Sports

This will be short and sweet. Defense and special teams won the game. The best thing our offense did was to minimize turnovers with only one ill-advised Onyegbule throw. We scored off of four forced turnovers (including a pick 6), Quandre’s 81 yard punt return field position, and a great trick play call from Harsin. That’s it.

Our offense accounted for a miserable 237 yards and only 3.6 yards per play. Miserable.

QB

Case McCoy certainly won my respect as a competitor and he didn’t put us in a bind with interceptions as Ash did against Kansas State, but his overall play was poor aside from his improbable, opportunistic 25 yard run to set up the winning field goal. McCoy was 16 of 27 for 110 yards, scrambled from clean pockets at least a half dozen times, threw several balls poorly, and did little to inspire confidence in any reasonable Longhorn fan that he’s our answer at QB. He doesn’t keep his eyes down the field when he scrambles and he doesn’t like to step into balls in traffic. We all enjoyed the karmic payback for Cart McCry in their place in Aggieland’s Mostest Importantest Game Ever, but let’s not get carried away with the Tebowian All He Does Is Win meme. I don’t like where we are at QB and it’s a potential albatross on a team that’s setting up nicely otherwise for an enjoyable run in 2012-2014.

I was pleased to Ash get a few snaps, if only to keep him involved and to help nurture him out of shell shock.

RB

I thought Brown was banged up and 17-44 was as revealing of his blocking and A&M’s ability to ignore our passing game as much as his running. Cody Johnson was pretty amazing in ways that belie his 6 carries for 9 yards stat line. He created a touchdown and two short yardage conversions with sheer force of will and leg drive when he should have been stopped short. These guys didn’t have much to work with and created no value adds of their own. We miss Fozzy immensely and we miss Bergeron too. (more…)

As I was sitting in a post-Thanksgiving coma simultaneously enjoying fireronzook.com: The Sequel (let me pour one out in honor of the multiple first half 2-point conversion attempts over the years) and being mortified of the start of the Caleb Hanie Era in Chicago (*pounding head against the wall*), I started thinking about the last post that I wrote regarding the potential of a new BCS system that would only run the #1 vs. #2 national title game with all other bowls going back to their traditional tie-ins.  Effectively, it would be a reversion to the old Bowl Alliance system with the exception that the Big Ten and Pac-12 would send #1 or #2 ranked teams to the national championship game.  (Note that even though the Rose Bowl/Big Ten/Pac-12 triumvirate was technically not a part of the Bowl Alliance, the Big Ten still benefited by sending teams to Bowl Alliance bowls in 2 of the 3 years of the system’s existence.) It was subsequently reported that the genesis of such proposal was from Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany.  This is not surprising when you recall these quotes from last year about defending the BCS system: (more…)

Adjusted stats and ratings have been updated through yesterday’s games. LSU remains in the #1 spot of my EWP ratings with Alabama holding at #2. Stanford, Oregon, and Oklahoma State round out the Top 5 with the Sooners just behind the Cowboys.

Texas moves up to #18 with the dramatic win over A&M. The analyzer gives Texas a 52% chance of winning at Baylor next week. Checking out the Texas team page, the Texas defense is now a Top 5 unit on the season overall.

Thanks for passing along, Huck.