Texas Football: 3 adjustments Sarkisian must make before Big 12 play
Rotate the defensive line more often to get a bigger push in the pass rush
One thing that did become clear for the Longhorns in the first three games of the regular season is the fact that the defensive front is not as good as we once thought. Throughout fall camp, there was a school of thought that the next-strongest position group for Texas on either side of the ball behind running back was along the defensive line.The loss to Arkansas definitely proved that Texas and new co-defensive coordinators/linebackers coaches Pete Kwiatkowski and Jeff Choate have a lot of work to do in the trenches.
One great example of how much Texas is struggling in the trenches comes with the play of redshirt junior nose tackle Keondre Coburn. As one of the most proven and productive returning starters for Texas on the defensive side of the ball this year, Coburn had big expectations in his fourth year playing for the team.
Yet, Coburn has half as many missed tackles as he has combined tackles. And he doesn’t have a single tackle for loss and/or quarterback pressure.
There is not a single defensive player for the Longhorns this season that has more than just a single sack and/or quarterback hit this season. The lack of pass rush extends to the ground game too, if the loss to Arkansas was any indication.
Texas does have a few other good examples of players who have sparked the pass rush in bits and pieces in the first three games. Transfer edge rusher Ovie Oghoufo has played well as one of the higher-graded Texas defensive players. And freshman linebacker/edge rusher D.J. Harris Jr. could get more reps as he got his first sack of the season (and of his career) against Rice.
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It’s clear that the Texas defensive front needs to change something, but there’s no easy fix it looks like. Texas only blitzed around a quarter of the snaps in the win over Rice, but it didn’t make much of a difference in the result of the passing play either way. Switching up the personnel and adjusting the blitz packages are obvious changes, but ones that must be made before facing Texas Tech this weekend.