Habe on the ‘Horns — football still looking for defensive answers after loss at Cal

By Steve Habel, Senior Editor

AUSTIN, Texas — In the matter of four hours in Strawberry Canyon on the campus of the University of California Saturday night, a 50-43 loss to Cal turned the warm and fuzzy feelings about a resurgence of Texas football into a question mark.

The source of the consternation is the Longhorn defense’s ongoing shortcomings, and Texas coach Charlie Strong has had enough.

We shouldn’t be surprised — but then we [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)]thought the Longhorns were past the point where they could score 43 points on the road, rush for more than 300 yards and still get beat. Strong thought so, too.

Brought to the 40 Acres as a defense-first coach but struggling to win in a spread-offense league, Strong said Monday at his weekly media availability that he would use the Longhorns’ open week and the run-up to Texas’ Big 12 Conference openerOct. 1 at Oklahoma State to evaluate the performance of that unit.

Based on what he pulls from three games and scores of practices over the past two months, Strong said he will decide if he should take a bigger role in play-calling as the season moves forward.

“We have some defensive issues to address,” Strong admitted. “We have two weeks to get those fixed, and we can get them fixed. I’ve been involved in the defensive game plan in a big-picture role, and I will be more involved.”

Texas, which in 2015 allowed more yards than any team in the school history, has fallen back into that funk, surrendering 507 yards and 50 points to a Cal team that was beaten the week before by San Diego State.

Through three games, opponents have racked up a total of 104 points against the Longhorns’ defense, 97 of those in two games (47 in an overtime win over Notre Dame and half a hundred in the loss to Cal).

Much of the criticism for the Longhorns’ poor defensive play is falling on the shoulder of defensive coordinator Vance Bedford, but Strong said everyone — players and coaches, alike — had a hand in the loss to Cal.

“We will learn from this loss,” Strong said. “We are disappointed, and we can all get better at what we are doing. Sometimes it takes a loss to bring out the potential of the team and the players.”

One of the focal points of the offseason was changing the defense’s attitude, to put players into positions to use their athleticism to make game-changing plays. Getting burned on long passes, having multiple coverage breakdowns when making one play could have made a huge difference in a close game and only forcing one turnover through three contests was not on the agenda.

The Longhorns, who dropped from 11th to 21st in the Sept. 18 Associated Press poll, have 14 days to find the answers. With the high-powered offenses of Oklahoma State and Oklahoma waiting before Texas plays another game at home, an immediate turnaround is paramount.

Other items addressed in the Monday press conference included:

• The Longhorns emerged from the loss to Cal with a virtually clean injury sheet and should be at full strength for the Oklahoma State game Oct. 1.

• Kickoff for the conference opener at Oklahoma State will be at 11 a.m.

• Texas is now only 5-9 in games away from Austin (and 4-6 in “true” road games) in Strong’s two-plus-year tenure on the 40 Acres.

• The Longhorns had two 100-yard rushers in a game for the first time since Oct. 10, 2015 against Oklahoma (when D’Onta Foreman rushed for 117 yards and Jerrod Heard for 115), and had two running backs go over 100 yards rushing in the same game for the first time since Nov. 28, 2013, when Malcolm Brown (128) and Joe Bergeron (102) did so against Texas Tech. It was the 34th time in school history that the Longhorns have had two 100-yard rushers in a game.

• Brandon Jones is the first Longhorn to record two blocks in the same season since Mykkele Thompson in 2012. The school record for blocked punts in a season is four, most recently done by Aaron Williams in 2008.

• Anthony Wheeler had a career-high 10 tackles in the game. His previous high was eight.

• Devin Duvernay made his first career reception in the fourth quarter.

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