It was only 11 months ago that the Texas Longhorns stood on the Rose Bowl field looking up at the scoreboard. 3:14 left on the clock and a 3-point game. Freshman Garrett Gilbert had come off the bench in the first meaningful action of his career and had shown the type of promise that teams dream of from their top recruits.
Yes, Colt McCoy was leaving and so was Jordan Shipley, but the torch had been passed. The team was going to be ok. And this wasn’t a case of looking through the world with burnt orange-colored glasses. Folks in Austin weren’t the only ones who thought this team could still hang. The Associated Press had Texas ranked 5th in the country to start 2010. The coaches had the Horns 4th.
We were all wrong. This team lacked the heart that others have had. It seemed to lack leadership and it definitely lacked strategy. The vaunted recruiting classes of the last few years failed to unearth its promised superstars. This can’t be laid at the feet of Garrett Gilbert, either. He hasn’t been the success story Texas fans hoped for, but he hasn’t been placed in the best position to succeed, either. Dropped passes, questionable play-calling and a sub-standard offensive line have made his sophomore season difficult.
Put those ingredients together: lack of heart and leadership, poor game-planning and play-calling, underachieving talent. The result is obvious. Losses to Oklahoma and Oklahoma State – Baylor and Texas A&M – these things you could almost explain away if they were close games… they were all ranked teams. But losses to teams like UCLA, Kansas State and Iowa State? These are the things that show you that you have a major problem.
And now I see Longhorn Nation in a panic. I see fans who don’t care about the games anymore. I hear people say things like, “Who cares? We suck anyway.” So soon after standing on the precipice of greatness?
Look, I get it. We’re spoiled. We had one of the greatest runs in the history of college football. 9 straight seasons with at least 10 wins? That’s the type of thing that will make you awfully comfortable with winning and losing will start to feel pretty foreign.
But remember how we got here?
In 1997 this team went 4 and 7. That’s right… worse than this year. And the mess started with a disgusting 66-3 loss to UCLA. That team lost to Baylor and Oklahoma State, too. The ’97 bunch lost 4 in a row before getting a win in the 2nd to last week only to lose to a ranked Texas A&M team to finish the year. Sound familiar?
Do you know how long it took for the Texas Longhorns to recover from that disaster season and get back to relevance? Exactly no time flat. In 1998 the ‘Horns won 9 games and finished ranked 15th in the country and were Cotton Bowl champions.
So what happened? A change in the coaching staff. John Mackovic was out – and in from North Carolina came Mack Brown. Ricky Williams was the best player on that ’98 team. But he was also the best player on the ’97 team. The right mix of coaches and a young Major Applewhite put in the position to succeed and they turned it around in a heartbeat. Two more solid 9-win seasons followed without Ricky and then the 10-win streak that led to three BCS games, two title games and one National Championship.
Changes are coming again. Mack Brown isn’t going anywhere, but that’s ok. The point here, friends, is that Mack Brown knows how to do it. He knows when things aren’t working and when he figures it out and gets the right people in the right situations it can get back to good in a big hurry.
I hear the whining. “He should have fired Greg Davis years ago!” Hard to do when you’re in the national championship discussion every year. I’ve even heard people asking if maybe it’s Mack’s time to go.
As it turns out, it’s Mack’s time to shine. He’s done it before and he can do it again. He'll find great football minds to mold great kids into great football players. This team will find leadership and will scratch and claw their way back to the upper rung of the sport.
Keep the faith, Texas fans. Next year will be here before you know it… and there’s every reason to think that it could surprise a lot of people.
No comments:
Post a Comment