How will we ever beat Mighty Tejas?

Dahobbs said:

Horn here, some random thoughts:

1. Washington has a very good team and my impression is that this is the worst matchup for Texas out of the other 3 playoff teams. The primary reason for that is your receivers versus our secondary. But when I say worst matchup, I don't necessarily mean that it presents the biggest problems for Texas. What really bugs me about this matchup is I view it as a high delta game. I'm pretty confident I know how a matchup with Alabama or Michigan would play out: a grind with one team or the other taking a late lead. Washington brings a bit more variation into the mix. I could easily see the Washington offense and Penix going off like it did early in the season and against Oregon the second time. If combined with a lull by the Texas offense (a not uncommon occurrence this season), it could result in a lopsided score. On the flip side, if Texas stops the run game with a honest front (as it has done all season) and Washington tries to force the issue, Washington could easily find itself having to dig out of a large hole late. Similarly, if we see the Washington that played in many of the non-Oregon games, it could also get ugly. Point being, I think the distribution of possible outcomes is much more diverse in this matchup than the others.

2. I see some posters here believe they are playing the same Texas team from last year. That was a mediocre team that had 4 losses in the regular season, several of them being quite bad. That was also a team with essentially a 1st year QB that hadn't played meaningful football for several seasons. With the heart and soul of the offense, NFL draft picks Bijan Robinson and Roschon Johnson, out of the game, and with our only deep threat (Worthy) playing with a broken a hand, the offense was a shell of itself and had no real identity in the game. Bijan hid a lot of warts in the run blocking for a young oline and losing him prevented it from having any real success. On the defensive side, the Longhorns were incredibly thin at linebacker. Although the unit performed well against the run during the year, much of that was built on focusing on stopping the run during the year and heavily relied upon limiting the playing time of our backup linebackers. With Overshown out of the game last year, suddenly those backup linebackers were thrust into starting spots and did a poor job with run fits. We also had our edges get too far upfield multiple times, resulting in large lanes.

This year's teams is much better overall, but particularly has much more disciplined approach to shutting down the run game and can do so without loading the box thanks to Sweat and Murphy clogging up the middle. New additions Adonai Mitchell (WR), Anthony Hill (LB), CJ Baxter (RB), and Malik Muhammad (DB) have all had important roles on this team. The Mitchell addition in particular has been important for the offense to give teams another deep threat besides Worthy. We have also had a number of players make significant jumps in performance. Worthy was battling a hand injury all year and is a much improved player this year AND is finally in sync with Ewers. Quinn has improved tremendously from last year. He has gone from a 58% completion percentage last year to over 70% this year. Simultaneously his YPA improved from 7.4 to 9.0. His passer rating jumped from 132 to 162. Despite losing Bijan and this season Brooks, the running game hasn't missed a beat thanks to significantly improved run blocking, including from our receivers our TEs. Overall, this year's team averages 50 more yards per game on offense and gives up 50 less yards per game on defense.

3. Pass defense for both Washington and Texas. While neither is necessarily a great unit, both are better than the pure rankings suggest. For I believe different reasons, Washington and Texas have faced more pass attempts than pretty much any other teams. Washington is #1, facing 521 pass attempts. Texas is just below that at #4, facing 464 pass attempts. It terms of pass efficiency defense, both units are actually quite respectable: Washington is ranked 30 and Texas is ranked 33. I believe for Washington that number of pass attempts is largely a function of who you've played AND (especially early on) trying to keep up with Washington's scoring. For Texas it is largely a function of teams have minimal success running and realizing they need to throw to the move the ball. Both teams also have 16 ints on the year. For Texas, I can tell you that our primary weakness is at safety. Our choices have been to either play guys that know where to be, but don't necessarily have the speed to be there, or to play guys with speed but that are constantly out of position. Our corners are actually pretty good, and some of the young guys have played really well in spots. We also have had difficulties in zone coverage, having a number of busts due to lack of communication between different levels of the defense (Anthony Hill is a really good linebacker that is really bad in coverage). We have also had a number of injuries over the year that have kept the secondary from fulling jelling as a unit. Curious your view on your secondary.

4. No game prediction here, but just something for those of you who think this is going to an easy game to consider: last year a significantly worse Texas defense held Penix to a pretty marginal game (59% completion percentage, 5.2 YPA, 72 passer rating). I expect he'll play much better the second time around. But I also expect y'all will not have much success on the ground this time. Also, watch out for Jayden Blue when he is in at running back for Texas. He may be the second faster player in the game after Worthy. Like Brooks last year, expect him to house one, probably on a screen pass, at some point in the game.