Five Questions – Oklahoma State

 

By Steve Habel, Senior Editor

STILLWATER, Okla. — In the space of three weeks, across three time zones against a pair of talented but middling teams, the Texas Longhorns have gone from trending upward to sliding back.[s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)]

Now, after another disheartening loss on the road — this time a 49-31 defeat on Oct. 1 to Oklahoma State — No. 22 Texas has to find some way to reposition a train that’s clearly coming off the rails, and it has to do it quickly.

The loss was the first for Texas in Stillwater since 1997, snapping an eight-game win streak for the Longhorns on the plains just east of the Indian Meridian.

Before a crowd of 53,468 at Boone Pickens Stadium, the Longhorns (2-2, 0-1 in Big 12 play) did some things well against the Cowboys. Texas ran the ball effectively (329 yards and four touchdowns on 50 carries) and constantly pressured Oklahoma State quarterback Mason Rudolph. In fact, the Longhorns sacked him three times.

D’Onta Foreman ran for 148 yards and two touchdowns, while Chris Warren III went for another 106 yards on the ground. Unfortunately, both running backs suffered an injury during the game.

Freshman quarterback Shane Buechele passed for 239 yards and a touchdown despite feeling the effects of a rib injury he sustained Sept. 17 in Texas’ loss to California. Short-yardage quarterback Tyrone Swoopes had two touchdowns while running the “18 Wheeler” package.

But those positives were all but erased by a porous defense that allowed 555 total yards — an average of 7.8 yards per play — and forced zero turnovers.

Four of Oklahoma State’s six touchdowns came on plays of 30 or more yards, including touchdown passes of 54 and 52 yards. The other two came on the heels of a 37-yard pass and an interception that allowed the Cowboys to start a drive at the Texas 1-yard line.

“We can’t play the way we did in the first half and expect to win a football game, especially in an environment like this,” Texas head coach Charlie Strong said. “We still have work to do. We still have a long way to go. When you have two weeks to prepare for it and you [still] give up the throws they had … we have to get this fixed.”

Rudolph passed for 392 yards and went 19-of-28 — an average of 20.6 yards per completion. Justice Hill had 135 yards on 25 carries for Oklahoma State (3-2, 1-1 in Big 12 play) and Jalen McCleskey hauled in four passes for 109 yards and two touchdowns.

“[Oklahoma State] didn’t do anything we didn’t expect,” Texas defensive coordinator Vance Bedford said. “When you don’t get takeaways, you have a difficult time winning a ball game. We need to think about making plays — we missed five or six sacks in the first half.”

The Cowboys flexed their muscles early on, driving for touchdowns on their first two possessions. The first, a nine-play, 75-yard march was culminated by Hill’s 30-yard scoring run; the second came on a 54-yard pass from Rudolph to James Washington on a crossing route at the end of a six-snap, 68-yard drive.

Poor tackling and bad pursuit angles aided both scores by the Cowboys.

Texas responded on its second possession with its own six-play drive for a touchdown, with 55 yards of the march covered on a nifty pass from Buechele to Dorian Leonard. Swoopes covered the final two yards with a run around the right side out of the “18 Wheeler” power package.

The Longhorns got within a point on a 22-yard Foreman run up the middle at the 1:25 mark of the first quarter. Unfortunately, Texas kicker Trent Domingue’s extra point attempt was blocked by the Cowboys’ 310-pound defensive tackle, Vincent Taylor, who also picked up the bouncing ball and carried it 42 yards before pitching it, option-style, to Tre Flowers.

Flowers, escorted by a handful of teammates, took it all the way to the end zone for two points and a 16-13 Oklahoma State lead. It’s the second time this year that Texas had a blocked extra-point kick return for points for the opposition.

Texas’ power running game gave the Longhorns a 19-13 lead at the 10:13 mark of the second quarter as Swoopes ran over an Oklahoma State defender and through another on a 13-yard touchdown. But Domingue had another extra point blocked, stunting the Texas momentum.

The Cowboys found some offensive magic on their next possession, covering 80 yards for the go-ahead touchdown with two plays: a 37-yard screen pass hookup from Rudolph to Washington, followed two snaps later by a gutsy 10-yard touchdown run by Rudolph.

Texas tight end Andrew Beck’s first catch of the season turned into a 39-yard touchdown and a 25-23 Longhorn lead. Remember Beck? The Cowboys obviously didn’t, because they didn’t even bother covering him on the pass from Buechele. Then Domingue had a third extra point blocked, this time by Lenzy Pipkins.

Like clockwork, the Cowboys made good on their turn on offense as Rudolph’s 36-yard touchdown pass to McCleskey, which came one snap after a 34-yard hookup from Rudolph to Jhajuan Seales, handed Oklahoma State a 30-25 lead with 5:05 to play in the first half.

McCleskey and Rudolph teamed up again in the waning seconds of the second quarter on a 52-yard catch and run that expanded the Cowboys’ lead to 37-25. Rudolph’s throw, which was delivered under pressure from the Texas rush, was punctuated by McCleskey’s you-can’t-touch-me move to avoid two tacklers.

Each team ended up with the same amount of total yards — 390 — in the first half, but each arrived at that total differently. Texas had a more balanced attack, with 205 rushing yards and 185 more through the air, while Oklahoma State got the majority of its work (310 yards) via the pass.

Oklahoma State added to its lead on a 1-yard touchdown run by Barry Sanders, Jr., two plays after Jordan Sterns intercepted Buechele on an ill-advised pass to the right flat. But Foreman bolted through the Cowboys’ defense for a 62-yard touchdown run on the Longhorns’ ensuing possession to keep Texas within reach, at 43-31, with 4:08 to play in the third quarter.

Oklahoma State kicker Ben Grogan, who also had an extra-point kick blocked in this game, padded the Cowboys’ lead to 46-31 with a 26-yard field goal with 11:54 to play. He added another one just five minutes later from 24 yards out at the end of a 61-yard, eight-play drive in which the Texas defense looked like it finally figured something out — albeit much too late.

 

How much did Strong change the Texas defense?

Strong and Bedford said they both had input in the defenses that were called and the schemes planned. But the problem was not in the calls or the scheme — it was in the players’ execution.

“I made a few [defensive calls] out there today,” Strong said. “We just have to execute the calls. We have to make sure we improve.

“The thing that hurt us were the third downs,” he explained. “A third and 10, third and 15, third and 12 — those were the back-breakers. You stop them on first and second down then on the third down play you feel like you can execute and get off the field, but we just didn’t get it done today.”

Missed tackles and inexperience also had a lot to do with Texas’ defensive troubles.

“We had guys on the perimeter with great position to make a play, and they missed a tackle,” Bedford said. “We spent two straight days [during preparation for Oklahoma State] going through our tackling station for that reason. We’re going to rotate guys. We started with the young guys … they have great potential to make plays.”

 

What was the disconnect that allowed Oklahoma State to block three extra-point kicks?

Plenty of kickers have gone their entire career on the 40 Acres without having an extra point kick blocked, much less three in a game.

Domingue now has had four PATs blocked in the Longhorns’ first four games, and two of those were returned for points. He was so worried about having his 46-yard second-quarter field goal attempt blocked that Texas took too much time setting up, resulting in a delay of game penalty that pushed the kick back five yards. The kicked ball drifted wide left, and likely would’ve been good from the original 41 yards.

“The blocks were right up the pipe,” Strong said. “Our center [long-snapper Jak Holbrook] is small, and they set it up where they were pinning the guard and running right over him.

“The first guy would pin the guard, the second guy would run through and he would step over the center,” he elaborated. “[Holbrook] isn’t a big enough guy to where he can stand up after snapping the ball because he’ll get knocked back, but that can be corrected.”

 

Is Texas good enough on offense to win the shootouts that are coming up in the Big 12?

If Foreman (who suffered an oblique injury) and Warren (who hurt his right knee) can return to full strength, the Longhorns have more balance between the run and pass than most of the teams they’ll face over the next eight weeks.

Texas has rushed for more than 300 yards, had more than 500 yards of total offense and scored an average of 37 points per game in their past two contests and lost them both.

That’s difficult to even fathom.

But the Longhorns have scored just two touchdowns in the second half in those losses to Cal and Oklahoma State, meaning that the opposition is making winning adjustments at halftime to confuse Buechele.

“I have to see things better and trust my O-line — they were doing their job upfront and I have to be more patient,” Buechele said. “We executed the first half really well. Nothing changed, we just have to execute. We know what we can do. We’ve shown what we can do. We just have to continue getting better every week.”

As well as the freshman signalcaller has played, he still has just four games of college football experience under his belt.

“You have to change, adapt and adjust,” Texas offensive coordinator Sterlin Gilbert said. “Every rep is a learning experience. Some of those [passes in the second half] were tight for Buechele because of what Oklahoma State was doing on the back end.”

 

Is Strong on the hot seat?

If the seat was hot to start the season, Strong’s chair has to be boiling right now. Texas athletic director Mike Perrin told a reporter that what happened in Stillwater would need to be evaluated. Then another report stated that Perrin said, “He’s evaluating everything about the program, not just Strong per se.”

Those remarks caused a media frenzy about Strong’s job status in the wake of two losses (who even remembers the Longhorns’ win over Notre Dame at this point?) and back-to-back losing seasons in 2014-15.

“You’re evaluated each and every day [at Texas],” Strong said when asked about Perrin’s statement. “We can get the confidence back that we had after Notre Dame.  We have to get a win. You have to play your best to win on the road and we didn’t do that today.”

The feeling here is that Strong will have the whole season to make his final statement about his job, no matter how hot the seat is.

 

What’s next for the Longhorns?

With two consecutive disappointing losses, Texas’ season has been put in desperation mode. With a wounded but talented Oklahoma team waiting for revenge next week in Dallas, it’s nearly time to push the panic button on the 2016 Longhorns.

After the Sooners, Texas returns home for Iowa State (which nearly upset Baylor on Saturday). Still ahead are road games at Kansas State, Kansas and Texas Tech, and home games versus Baylor (which is undefeated at 5-0), West Virginia and TCU.

Based on what we’ve seen the past few weeks, there are no assured wins on the schedule (okay, maybe Kansas is a gimme). Things have to change in a hurry.[/s2If] [s2If !current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)] [article-offer] [/s2If]