No rest for the Texas defense vs. TCU

By Steve Habel, Senior Contributing Writer

AUSTIN, Texas – Defense, or more notably Texas’ lack of it, is on the minds of everyone who’s interested in the 15th-ranked Longhorns these days – and rightfully so.

Texas head coach Tom Herman addressed the topic of defense – to wit the more than 569 yards and 48 points that his team allowed in a 50-48 win over Kansas Oct. 19 – aplenty on Monday during his media availability, taking question after question about what’s going wrong on that side of the ball and how to fix it.

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Something has to be done, and done now, as four of the Longhorns’ final five regular-season opponents — including TCU — have an offensive attack and weapons that are much more potent than the ones with which Kansas scorched the field and the Longhorns.

The Horned Frogs (3-3, 1-2 in Big 12 play) hosts Texas (5-2, 3-1 in Big 12 play) at 2:30 p.m. Saturday afternoon at Amon G. Carter Stadium in Fort Worth.

TCU has lost two straight games but lambasted the Jayhawks 51-17 in its only conference win of the season. That has to have the Longhorns and their coaches scrambling to find real answers.

“Obviously we know we have got to play better defensively and everybody associated with that side of the ball – coaches, players, leaders – we all get it,” Herman said. “We’re committed to figuring it out, and I think we can and will.”

The silver lining on Texas’s defensive dark cloud is that the Longhorns are still winning and remain in line for a spot in the Big 12 Championship game if they can find some help for their uber-potent offense.

“None of us are OK or satisfied with that defensive performance (against Kansas) just because we won the game,” Herman said. “Are we happy to win the game? Absolutely. And at the end of the year that one’s going to count just the same as all the other ones do. But we expect to play much, much better, especially defensively.”

Texas will have to do so without safety Caden Sterns, who Herman ruled out for the TCU game as the sophomore continues his rehab from a knee injury suffered against Oklahoma State.

Herman also said safety B.J. Foster has been affected by a lingering shoulder injury.

“We’re working (Foster) up for anything and everything, Herman said. “He did not play very… you could tell he was favoring his left shoulder pretty significantly in the game Saturday night. So we just want to make sure that we’re crossing all our t’s and dotting all our i’s on that deal.”

The Longhorns could get cornerback Jalen Green back from a shoulder injury for this week’s game as he is back at practice and will be watched for signs of a setback. But safety DeMarvion Overshown complained about shoulder pain from the Kansas game and will be evaluated in the run-up to Saturday’s dustup.

Herman said the film of the Kansas game showed that his defense gave the needed effort, but was lax in some important fundamentals. There will be plenty of work on those shortcomings this week in practice.

“When you watch we were flying around, we were running to the ball,” said Herman of his defense. “We were just doing it with poor angles and from the wrong spot and had some poor fundamentals and some poor fits. The effort level was not a question.”

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