Five Questions California | Horns Illustrated

 

By Steve Habel

The point-after kick in college football — a kick taken from the 10-yard line and amounting to a 20-yard field goal — is the most basic of plays.

So when Texas’ Nick Rose lined up to perform the kick that would punctuate a final touchdown run by Jerrod Heard to tie the game against California, coach Charlie Strong didn’t even bother to watch.

“It’s an extra-point and that’s automatic, right?” Strong said. “Then I looked up and saw one of the Cal players yelling and running down the field and I was like, ‘Oh my God.’”

With only 1:11 left to play, Rose saw Cal’s Darius White roar around the end of the line. Rose missed the extra-point kick, kicking the ball wide right and securing Cal’s 45-44 victory before a feverish, and then stunned, crowd of 91,568 fans Sept. 19 at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium.

The missed kick placed an irreversible down note on the [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] Longhorns’ furious rally to come back from being 21 points behind with less than 14 minutes to play. Heard scored twice in the final quarter — once on a 13-yard, cross-field run that started on the right and ended in the front-left corner of the end zone and on his final carry, a 45-yard sprint to paydirt on a quarterback draw.

Heard ended up with a team-record 527 yards of total offense, 364 passing and 163 on 24 carries, while also scoring three touchdowns. The Longhorns (1-2) racked up 650 yards of total offense — the eighth-best mark in school history but the team still left the stadium with a loss.

“This one hurts, and that’s good because it should,” Strong said. “That’s the first time I’ve seen the guys really hurting like that. They’re beginning to take ownership of this team and that’s going to go a long way. I’m proud of the way they continued to play.”

Texas lost because it allowed the Golden Bears (3-0) 548 yards of offense, including 280 yards on the ground. Cal earned most of those yards right up the middle where the Longhorns are supposed to be at their strongest.

“The defense is a major concern right now,” Strong said. “We haven’t played good defense in any of our three games this season and we haven’t been able to make teams one-dimensional, which is how you win with defense.

“We have to play much better,” Strong added.

The two teams traded punches in the first half as offense ruled the proceedings. Cal racked up 337 yards in the first half while the Longhorns had 317. Heard produced big play after big play and the Texas offensive line gave the fire-footed quarterback the time to throw the deep pass and scamper off through the lanes they opened.

The Golden Bears scored first, moving 64 yards in 11 plays to Jared Goff’s 6-yard touchdown pass to Maurice Harris. Texas answered with a Heard 2-yard touchdown run in which he took on four Cal defenders on a naked bootleg and won the battle, stretching over the goal line while being tackled.

Rose added a 27-yard field goal early in the second quarter and Goff replied with a 17-yard touchdown pass to Kenny Lawler on fourth down to give the Golden Bears a 14-10 lead.

Gray added two touchdown runs, from 4 and 6 yards, respectively, in a six-minute stretch to push the Longhorns’ advantage to 24-14.

The first touchdown culminated a 95-yard Texas drive on which Heard sprinted to a 34-yard gain and then passed deep to John Burt for 43 yards to the Cal 6. The second came after Goff was sacked by Shiro Davis and fumbled, with Desmond Jackson picking up the loose ball and returning it to the shadow of the Golden Bears’ end zone.

All the good feelings fought for by the Longhorns’ offense in that key stretch of the second quarter faded when Cal covered 75 yards in just four plays to cut the Texas lead to 24-21 on Vic Enwere’s 1-yard touchdown run with 52 seconds remaining in the half.

Then Heard uncorked his first collegiate interception — taken by the Golden Bears’ Jonathan Johnson and returned to the Texas 30 — precipitated a game-tying 34-yard field goal.

Heard fumbled while being sacked on the Longhorns’ first possession of the third quarter and Cal converted that turnover into another Enwere touchdown run, from 1 yard out again on fourth down, to push ahead 31-24.

Goff engineered a 71-yard, eight-play drive in the Golden Bear’s ensuing possession, finding Lawler on a 3-yard jump ball touchdown pass with 4:28 left in the third quarter to put the Longhorns further in arrears. Cal added to the lead on Khalfani Muhammad’s 74-yard touchdown run that ended up being the difference in the game.

Heard’s two fourth-quarter touchdowns were sandwiched around a 27-yard touchdown run by D’Onta Foreman.

“We never gave up and we did a lot of things right tonight but we have to get better and we know it,” Heard said. “At the end there was no hesitation on the offense — we knew what we had to do and had the confidence to go get it done. We’ll move forward from this and be a better team.”

Texas had all the momentum and might have found a way to win if Rose had just converted the simplest play in the game. But one play does not win or lose any game.
1. How has Heard become the face of the Longhorns?

It seems like ages ago when Heard played just six snaps in Texas’ loss to Notre Dame, after which several of the Horns’ coaches said it was Tyrone Swoopes at quarterback, and not Heard, that gave them the best chance to win.

A lot has changed in the past two games, mainly because Heard has been able to show the Texas staff and his teammates the kind of player and leader he can be with the ball in his hands on a consistent basis.

“Jerrod’s talent is difficult to evaluate in practice, but he’s a guy that shows up and plays his best when the lights are on and the situation is the most important and his teammates need him the most,” Texas offensive coordinator Jay Norvell said. “You find out about a kid when he’s playing with live bullets – Jerrod is not afraid of the spotlight or to be at his best when the stakes are highest.”

Heard’s performance against an admittedly porous Cal defense broke the former single-game total offense mark of 506 yards set by Vince Young at Oklahoma State in 2005. His 300-yard passing/100-yard rushing effort marked the first for Texas since Colt McCoy threw for 304 and rushed for 175 against Texas A&M on Nov. 26, 2009.

“Hey man, Jerrod’s a baller,” senior wide receiver Daje Johnson said. “He’s going to come play every week, so I’m excited for him. The team is going to get even better – we’re getting better each week.  We see the progress.”

The bottom line is that this Texas team will only go as far as Heard can carry it. Who would have thought that three weeks ago?

 

2 .What was the game’s biggest play?

Rose’s miss will be thought about in future years as the pin that popped the Longhorns’ comeback balloon, but Strong pointed to another Texas error that threw his squad into a tailspin from which they never recovered.

On the first play, after Texas scored in the waning moments of the second quarter, Cal took over on its own 25. Muhammad burst over the right tackle for a 49-yard gain that led to a Golden Bears’ touchdown three plays later.

“One of our defensive backs thought [Muhammad] was tackled but he wasn’t,” Strong explained. “That’s just youth, running up there and being in position to make a play — go make it. It was gap control.”

That touchdown forced Texas’ hand and Norvell needed to answer Cal’s touchdown with a score of his own. That eventually led to Heard’s first-ever collegiate interception and a last-second field goal for the Bears that tied the game at intermission.

“When you play a team that’s good on offense like Cal, you can’t waste a possession,” Norvell said. “We needed to score at the end of the half but we want to be smart. Jerrod had an outside lane throw and he just missed it inside, and he can’t do that. He’s got to learn from that.”

 

3. What’s happened to the Texas defense?

Strong came to the 40 Acres with a well-deserved reputation as a defense-minded coach and has stated repeatedly that his teams win with stout play on that side of the ball.

But the Longhorns are a bad defensive team in every sense of the word. They don’t create the needed pressure with their front-four, don’t cover well in the secondary, miss assignments and can’t seem to tackle when they’re in position to make plays. That’s a recipe for disaster, especially with the offensive-minded teams of the Big 12 on the immediate horizon.

In its first three games of 2015, Texas has allowed 1,537 yards of total offense (about 512 yards per contest), which ranks 118th nationally out of 127 FBS schools. The Longhorns have surrendered 722 yards on the ground (241 ypg), putting them 119th nationally. That’s no way to win football games and does not bode well for the upcoming conference challenges.

“The problem with the defense is that guys aren’t doing what they’re coached to do,” Strong said. “It’s gap control and coverage principles. It’s so many things that can be fixed. I’m excited about our offense, but that’s negated by how poorly we’re playing right now on defense.”

 

4. Does Texas have a problem with its kicking game?

A missed extra point is not reason to push the panic button on Rose, but one has to wonder what will happen with the Longhorns’ floppy-haired kicker when the game is on the line again.

“Nick has been doing well, and for that to happen there, he got the pressure coming from the outside and just mishit it,” Strong said. “He needs to go ahead and kick through it.”

“We still love Nick [Rose],” Heard said. “Stuff like that happens and we’re still going to rely on him to make even more critical kicks. There are no hard feelings for him — he knows what he has to do and he’s going to bounce back and be that reliable kicker we need.”

Texas got a 43-yard per kick average from freshman punter Michael Dickson and the Aussie’s three punts netted a respectable 36.3 net average.

And after the Longhorns returned two punts for touchdowns against Rice, Cal kicked away from the Texas returners by using pooch punts from its quarterback that didn’t allow Daje Johnson on the field.

 

5. What’s ahead for the Longhorns?

Texas needs to find a way to rebound from the disappointment of the loss to Cal and pull itself together in time for Saturday’s Big 12 Conference opener, at home at 2:30 p.m., against an undefeated Oklahoma State.

The opener marks the fourth consecutive game that Texas will play an undefeated team, a stretch that’s likely to continue on Nov. 3 against TCU.

Seven of the Big 12’s 10 teams, all except Texas, winless Kansas and Iowa State (1-2), are undefeated heading into next weekend’s games. The next three Longhorns’ opponents are ranked in the Associated Press Top 25 (No. 24 Oklahoma State, third-ranked TCU and No. 15 Oklahoma) and four Big 12 teams are currently in the rankings.

“What we showed [against Cal] is great for us in the long run,” Heard said. “We’re going to have a lot of confidence and be ready to start the Big 12.”

 

[/s2If]

[s2If !current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)]

[article-offer]

[/s2If]