Colt and Will

The talk of the tubes today has been about the futures of Colt McCoy and Will Muschamp, the first saying he will stay and the latter being rumored to possibly be done at UT at the end of the season. It's unpleasant to think or talk about, but what if both decide to move on to arguably greener pastures? 

Colt:

For the immediate future of the program, this one will hurt the most. It's no breaking news that Colt is playing at a level unseen in the history of college football, but an argument can also be made about his readiness for the big leagues. The last thing any of us want is our own Troy Smith. We as Longhorn fans may be very willing to quickly forget about his 18 interceptions and 22 touchdowns in 2007 (he already has 19 TD's this season), but the organizations looking to offer up millions of dollars will most certainly be more critical. Typically, the most oft cited physical qualities that make for a great NFL quarterback are the strength of his arm and his size. After a summer well spent in the weight room Colt is 6'3/~220 lbs, and is therefore ideally sized to play quarterback professionally. Although he has dispelled most or all of the speculation that his arm isn't strong enough to be far better than good in college, his arm strength is still about a 9 when he needs to be at 10 to be a first day pick in the draft. Leave at the end of this season, and he'll most likely go in the second or third round, stay another year and he'll have more money than Jay Z.

Muschamp:

The loss of our favorite defensive coordinator to the glamour of head coaching may not be felt immediately, but he is a commodity we will sorely miss when we are once again forced to rely on our smart play calling rather than raw talent. Fortunately for us, we have enough young nasty talent that we will be decent for a season or two without Will, but it won't last forever if we don't replace (is there a better DC anywhere?) him with similar coaching prowess. The list of suitors is long and distinguished, including Washington State, Clemson, and Tennessee. The absolute slap-in-the-dick worst case scenario would be if he was snagged by someone we have to play against on a regular basis, specifically Texas A&M. As much as I loathe to say it, compared to Texas they have similar pay grades, facilities, recruiting grounds, and fan base. Plus, I don't think anyone can argue with the fact that the Aggies are in desperate need of a shot of energy, mainlined straight into their program's figurative eyeball, and Sherman just isn't it. As much as I'd hate to see him go, I would hate nothing more than seeing him fall into the crucible of  irrelevancy that is Texas A&M. If you really really need to go Will, please for the love of everything good go to the SEC AFTER THE SEASON IS OVER. And if he goes it will be to the SEC, because if it isn't Kansas State or Texas A&M, it surely won't be some non-super conference. 

The Good News:

Colt has gone on record to say "I'm going to play here for four years," and my feeling is if he says it, he means it. It's the "I'm going to sit down with my family and talk about it" speak that you need to watch out for.

With Muschamp, the only good news I can really think of is that he's said before that he's planning on staying a while because his wife is "tired of moving." Hopefully she's tired enough to forgo $1 million+ a year.

Three most important players

It is impossible to deny that the 2008 secondary is going to need to play out of their very talented minds in order for the Horns to be competitive in conference play this season. To me, however, the most important position, not only on defense, but for the entire team is going to be defensive tackle. The scary part? We have a junior, a senior, and a gaggle of goofy freshman listed at that position.

Muschamp to the rescue:

Will Muschamp already showed his worth during the spring game by moving Lamarr Houston inside to boost the speed and experience of the unit.  The health of Houston, along with Ben Alexander and Roy Miller, is paramount to the success of the pass rush, and therein the success of the defense this season. Look no further than the Giants to see what effective pressure from a speedy set of DT's can do against an otherwise unstoppable aerial assault.

I'm Back

Me:

After finally finishing the semester, graduating, getting a job, and moving to Houston, I am finally ready to start regularly writing for all my trusty readers (hi mom). Unfortunately and fortunately, I feel like I haven't missed much over the past few months in the land of Texas football. 

No news is good news:

Even though I get excited like Kirstie Alley at Golden Corral every time mb-tf.com blinks, news about college football players around this time of year is rarely positive, so I can't really complain.  Ken Rucker is earning every penny of his salary, as far as I'm concerned, by keeping Texas players off of the APD scanners. Let's not forget what happened last time there was a ton of football news during the summer.

What I have missed:

For the sake of making me feel like I'm caught up, I'm going to cover everything you need to know right here.

Texas Tech, Missouri, and Georgia are going to co-win it all in a BCS disaster, Tim Tebow is teh BEST, l1ke, EVAR, WVU pimp-slapped Rich Rodriguez, DollaWill Mu$champ is kickass,  and I met Quan Cosby on 6th Street and he was really really cool. 

Seriously, he was really friendly.

Keeping feeding the addiction

It's like football off-season Christmas today; mackbrown-texasfootball.com posted its latest installment of tracking the horns:

Offensive highlight of the interview:
We came back this spring with an attitude that we had some young guys and we had some guys that we needed to get tested, so we're doing a lot more hitting. The scrimmage the last Wednesday before spring break I think we had 125 snaps or something, and all of it was live. I can't remember in the 10 years I've been here that we've had that many live snaps in a scrimmage, but we were able to evaluate a bunch of different things because of it...

Like I said before, I love the idea, but for the sake of Will Muschamp's unreceded hairline I hope there aren't any major injuries like the ones that plagued the Longhorns' lines last year.

Defensive highlight of the interview:
Football really boils down to blocking on offense and getting a hat on a hat, and on defense, getting off blocks and making tackles, and that's what we’re really trying to emphasize and toughness issues.

It's as if Coach Muschamp is actually Big Brother and knows exactly what to say to pacify me. I bet they got Chris Jesse to write a "How not to get fired at Texas handbook." Even though it sounds ludicrously basic, he perfectly illustrates the two main issues I had with the Horns' defense last year. If I see one more Texas linebacker hug-and-slide-off someone with the ball in the backfield I might actually poop in my hand and throw it onto the field. Boom, bet you didn't see that coming Stephen McGee.

2008 Football Defense: Volume 3

Without a doubt, the unit hit hardest by graduation this year was the secondary. Not great when you take into consideration all the spread offenses the Horns will be seeing this season. At the cornerback position only Brandon Foster graduated. At safety all but one, junior Ishie Oduegwu, graduated. And he's a strong safety, a position generally geared more towards stopping the run than the pass. How is it possible that there is such a huge hole in the depth chart at safety? Because Texas's secondary is straight hood. Robert Joseph and James Henry would have alleviated many of the Horns' safety-related woes, but unfortunately they had a hard time staying out of trouble. The Man stickin' it to Texas's secondary: Mushcamp 3 Lackluster Defense 2

The Good Guys' Defense: Secondary

The biggest complaint about last season's secondary, besides their ineffectual pass coverage, was their short stature. Cornerbacks Brandon Foster and Ryan Palmer are 5'9 and 5'10, respectively, which made it simple for other teams to create mismatches down field with taller receivers (see: Crabtree, Michael).  Even though losing one of the lollypop kids hurts in terms of experience, it will be nice to see cornerbacks starting for Texas that can ride all the rides at Six Flags Fiesta (zing).  Using the nickel package to play more of the better physically equipped cornerbacks: Muschamp 4 Lackluster Defense 2

Cornerbacks

Returning cornerbacks from last season with any sort of playing time are Ryan Palmer, Curtis Brown, Chykie Brown, and Deon Beasley. Curtis Brown had arthroscopic knee surgery last week and will be missing all of spring practice. All four of our returning cornerbacks had meaningful play time last season, and should look much improved over last year's unit. I watched the first spring practice and Chykie Brown stuck out to me as one of the strongest players on the entire defense.  He's 6'1, fast, and really showed a sense of purpose in pass coverage situations. Deon Beasley may very well find himself sitting on the bench behind the Browns and Palmer, as he had a fairly mediocre showing at the open spring practices. Based on what I have observed, the three (nickel defense) starting cornerbacks are Ryan Palmer, Curtis Brown, and Chykie Brown. Incoming freshman D.J. Monroe will likely play cornerback, and all scouting reports say he is ludicrous-speed-fast. Having serious competition from newer players: Mushcamp 5 Lackluster Defense 2

Safeties

The biggest question-mark in the '08 Longhorn defense is who in the world is going to play safety. Ishie, the only returning safety, played in all 13 games in 2006 and 2007, and never intercepted a single pass or caused any sort of turnover. He's also out for the Spring practices due to a shoulder injury. "Starting" in his place during the practices were Earl Thomas and Ben Wells, neither of whom have ever seen the field in a game. Incoming freshman Aaron Williams is an elite prospect according to most scouting services and those who have seen him play in high school who will likely see playing time immediately. Let's hope he is really that good. And doesn't get arrested over the summer just to fit in with last year's young safeties. Redshirt freshman Christian Scott is also out for some of spring practice and hasn't played in a game. True freshman Blake Gideon is a very raw safety who will most likely redshirt his freshman year to improve his skills. Having Duane Akina focus on nothing but coaching the young secondary: Mushcamp 6 Lackluster Defense 2

Mack Fever

Mack Brown is saying some things right now that are making me very very happy. A few things that have made me particularly gleeful include:

"We have not defended the pass as we've liked to the last two years and we've done a good job against the run, so we've got to continue to stop the run but do a better job of disguising, [...] maybe blitzing more and also work on disguising some blitz and backing out to try and confuse the quarterback."

"We need to get more pressure on the passer and get more takeaways on defense. I think one of things that Will (Muschamp) will bring to us is more nickel and dime defenses with more new looks."

"We will start the NOSs (Not Our Standard) today. "

"Brian Orakpo, Lamarr Houston and Roy Miller are going to play well and you know the linebackers are going to play well. You know Chris Ogbonnaya is going to know what to do and handle things right, Vondrell (McGee) looked good, John Chiles and Colt (McCoy) looked good"

"That's why we told them not to take a lazy step and not to take a day off because they may not get back out on the field."

If this attitude is actually being reflected by the coaches in practice, then I have a good feeling about next year. Everything coming from Belmont is sounding spot on considering the young team Texas will be fielding next year. The only part of that whole press conference that threw me a tiny bit was "blitzing more." I would have liked him to say "blitzing more effectively," because for Duane Akina's mustache's sake, our defense blitzed on way too many downs last year and everyone saw it coming everytime.