Horns Have Been Here Before and Have Responded | Horns Illustrated

Habe on the Horns – By Steve Habel/Associate Editor

For those that are discouraged after the Texas football team lost two of its first three games, be comforted that the Horns have a history – a recent one, at that – in being in just this situation.

Even those with the shortest of short memories can remember as far back [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)] as last year when Texas was 1-2 after three games before the Big 12 Conference schedule began. That team responded by winning six straight league games and back into the Top 25.

Can this Longhorns’ team bounce back the way last year’s did? The first step will be this Saturday when Texas visits conference whipping boy Kansas (2-1, with wins against Southeast Missouri and Central Michigan) in its league opener.

Texas coach Charlie Strong understands the magnitude of the task ahead and expects his team to come together and compete with plenty still in the line.

He emphasized that during the Horns’ open date last week, when the team worked on assignments, fundamentals and technique as much as the teams they will face in the coming weeks.

“The non-conference games were Phase 1 of our games – now we are on to Phase 2,” Strong said Monday in his weekly media availability. “We aren’t thinking about anything but the opponent right in front of us each week. We just have to worry about ourselves and play better.”

Strong’s first team at Louisville in 2010 was also 1-2 after three games and finished the season at 7-6 with a bowl victory in the Beef O’Brady Bowl.

“That (Louisville) team had a mostly senior offensive line that understood what we needed to do to win and worked to make it happen,” Strong said. “Our guys are coming around, but we would like our seniors to be playing their best football and some of them just aren’t.”

Texas is ranked a woeful 119^th in the FBS in third-down conversion rate and 111^th in total offense after three games. The Horns need to make plays to move the chains and take some pressure off their defense, which has wilted in the second half of its two losses.

“During the open week we worked on doing better on some of the little things that have made a difference the past two games,” Texas sophomore quarterback Tyrone Swoopes said. “We have been very close to making some big plays – it’s just been a block here or a cut there that’s kept us from doing so. We understand that we have to keep work hard and making the improvements that will change that.”

Other notes from the Horns’ weekly availability on Monday:

Quarterback David Ash, who announced last week that he is giving up football because of continuing concussion syndrome, addressed the media for the final time, saying that because of his strong faith that he was a “victor, not a victim.”

Strong said that Texas’s suspended players – offensive tackles Desmond Harrison and Kennedy Estelle and wide receiver Daje Johnson – have not been reinstated and will not play in the Kansas game. Strong added that Johnson has been practicing with the team and that Harrison and Estelle could resume practice this week.

Hassan Ridgeway will start at one of the interior defensive line positions this week in favor of Desmond “Tank” Jackson, who will miss the rest of the season with a broken ankle suffered in the UCLA game. Ridgeway has 11 tackles, with four for a loss that includes three sacks, this season.

Freshman safety Jason Hall will have added impact for the Horns now that the league season is beginning because of the need to play more nickel package to combat the spread offenses played in the Big 12.

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