New Coach’s Slow Start Not Unprecedented, but Strong Remains Committed to Ideals, Success

Texas fans expecting Charlie Strong to wave a magic wand and immediately set the Longhorns back in the nation’s elite may need to take a trip back to the last new coach’s initial season.

These Longhorns’ first two games don’t seem all that different from the first two that Mack Brown coached back in 1998. And the third may look similar as well. While similarities exist, they may be the only ones. The team Brown inherited from John Mackovic featured plenty of NFL talent and stayed fairly healthy. Strong’s first Longhorn team couldn’t be any further away.

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The similarities:

• Both Brown and Strong debuted with convincing wins while utilizing quarterbacks who simply needed to manage the game. The 1998 Horns, led by Ricky Williams, blasted New Mexico State 66-36. Williams kicked off his Heisman campaign with a 215-yard, 6-touchdown performance. Richard Walton managed the offense well, completing 15-of-21 passes for 282 yards. Strong’s Longhorns topped North Texas 38-7, using a dominating defensive effort, wrote Mike Finger in the Houston Chronicle, and solid game management by David Ash, who passed for one score and ran for another.
• Both Brown and Strong lost their second game, one in which many felt revenge would be the theme of the day, and their quarterback. In 1998, Texas traveled to UCLA to rid the fanbase of the memory of “Rout 66,” the 66-3 beating the Bruins put on Texas at home in 1997. While the Horns lost by a more respectable 49-31 score, the loss did little to soothe the bitterness from 1997, nor did an injury to Walton. Last week, Strong’s team had hoped to avenge last year’s embarrassing defeat at BYU, when the Cougars decimated Brown’s defense for 550 rushing yards, including 259 from quarterback Taysom Hill. And as if handling Hill the second time weren’t a tough enough task, Texas played without Ash, who suffered more concussion-related symptoms following the North Texas game. Breaking in a new quarterback, Texas hung tough for a half before a third quarter implosion doomed the team to a 41-7 loss.
• Both Brown and Strong faced stern tests in their third games as well. Brown broke in redshirt freshman quarterback Major Applewhite against highly-ranked Kansas State in Manhattan, and things didn’t go well. KSU throttled Texas 48-7. This week Strong takes his team to Arlington to face nationally ranked UCLA, and while Tyrone Swoopes isn’t making his starting debut, it’s still just the sophomore’s second game, and he’s playing with a M*A*S*H unit of an offense. Only five players expected to start for Texas figured largely in the preseason plans at their position, as Ryan Autullo chronicled in the Austin American-Statesman.

While Brown had a much more polished team and leaned heavily on Williams to carry the load while his young quarterback grew into the position, Strong doesn’t have that luxury. Through suspension, dismissal and injury, his first team no longer resembles what he thought it would. But despite missing key players due to suspension – projected starters Josh Turner, Daje Johnson, Kennedy Estelle and Desmond Harrison, not to mention those who have been dismissed – Strong’s not going to budge, no matter how these next few games go, as Brian Davis reported for the American-Statesman.

“What lesson are we teaching them?” he said. “Even if you have the suspended players back, how much good are they going to help you? Will they do something in the game because now all of a sudden you let them back?”

Brown’s Longhorns figured it out. His first season brought nine wins and a Cotton Bowl triumph, and he eventually builtTexas into a team that competed annually for conference titles, BCS bowl berths and, of course, the 2005 National Championship.

Clearly, Strong has a process. It worked for him at Louisville, where he started slowly before putting the Cardinals on the national football map. This Texas team may not get to the Cotton Bowl, as Brown’s debut season ended. Considering the injuries to Ash, center Dominic Espinosa and receiver Jaxon Shipley (who may miss the UCLA game), making any bowl would be a success. But Strong won’t give in and lower his expectations, or his standards. He wants to win and win quickly, regardless of who makes it to the field on Saturdays.

“No, we have us a good football team. We have what we need,” Strong added in Davis’ story. “We have more than enough. What we have, we can get done with it.”

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