develop. Trying to evaluate a young player week to week is short-sighted, and yet that is precisely what the national pundits (and many Texas fans) are doing with Arch. What we should be doing is looking for an upward trend. I think we will know a lot more (but not everything) about who Arch is as a player by the end of this season. In the meantime, is he showing us SOMETHING every single week? Is he improving at the little things, like footwork and mechanics and how he responds to adversity? If the answer is yes, then I don’t care if he completes 55% of his passes and throws an INT in any given game—is he getting cumulatively better?

Yeah, I don’t want any sneers from the national pundits about how Texas stomped Florida with their backup QB. They’re already going to say “oh well, Florida is now 1-4, so we don’t really know that much about Texas since they beat a bad team.” Which is completely disingenuous, but we might not get any credibility going forward in any game unless/until we beat Georgia on the road. That’s pretty much our first chance to prove that we are for real (or not).

Hey, the nation can whine about Texas missing all these starting QBs until the cows come home. If it increases our chances of making the CFP, then it doesn’t bother me in the least.

I think we are going to see Simmons and Hill elevate their play and look more like they did last year. Gonna be a long day for Lagway.

It’s his way of deflecting from the truth you discovered of his true allegiance to the Sheep Humpers of Dead Dog Field.

Don’t you have a swimming pool to jump into?

I feel more confident today that we should be able to slow OU’s offense. They couldn’t run the ball against a 1-man front lol. And if you contain Mateer’s legs, they have a hard time moving the ball. But damn is their defense salty. We’d better improve considerably on offense over the next 3 weeks.

Yeah, that missed DPI was turrrrble. Would’ve been Auburn 1st and goal inside the 5.

So far his PFF numbers are like a combination of a slightly less disruptive Collins stopping the run and slightly less disruptive Broughton in pass rush. More complete than either of them in terms of combined PFF grades. Color me extremely impressed. Baker is a wizard.

Too many people are ready to throw Arch to the wolves. I still think he has an incredibly high ceiling and he will improve by leaps and bounds once the game slows down for him. It’s a long season. We don’t know what he’s going to look like at the end of it. But we should probably withhold our final verdict of Arch as a college player until the end of 2026, when he’s had two full years as the starter. I suspect this is all going to feel like a weird fever dream by then.

The remarkable thing to me is that this program has had many of the same issues since Sark arrived and none of them have been addressed. The extremely experienced 2024 OL couldn’t get any push in the run game against any decent defensive lines. It took three high-level nfl players (Bijan, Roschon, and Brooks) who were elite at breaking tackles to overcome the problem. I think Sark looked at the results (really good running game 2021-2023) and trusted his buddy Flood without actually reviewing the tape and the advanced analytics. This has been a problem for years that was going to rear its head the second either the OL or RB experience or talent dipped just a bit. This year, unfortunately, both happened. The same is true of penalties. The number of penalties the OL creates is completely unacceptable. That’s a Kyle Flood problem. But we also get a ton of ST penalties and boneheaded plays. That’s a Banks problem. The same is true of Milwee and qb development / mental makeup. I’ve said it before, but Sark has a problem with delegating too much to his buddies on the coaching staff and not holding them accountable. When the same problems keep popping up year after year across multiple position groups and dozens of different players, the problem is systemic. And it stems from the coach who oversees the entire offense.

Dumb question: should Sark get Arch warmed up by calling a bunch of early deep shots? Just like he warmed up Quinn by calling a bunch of short, quick throws and screens, which was Quinn’s comfort zone, I wonder if it would get Arch going to hit a couple of deep shots. Sark barely called any deep shots in the first half against UTEP, but maybe that would actually benefit Arch. Some combination of giving him 7-10 designed runs and 5-10 deep throws a game might get him some success and feeling a rhythm.