Texas Football: 5 takeaways from the crippling collapse vs. OU

Offensive line takes a major step back

It’s hard to know where to start with the faults of the offensive line. While Texas looked pretty good in the trenches early on in this game, it quickly fell off the rails in the second half. There were plenty of inconsistencies from certain position groups in this game for the Longhorns that embodied how this game went altogether.

But you can place a whole lot of blame on the offensive line for the lack of offensive production in the second half. Any production for Bijan came to a stop. And redshirt junior quarterback Casey Thompson came under constant pressure.

Two of the most problematic offensive linemen for the Longhorns in this game were first-year starters Andrej Karic and Jake Majors. Karic is coming in at a tough point of the season after Texas got the news that senior Denzel Okafor would miss the rest of the year with an injury he suffered last weekend in Fort Worth.

Okafor was starting to come on at the outset of Big 12 play, and losing him was a killer for the offensive line. Karic has potential over the long haul, but he was getting pushed around in the second half. Any creative pressures that Grinch drew up for the Sooners would often go unchallenged by the likes of Karic and Majors.

By the end of the game, Thompson was pressured more than eight times, and sacked on three occasions. That came after he was mostly kept clean in the first quarter.

To make matters worse, it looked like Majors was starting to get jumpy at untimely points in this game. He had two snap infractions where it looked like he just got anxious. That is not something the Longhorns can have happen from the anchor of the offensive line.

More so than anything else, Texas just has to hold up longer off the line of scrimmage. Texas was getting pushed around again in the second half. It started to look more like the version of the offensive line that showed up in the loss to Arkansas.