Texas Football: What we learned from win over Kansas

Rushing attack can’t do everything

it was hard to tell what the game plan was for the Texas football ground game with the shoulder injury to Ehlinger modifying the usage for each weapon. Ehlinger leads the Horns in rushing touchdowns this year and rushing yards last year. Having Ehlinger’s threat on the ground mostly subsided, the running game was left pretty much exclusively in the hands of freshman Keaontay Ingram and senior Tre Watson.

In his final regular season in his collegiate career, Watson led Texas in rushing yards again. Watson was a big factor to the Horns locking down the victory over Iowa State in the second half last week. He continued his productive ways with 79 rushing yards while averaging 5.6 yards per carry. A significant mark for Watson all year was his ability to consistently pick up chunk yardage and ware down opposing defenses.

Ingram is more of an explosive running back that is developing his skill set to become a more complete player. His production and workload slowed in the past two weeks with Watson leading the way. Last week, Ingram posted 57 rushing yards on 12 carries. This week, he had 51 yards on 13 carries. He also didn’t have a single touchdown on the ground against both Iowa State and Kansas.

If the Texas offense proved anything in this game, it’s that it needs a balanced offense to thrive. When there was no threat from the passing game and Kansas was able to load the box, the ground game couldn’t do much. That was partly due to a down performance from the offensive line where it should’ve dominated in the trenches.