Texas Football: 3 reasons the Longhorns can dominate Louisiana
Extra high safety can help Texas minimize damage of the Louisiana passing game
If Texas can lock down on the Louisiana ground game, that will force the game on the arm of Lewis. That is likely a good way for new co-defensive coordinators/linebackers coaches Pete Kwiatkowski and Jeff Choate to try and win this game for the Longhorns. Lewis is a good quarterback with plenty of wins under his belt in his four years at Louisiana.
But Lewis is not known for dropping back and picking apart opposing defenses at all levels of the field with his arm. That’s not the way that Louisiana was able to win games last year.
That doesn’t necessarily mean, though, that the Longhorns’ defense can take this Louisiana passing game likely. While none of the top three Louisiana wideouts registered even 400 receiving yards last season, that trio is lengthy and explosive in the red zone. Texas really has to watch out for a burgeoning talent in sophomore 6-foot-3 wideout Kyren Lacy.
Where Texas has to be most on alert when defending the pass for Louisiana is on the intermediate and corner routes. Louisiana doesn’t have that many explosive and agile athletes, so Texas shouldn’t have to worry much about getting beat off the line of scrimmage in the screen game. But Louisiana does have the height and depth to beat Texas on a few different looks on intermediate and corner routes.
A crutch that Texas can rely on is the extra high safety that can drop down to cover on some of these mid-level routes. That responsibility will largely fall on the likes of either sophomore Jerrin Thompson or senior B.J. Foster. The former five-star recruit and proven safety Foster can really be a difference maker for Texas this weekend.
Foster brings back 122 career combined tackles, 15 tackles for loss, six sacks, two picks, 10 pass breakups, and two forced fumbles for the Longhorns this fall. That can help when Texas is having to prepare to defend what looks to be a plethora of intermediate routes from the likes of Lacy, Jalen Williams, etc.
There’s enough here for Texas to know what Louisiana does in the passing game, and how to effectively defend it this weekend. Foster should be able to spearhead that effort.
Next. 3 players that will benefit from Hudson Card starting at QB. dark
Moreover, Lacy caught just 26 percent of the balls that were thrown his way of 20+ yards. But he caught 63 percent of the passes that were thrown his way on medium routes (10-19 yards), good for roughly 250 yards and three touchdowns. The same could be said for Williams (65 percent of receiving yards were from intermediate routes) in terms of frequency of balls thrown to the middle level of the field.