Tyrone Swoopes Has to Learn to Trust Himself for Texas to Continue to Ascend

Habe on the Horns – By Steve Habel/Associate Editor

If there’s one point of concern about the Texas football team’s resurgence into the race for a bowl game over the past two weeks, it’s that quarterback Tyrone Swoopes has been stuck in neutral as the rest of the Longhorns’ offense gets better around him.

Swoopes completed just 11 of his [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)]29 passes in the Horns’ 33-16 win over West Virginia Saturday with only seven of those connections and 71 yards coming after he went 4 for 5 for 53 yards and a touchdown on his opening drive.

In his past three games – two of them Horns’ victories – Swoopes has passed for an average 152.7 yards per contest, less than half of the yardage he amassed in Texas’ loss to Oklahoma (334 yards) and win over Iowa State (321 yards).

Even worse is that he’s looked tentative in the pocket, and shies from contact despite the fact that Swoopes (at 6-foot-4 and 243 pounds) is bigger than the majority of the defensive players that are chasing him.

“It’s week by week with him,” Texas coach Charlie Strong said about Swoopes on Monday in his weekly press availability. “It’s important that everyone around him has stepped up and is playing well. I really don’t know where we would be if he had to try to win a game by himself.”

The Texas coaching staff did Swoopes few favors in the win over West Virginia, especially in the second half when he was asked to convert seven third downs that needed to gain six yards or more, all against a defense that was stacked to stop the run and to force Swoopes to make the plays to beat it.

“We were moving the ball really well in the first half, but then we just kind of stalled out a little bit,” Swoopes said. “We got into a situation where we got a little too conservative. I just try to take what the defense gives me.

“Sometimes I’m still not making the correct reads, but I’m getting better,” Swoopes added. “But at the end we got the win so I feel like that’s all that matters.”

Making the right decisions under fire comes with experience, an aspect that Swoopes still needs to deposit in his bank account.

“Swoopes needs to just stand in there despite the heat and be patient with his throws,” Strong said. “Guys are working to get open for him, and if the first option is covered he has to have the faith that he will have time to get the ball to the second option and then the third. He has to trust himself.”

Expect Oklahoma State – Texas’ opponent this weekend in Stillwater – to employ the same defensive strategy that worked so well for West Virginia in the second half.

“It’s a big game Saturday night and we know Oklahoma State is going to bring their best because of what’s on the line and because it’s their senior night,” Strong said. “We have to be at our best, too. We’ve got a two-game win streak but we can’t get too excited. We can’t get complacent – we have to stay the course and keep working and doing the things that have been successful for us the past two games.”

Also discussed during the Monday presser:

Strong said he didn’t feel the team was focused and ready to play the game during its walkthrough on Friday. “But on Saturday they had made the transition and were ready to go,” Strong said. “I asked them every week which group of guys are going to be on the field when it’s game time, because I still don’t know.”

He lauded the intensity and toughness of his defense, including a pair of ringing tackles by safety Mykkele Thompson, the individual effort by Jordan Hicks on back-to-back plays in the third quarter and the in-your-face coverage skills of cornerback Quandre Diggs against West Virginia standout wide receiver Kevin White.

Diggs defended 25 throws to White, who caught 16 of those passes for 132 yards and drew two pass interference penalties, one on the game’s first snap. But Diggs and his teammates kept White out of the end zone and the tough-as-nails cornerback intercepted a pass.

The Texas defense held West Virginia to a season-low 16 points; the Mountaineers still average 36.1 points per game.

After averaging 319.2 yards per game in total offense in its first five games, the Horns are gaining an average of 402.4 yards per contest in the past five outings.

The win over West Virginia was Texas’ first over a Top 25-ranked team this season (it was 0-4 before Saturday’s victory). It was also the first win at home against a ranked team since Oct. 25, 2008, when the Horns’ top-ranked squad beat seventh-ranked Oklahoma State 28-24.

[/s2If] [s2If !current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)] [article-offer] [/s2If]