Texas Football: 3 overreactions from humiliating loss to Iowa State

Defense keeps coming off the rails in the second half

It’s hard to completely blame the defense for what happened in the second half against Iowa State. The offense didn’t give them much of a chance at any point in the second half to get an actual break. Thus, the Texas defense was on the field for most of the second half, allowing Iowa State to let their big-time playmakers make big-time plays down the stretch.

Yet, the missed tackles still started to pile up in the second half, as did the number of times that the Longhorns were getting dominated in the trenches as the game wore on.

Texas finished up this game with a whopping 16 missed tackles on just 76 offensive plays that Iowa State ran in total. That’s way too many for this defense to get the job done against any team, let alone one as experienced as Iowa State.

The lack of a pass rush was still a problem for the Longhorns in this game. Blown coverage assignment and dreadful misreads from the linebackers and safeties also plagued the Texas defense in the second half.

Some bright spots did emerge in the chaos, though, for the Longhorns defense. Sophomore cornerback Jahdae Barron forced one fumble and mostly played well in this game as he got 21 snaps on defense, a season-best in Big 12 play for him. Defensive tackle Byron Murphy II and senior defensive back Anthony Cook also had decent outings in another poor performance for the Texas defense on this night.

Something has to give soon for new co-defensive coordinators/linebackers coaches Pete Kwiatkowski and Jeff Choate. This defense came into the season with too much returning experience to be seeing these types of second-half results in key Big 12 games.