Strong’s Results Have Been Impressive But Can It Carry Over to The Horns?

Habe on the Horns

By Steve Habel

Just by pure happenstance, I found myself at home on Saturday night and clicking through the offerings on the sports channels provided by my cable company when I ran across a replay of last year’s Russell Athletic Bowl, where Louisville, coached by Charlie Strong – Texas’s new head man – whipped Miami 36-9 to finish off a 12-1 season.

The Cardinals performance mesmerized me. [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)]Louisville’s offense racked up 554 yards of total offense as quarterback Teddy Bridgewater threw for 447 yards while completing passes to 10 different receivers. Miami managed just 174 total yards against Louisville’s defense and – in essence – was never in the game.

After a while I dialed up the Cardinals’ 33-23 win over Florida in the 2013 Sugar Bowl, a game where Louisville overwhelmed the Will Muschamp-coached Gators for three and a half quarters while building a 23-point lead before allowing a kickoff return touchdown and a late score.

That performance proved every bit as dominating as the one a year hence, even more so because it was against a talented Florida team and allowed Louisville to end 2012 with an 11-2 mark.

Those wins pushed a singular question to the forefront: will Strong and his staff find a way to get as much out of his first Longhorns team as he did from those players at Louisville?

Austin certainly has different dynamics than basketball-crazy Louisville. Strong could always use the “no-respect” card with his Cardinal players, many of whom were not highly regarded by the teams in the power conferences as recruits. Strong and his staff could “coach-up” those players because they had a hunger to prove something.

Can the same be said about the players Strong has inherited at Texas?

Strong has certainly run a tight and demanding ship in his seven months on the 40 Acres and the togetherness and enthusiasm built in spring football, over the summer workouts and in the first week of fall camp was evident in the Horns’ open practice on Aug. 10.

Through a set of spirited drills conducted in Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium on a searing summer morning, the Texas players look energized and eager, as if they were looking for any chance to impress the new coaching staff.

Yes, it was just a practice and the Horns limited what they showed to the public and the press. But sometimes we forget that 95 percent of the field time for a football player is spent at practice and not in games – it’s in that realm that good fundamentals are developed and honed and where great teams are built.

Strong’s first Texas team sits less than three weeks from showing the world if the work they done behind the scenes will translate to rave review when the curtain is pulled back and the band begins to play.

Hope abounds that Strong’s previous work at Louisville portends to what Longhorns fans might eventually expect – but it’s prudent to give him his due time. Not even Rome, or the performance I saw from the coach’s Louisville team, was built in a day.

Just sayin’, ya know?

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