Texas Football: 3 reasons OU will beat the Longhorns in Red River

3) Why OU will beat Texas football: Drops and missed tackles

The first reason up on this list isn’t a knock against Oklahoma, but one against the Longhorns. Texas pretty consistently got worse with both missed tackles and drops over the course of the last two weeks. They set a season-high in drops last week, with three.

And there’s a few players on the defensive side of the ball, like talented junior linebacker DeMarvion Overshown, that have a mind-boggling amount of missed tackles on the season already. Overshown already has 11 missed tackles through three games this season. He does have an impressive mark of 13.0 total tackles, three tackles for loss, and three pass deflections.

But that’s never good when you have almost as many missed tackles as you have total tackles on the season.

In the win over Texas Tech alone, Texas had more than 15 missed tackles. They are also getting poor tackling in the open field at times in the secondary. Junior cornerback D’shawn Jamison is one of the team leaders in missed tackles from any defensive back, with three already.

Jamison is off to a pretty slow start this season in general.

On the offensive side of the ball, drops became a notable problem last weekend. Sophomore slot wide receiver Jake Smith got off to a slow start at times in his season debut, as he had one offensive pass interference called against him and one very costly drop.

Smith must be better this weekend, and he will get some pressure taken off his shoulders with the return of redshirt freshman wide receiver Jordan Whittington to the receiving corps.

All in all, drops and missed tackles were really costly for the Longhorns in the last two weeks, and might be again in Red River on Oct. 10.