Are Texas Longhorns Fans Being Unreasonable?

Is it wrong for Texas Longhorns fans to be frustrated?

As predicted in the aftermath of the shutout in Ames, today I read the first “Texas fans are being unreasonable” post in defense of Charlie Strong. Once again, one of the professional pundits has come galloping in to defend Strong and his staff in the wake of yet another black eye by telling all of us fans how unrealistic we are being.

With all due respect, I’m tired of hearing it.

Is it unreasonable to expect, after 21 games, that THE University Of Texas be competitive? Is it too much to ask for this program to actually show up 12 Saturdays out of the year? Is it unrealistic to expect a guy making more than most of us can fathom to produce something more than what we’ve gotten so far, for his team to show some concrete signs of improvement? I don’t think so.

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Most of us knew that this team would struggle, that the talent base had eroded (though I think some people overstate the talent deficit) and that the culture had to be changed. We prepared ourselves for this possibility. Yet, when the head coach himself says that 6-7 will never happen again, we expected that he was talking about getting better, not worse. Strong set that expectation, we the fans are merely holding him to it.

I personally have swallowed my urge to post unreasonable stories several times. I have toyed often with the idea of comparing Strong to other highly regarded coaches in their second year, but each time I have thought better of it for one reason or another. One example is Bob Stoops at OU, who took over from John Blake, perhaps the worse major college head coach ever, and won a National Championship in year two. However, when I began researching the piece I discovered that Blake, while an awful coach, was an excellent recruiter and left Stoops with many integral pieces to build around. That changed my perspective.

So as talk of Strong’s leaving begins to swirl again, let me attempt to take this issue on from the viewpoint of a fan who is looking at things logically, not emotionally. A fan who loved the Strong hire and desperately wants him to succeed. Yet, also as a fan who has admittedly had his faith shaken to the core. These are my issues with Strong and I don’t think that I’m being unreasonable.

Failure to identify and correct repeated, obvious failures

This happens on multiple of levels. One is personnel. How many times do we have to read post game breakdowns where we’re subjected to “Doyle/Flowers got beat repeatedly”? They get overpowered. They miss easy stunts/twists. They do a poor job of engaging. I read one analyst say that Flowers stands around more piles than any offensive lineman he’s ever seen.

Why? If this is a repeated problem, and it is, why is Flowers still playing? If the coaching staff tried different units and had to come back to Doyle/Flowers because that was the best option, that would be one thing. We haven’t seen that. I’d like to see Jake Raulerson or Tristan Nickelson or Elijah Rodriguez get some meaningful playing time. Let’s at least look at some other options in a real game and see if we can find a better solution. That’s not happening. At this point, expecting anything better from Doyle and Flowers is just foolish.

Or how many times do we have to see Jonathan Gray run into a pile or John Bonney get schooled before someone on the staff finally realizes that these guys are getting more playing time than they should? Again, let’s give some of the younger guys a chance under the lights and see if someone shines.

I’m a big believer in sending a message by benching a player. There are several players who could probably benefit from getting yanked out of a game for a little bit, maybe even being held out of a game altogether, as a way to make a point. At the very least, it would show that Strong is fed up enough to do something as opposed to continually throwing the same group out there and getting the same results.

The coaching staff isn’t immune either. Twice now we’ve seen Jay Norvell completely lose his mind as a play caller. He attacked a TCU team weak up the middle with…sideways passes? He attacked a weak Iowa State secondary with…sideways passes? (Greg Davis approves!) He abandoned the power running attack that had supposedly become our identity for no reason and never went back to it.

And there’s Vance Bedford, continuing to throw ineffective blitzes at teams when he knows his defense struggles with mobile quarterbacks and run fits. Or playing soft, off coverage and allowing easy yards underneath. Had Texas implemented a similar strategy to the one Iowa State adopted for Jerrod Heard, Saturday’s game might have turned out differently.

At some point, doesn’t Charlie Strong take them aside and ask them to try something else? Why wait until after the game? Is there some rule that prohibits us from changing and adapting on the fly? Do in-game adjustments go against the Core Values?

That brings me to…

Failure to adapt and adjust

Texas has been outscored 124-57 in the third quarter during Strong’s tenure, including 69-34 this year. Texas has won the third quarter just four times in Strong’s 21 games and has only managed to score more than a touchdown once, against Rice when they scored 21. They’ve been shut out in the third quarter 12 times and held to a field goal five other times.

This staff routinely gets out-coached. They routinely lose the Xs and Os battle. You can argue that the strategy of the game is overrated and performance trumps strategy, but losing the strategy battle doesn’t help a team that needs all the help they can get.

In Mack Brown’s glory days, his teams were second half teams. They might fall behind but they almost always responded. With Strong, what you see is what you get. If they come out stinking up the place, you can just turn off the TV and go on your way because things aren’t going to get better. There’s no excuse for that.

Failure to prepare his team to play/inspire emotion and confidence

This team takes every fourth game off. We’ve been hearing from Coach Strong since Week 2 last year that he knew his team wasn’t ready to play. We’ve seen them repeatedly lay down in the face of adversity. They have never won a game in which the other team scored first.

The head coach may not be responsible for Xs and Os or even for player development and deployment but he is very responsible for making sure his team is ready to play, not just mentally but emotionally. It’s his responsibility to get them fired up.

Every coach fights the battle of the team that comes out flat. For Strong’s team, it’s a habit, not a happening. After watching his team play poorly in the first half once, Darrell Royal addressed his team at halftime by telling them “there’s a helluva fight going on out there and you’re not in it.”

About every third or fourth game you can count on Strong’s team to not be in the fight. In fact, you can count on them to play like a team of out of time hippies, sitting around a campfire singing “Imagine” while large, angry young men leave cleat marks on their faces.

The Third Quarter Has Been No Laughing Matter For Strong And His Team. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports

If Mack Brown’s teams were haunted by the Soft label, Strong’s teams often look like they just can’t be bothered and that is a direct reflection on the big guy.

Strong was supposed to change the culture of this program. He ran off a ton of players in the process of doing that. Yet here we sit, 21 games into Strong’s tenure and we’re still hearing that buy-in is a problem. Apparently the dismissals and suspensions haven’t gotten through. Does he need to send more people packing? Bury more people on the bench? He needs to do something.

As we stand right now, if I were asked to give a thumbs up/down vote on Strong returning next year, I’d have to go thumbs down. It’s not that I don’t like Strong, I do. I just don’t see any reason to continue with this charade. Maybe things get better next year. If they don’t, then Texas will have to make a change and the agony will continue and a year will have been wasted.

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Can Texas make enough of a statement in their last four games to change that opinion? Probably not for a lot of people. They could for me, but it is unlikely. They’d have to dominate Kansas the way Texas should dominate them. They’d need to upset either West Virginia or Tech and at least play well in the other and they’d have to battle Baylor much the way they did last year. I don’t expect Texas to beat Baylor, just be more competitive than they were against Notre Dame and TCU. And Iowa State.

To be honest, I don’t expect Texas to beat anyone the rest of the way, save Kansas. That utter lack of confidence in this team is reason enough to justify a change, should one occur. That is how far this program has fallen, with very few reasons to be encouraged. Even if there are, how can we trust them? We all thought that this team had turned a corner, only to find out that if was a lie. They turned a corner all right, and got hit by a bus.

If Strong returns I will support the Longhorns but he is going to have to win me over. He is going to have to prove that he’s managed to get on top of things that have so far gotten on top of him. Therein lies the greater problem. How can anyone buy in after what has happened this year? How can Strong save a struggling recruiting class? How can Strong change the attitude when he has failed to do so this far? How can we trust he’ll bring in the right assistants this time?

The answers to those questions will determine if a new day is around the corner or if the Texas Longhorns are beginning another fifteen year journey through the wastelands of mediocrity and irrelevance.

So given that as context, is it unreasonable that Longhorn fans are upset and reactionary? What the professional journalists fail to appreciate is that fans are reacting to the big picture. No matter how you turn it, the big picture is ugly. We’ve seen how good this team can be, but we also see a team that plays far below that standard too often. A team that lacks spirit and togetherness and toughness. We’ve all bought in at one point or another and we’ve all gotten burned for it. We, as a fanbase, have been burned too often and we’re tired of it and expressing that the only way we can.

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