Texas Football: 3 takeaways from commanding win over No. 23 UL

Defense looks good, but missed tackles are still an issue

Texas will have a lot of potential to thrive on the defensive side of the ball this fall. Sark bringing in new co-defensive coordinators/linebackers coaches Pete Kwiatkowski and Jeff Choate was huge for Texas. And it helped to show what this defense can do against an experienced Louisiana offense this weekend.

One issue that still stuck out for the Longhorns on defense in this game, though, was missed tackles in the open field. That was namely a concern for the Texas linebackers when the Louisiana skill position players got out with room to run. A few Texas linebackers got outran in the 27-yard touchdown run from running back Chris Smith.

https://twitter.com/overtime/status/1434298379505385477

And the tackling looked really bad for Texas on the impressive 19-yard touchdown catch and run from Kyren Lacy. Missed tackles look like they could be an issue for some Texas linebackers in bigger roles such as David Gbenda and Ovie Oghoufo. But this is not the most experienced group of linebackers, and that showed at times this weekend.

The good news here is that the defense as a whole looked pretty good in this win over Louisiana. Texas allowed just 76 rushing yards, 2.6 yards per carry, and two total touchdowns from this experienced Louisiana offense.

The defensive line looked as advertised, often blowing up plays in the backfield. And in a game where the Texas defense raked in more than four sacks, you can’t argue with the results from the pass rush against a quarterback as elusive as Louisiana dual-threat senior Levi Lewis.