Texas Football: Adimora and Ojomo highlight defense’s shaky tackling

There’s a lot for the new Texas football coaching staff to work on for both sides of the ball heading into the 2021 season. New Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian tried to bring in a well-rounded coaching staff around him on all sides of the ball, but maybe the largest level of progression is needed on defense.

That will largely be up to co-defensive coordinators/linebackers coaches Pete Kwiatkowski and Jeff Choate to fix this side of the ball in 2021. Former Texas defensive coordinator/safeties coach Chris Ash looked to have his side of the ball trending in the right direction down the stretch last fall.

Texas wasn’t the best defensively in the Big 12 last season, and they often had trouble pressuring the quarterback outside of what push was given from star junior outside linebacker/edge rusher Joseph Ossai. There wasn’t much production in the pass-rushing efforts that Texas got outside of Ossai.

Missed tackles were also a problem for the Longhorns at times last season. Texas has a number of defenders last season that missed at least 15-20 percent of their tackles last season, which is a problem. That is something that Kwiatkowski and Choate are going to have to clean up this year.

Last fall, two of the biggest offenders in terms of missed tackle rates were safety Chris Adimora and defensive end Moro Ojomo. Among Longhorns players that were on the field for at least 300 snaps last fall, Admiora and Ojomo were both among the four worst on the team in missed tackle rate.

Other offenders in this regard included junior linebacker DeMarvion Overshown and junior safety Caden Sterns. But Overshown was tasked with a role that commanded the utmost versatility at linebacker to anchor this defense, and Sterns will not be returning this fall.

Missed tackles are sure to be frequent for Overshown again in 2021, but hopefully his rate gets below 20 percent during his senior campaign.

How missed tackle offenders for Texas football like Moro Ojomo and Chris Adimora can clean things up in 2021?

We’ll start off with a focus on the 6-foot-1 and 215-pound former four-star recruit and sophomore safety Adimora. Last year, Admiora saw his role gradually increase under Ash with the Longhorns. He was on the field for more than 400 snaps for the first time in his career to date.

Adimora finished up last season with 41 combined tackles, 1.5 tackles for loss, no sacks, one interception, and three pass breakups. By all accounts, his counting stats looked pretty good last fall.

But it was the fact that Adimora had one of the highest missed tackle rates on the team, north of 22 percent, during his sophomore campaign. He missed a total of a dozen tackles, which was among the few Longhorns defenders that were in double digits in this stat category.

Something else that was problematic for Adimora was the way that the missed tackles trended for him as the season moved along. Adimora missed at least one tackle in each of his last four games played of the 2020 campaign. Two of those four games saw him miss three tackles in each, which is unacceptable at the safety position in the Big 12 and in the postseason.

One of those games was the close win over the West Virginia Mountaineers at home, and the other was the Alamo Bowl win over the Colorado Buffaloes.

It’s rare that a safety like Adimora will have just as many missed tackles as he has stops (13 last season).

Adimora just had some trouble for the Longhorns down the stretch in general last season. All of the 15 passing attempts that went his way in coverage assignments resulted in catches, which is a rare sight (and not in a good way for Texas).

A lot of those missed tackles for Adimora last year resulted in more than 300 yards after the catch that he allowed in coverage assignments last year. That was not a good sign of what’s to come in pass coverage for Admiora. Hopefully, the beginning of the 2021 season is better for Adimora than the way 2020 ended.

However, Ojomo’s issues in terms of missed tackles last year are at least must easier to diagnose than Adimora’s. Ojomo just flat out overran a lot of the plays he missed tackles on. Last fall, Ojomo registered 21 combined tackles, 2.5 tackles for loss, two sacks, and one pass breakup.

Although he was solid for Texas in generating pass rush at times, Ojomo did miss seven tackles, which was good for a missed tackle rate north of 30 percent. That’s not good enough for Ojomo to keep a hold of his projected starting role in 2021.

Ojomo ranked among the best pass rusher for the Longhorns last year in terms of total quarterback pressures, with 23 on the season. He also ranked among the five best pass rushers on the team with 0.2 sacks per game. That is more of a poor reflection on the Texas pass rush as a whole last fall, though. That has to improve in 2021.

Much like Adimora, there were times that Ojomo just couldn’t clean up the missed tackles down the stretch last season.

A positive way to spin Ojomo’s game near the end of last season is that nearly half of his missed tackles came in the Alamo Bowl win over Colorado, which might’ve just been one bad game. Instead of a clear emerging problem with missed tackles down the stretch like Adimora had, Ojomo had just one missed tackle in the last three games of the 2020 regular season.

The ratio of stops to missed tackles last year for Ojomo was also much better than that of Adimora. He had a dozen stops last year, compared to just those seven missed tackles. That shows that when Ojomo did make a play for Texas, it likely came at a key time.

One other area of Ojomo’s game that he must clean up this fall is with the penalties. He ranked among the worst Longhorns defensive players last year, with six penalties called on him.

The good news for Kwiatkowski, Choate, and the Longhorns is the fact that Texas does have a good amount of returning production among the defensive backs and the pass rush should be decent too. Where Texas lost some depth among pass rushers, they filled gaps by way of the NCAA Transfer Portal with additions like edge rusher Ovie Oghoufo and linebacker Ben Davis.

Texas finished up last season with a record of 7-3 (5-3 Big 12) under the direction of former head coach Tom Herman. Sark and the Longhorns are set to kickoff the 2021 regular season at home at DKR on Sep. 4 against Louisiana.