Texas Football: 3 overreactions from stunning upset loss to TCU
2) Overreactions from Texas football’s loss to TCU: Running back room is in trouble
By far the worst play that emerged from this game was the aforementioned Ingram fumble late in the fourth quarter. Ingram had quite the up and down drive for the Longhorns to essentially cap the win for the Horned Frogs. TCU saw Ingram go for a 52-yard catch and then another first down on the following running play.
But Ingram would fumble away the game for the Longhorns once they got to the goal line. It’s not like Ingram is accustomed to having fumbling problems, but this one in particular came at the worst time possible. That does really seem to be the way things go for Ingram in various parts of his game over the course of the last two years.
The most crucial drop of his career came at a key time in the Longhorns eventual loss to the defending National Champion LSU Tigers last season. That drop that Ingram had against LSU last year was just one of two in his career to date.
Back to the fumbling problems, or lack thereof, that Ingram had leading up to this game. He only had one other fumble that was lost coming into this Big 12 home opener against TCU. And this second fumble came at one of the worst times possible. This is not a great trend for Ingram, making mistakes only when it matters most.
And while sophomore running back Roschon Johnson was pretty efficient in this game, the skill position players as a whole for the Longhorns were pretty disappointing. The leading receiver in this game was tight end Jared Wiley, who had just over 60 yards on two catches, with no touchdowns.
The drop fest existed for a while for the Longhorns. After they didn’t have any drops in Week 2 in the win over the Texas Tech Red Raiders, they had three this weekend. And that was likely not a perfect metric of little help Ehlinger actually got from his skill position targets in this game.
This presents concern from both the running backs room, and all of the skill positions as a whole.