Texas Football: What we learned from win over Kansas

Secondary seemed to recover from down period

The way the Texas football secondary showed out against the Oklahoma State Cowboys, West Virginia Mountaineers, and Texas Tech Red Raiders was less than stellar. The Texas secondary gave up more than 1,100 passing yards in those three games. As a result, the Horns lost two of those three games, and nearly fell shot to Texas Tech too.

The addition of junior safety Brandon Jones to the secondary after having some injury issues the last three weeks helped a ton. Jones took some of the pressure off the shoulders of true freshman safety Caden Sterns and senior cornerback Kris Boyd. Injuries to key defensive backs like Jones caught up with Texas after staying mostly healthy early in the regular season.

A key slip up from Jones came on special teams, when he fumble a punt return in the first half that was luckily recovered by senior wide receiver Jerrod Heard. Outside of that mishap, Jones played an important role for the Texas defense along with Sterns. Jones and Sterns led the Horns in total tackles and sat among the leaders in tackles for loss. They combined for 15 total tackles and two tackles for loss.

We can’t gloss over the performance of the secondary, and just the defense as a whole, without giving some recognition to the pass coverage. The linebacking corps came up with the only interception of the Jayhawks in this game. Texas also held the Kansas passing game under 160 yards. Kansas only mustered one passing touchdown and a completion percentage at 51.4 percent.