Texas football family draws close as it begins preparation for Tech game

By Steve Habel
Senior Contributing Writer

AUSTIN, Texas — There’s not a soul on the 40 Acres that is not hurting from the Texas football team’s recent drop from contender to pretender, but it’s time to look at the windshield rather than the rear-view mirror.

Longhorns coach Tom Herman talked about putting the past in the past when he met Monday with the media for the final time in UT’s irregular regular season.

His comments were about [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)]family and togetherness, from both inside and outside the team’s inner circle, as the Longhorns prepare to play Texas Tech at home on Black Friday in a game in which a victory would guarantee the team a third winning record in his three years in Austin.

“The biggest thing is relationships, making sure that these guys understand that we want what’s best for them,” Herman said. “We’re trying to win for them. We’re on their side.”

There has been plenty of criticism of Herman and his staff of late, the kind the comes with losing two contests in a row, four of six games and showing less and less success on offense, a part of the game at which Herman is supposed to excel.

“Obviously [we are] disappointed in the last couple of weeks, not just in the outcome but in how we lost those games,” Herman said. “But my message to the team is (that) we are not where we had expected to be. We haven’t played to our standard. We haven’t coached to our standard, but none of that matters this week.”

The coach was asked point-blank Monday if he was the “man for the job” at Texas.

“I’m not shaken, (but I am) obviously in big-time evaluation mode of everything throughout our program,” Herman answered. “I’m not going to bury my head in the sand. It’s my job to make sure that we play to the level that is expected at the University of Texas.

“Am I the right man to do it? I believe I am, yeah. You’re asking me, I don’t know … did you expect me to say, ‘no, I’m not’ and walk off and drop the mic or something?”

The heat is on for a turnaround beginning this Friday, but Herman no doubt will be the coach at the University of Texas for 2020. There is a need for improvement and the first steps toward will come in practice tomorrow, Friday against Tech and in workouts heading up to the bowl game to which the Longhorns will be invited.

“We’re all in this together, but at the end of the day the buck stops with me,” Herman said, “so that is a big charge of mine in the offseason … to find a way to get these guys better developed and put them in better positions to succeed and also then comes the part where the players gotta decide, you know, ‘I want to take the steps that are necessary to be developed.'”
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