Texas Football: 5 takeaways from the Longhorns 2019 regular season

2. Secondary was one of the worst we’ve ever seen

This year’s passing defense for the Texas football program under third-year defensive coordinator Todd Orlando was less than stellar. The Longhorns allowed more than 306 passing yards per game and two touchdowns. They actually allowed more passing yards than they racked up, and they had one of the nation’s 30 most efficient offenses this season.

There rightly should be a lot of pressure on Orlando’s shoulders to get his side of the ball together for the postseason. This Longhorns defensive backfield has to have a stout bowl game for him to have solid job security heading into the offseason. His pass defense was tied for No. 97 in the country in yards per pass attempt (8.0).

Texas ironically enough ranked at No. 97 in the nation too in opponent passer rating (at 144.0). Sitting tied for No. 98 in the nation with allowed completion rate (above 63 percent) was not what the Longhorns were looking for either. Even Texas Tech and the Oklahoma Sooners ranked more than 30 spots higher among FBS programs in the country in opponent completion rate.

Whether it was a lack of playmakers or just young and injuries in the secondary, this Texas pass defense has to get better. While they were really bad at times last season, the numbers didn’t show up as bad as this year.

This all comes back to the point that the Longhorns didn’t make many plays at all in the secondary. They had less than 10 picks on the regular season and ranked at No. 130 in the nation in busted drive rate (amount of opposition drives that resulted in zero or negative yards).