There’s no defense for Texas football’s 49-31 loss to Oklahoma State

By Steve Habel, Senior Editor

STILLWATER, Okla. — In the space of three weeks and two games, across three time zones against a pair of talented but middling teams, the Texas Longhorns have slipped from contenders to pretenders, from trending upward to sliding back.

Now, after another disheartening loss on the road — this time a 49-31 defeat Saturday to Oklahoma State before a sun-splashed crowd of 53,468 at Boone Pickens Stadium — No. 22 Texas has to find some way to reposition a train that’s clearly coming off the rails and it has to do it quickly.

The loss was the first for Texas in Stillwater since 1997, snapping an eight-game win streak for the Longhornson the plains just east of the Indian Meridian.

The Longhorns did a lot of things [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)]well against Oklahoma State: they ran the ball effectively (329 yards and four touchdowns on 50 carries) and constantly pressured Cowboys quarterback Mason Rudolph while sacking him three times.

Texas (2-2, 0-1 in Big 12 play) got 148 yards and two touchdowns rushing from D’Onta Foreman and 106 yards on the ground from Chris Warren III but both running backs suffered an injury during the game.

Freshman quarterback Shane Buechele passes for 239 yards and a touchdown, despite feeling the effects of a rib injury he sustained Sept. 17 in UT’s loss to California, and short-yardage quarterback Tyrone Swoopes had two touchdowns while running out of the “18 Wheeler” package.

But those positives were all but erased by a porous defense that allowed 555 total yards — an average of 7.8 yards per play — and forced zero turnovers.

Four of Oklahoma State’s six touchdowns came on plays of 30 or more yards, including touchdown passes of 54 and 52 yards. The other two came on the heels of a 37-yard pass and an interception that allowed the Cowboys to start a drive at the Texas 1-yard line.

“We can’t play the way we did in the first half and expect to win a football game, especially in an environment like this,” Texas coach Charlie Strong said. “We still have work to do. We still have a long way to go. When you have two weeks to prepare for it and you [still] give up the throws they had … we have to get this fixed.”

The Cowboys got 392 yards passing from Rudolph on 19-of-28 throwing, an average of 20.6 yards per completion. Justice Hill had 135 yards on 25 carries for Oklahoma State (3-2, 1-1 in Big 12 play) and Jalen McCleskey hauled in four passes for 109 yards and two touchdowns.

“(Oklahoma State) didn’t do anything we didn’t expect,” Texas defensive coordinator Vance Bedford said. “When you don’t get takeaways, you have a difficult time winning a ball game. We need to think about making plays — we missed five or six sacks in the first half.”

The Cowboys flexed their muscles early on, driving for touchdowns on their first two possessions. The first, a nine-play, 75-yard march was culminated by Hill’s 30-yard scoring run; the second came on a 54-yard pass from Rudolph to James Washington on a crossing route at the end of a six-snap, 68-yard drive.

Both scores were aided by poor tackling and bad pursuit angles by the supposedly revamped and re-invigorated Texas defense which, in the two weeks since the Longhorns’ loss to California, was stocked with playmakers.

Texas responded on its second possession with its own six-play drive for a touchdown, with 55 yards of the march covered on a nifty pass from Buechele to Dorian Leonard and the final two yards covered by a run around the right side by Swoopes out of the “18 Wheeler” power package.

The Longhorns got within a point on 22-yard Foreman run up the middle at the 1:25 mark of the first quarter, but Texas kicker Trent Domingue’s extra point attempt was blocked by the Cowboys’ 310-pound defensive tackle, Vincent Taylor, who also picked up the bouncing ball and carried it 42 yards before pitching it, option-style, to Tre Flowers.

Flowers, escorted by a handful of teammates, took it all the way to the end zone for two points and a 16-13 Oklahoma State lead. It’s the second time this year that Texas had a blocked extra-point kick return for points for the opposition.

UT’s power running game gave the Longhorns a 19-13 lead at the 10:13 mark of the second quarter as Swoopes ran over an Oklahoma State defender and through another on a 13-yard touchdown. But Domingue had another extra point blocked, stunting the Texas momentum.

The Cowboys found some offensive magic on their next possession, covering 80 yards for the go-ahead touchdown with two plays: a 37-yard screen pass hookup from Rudolph to Washington, followed two snaps later by a gutsy 10-yard touchdown run by Rudolph.

Texas tight end Andrew Beck’s first catch of the season turned into a 39-yard touchdown and a 25-23 Longhorn lead. Remember Beck? The Cowboys obviously didn’t, because they didn’t even bother covering him on the pass from Buechele.

Domingue had a third extra point blocked, this time by Lenzy Pipkins. Plenty of kickers have gone their entire career on the 40 Acres without having an extra point kick blocked, much less three in a game.

Like clockwork, the Cowboys made good on their turn on offense as Rudolph’s 36-yard touchdown pass to McCleskey, which came one snap after a 34-yard hookup from Rudolph to Jhajuan Seales, handed Oklahoma State a 30-25 lead with 5:05 to play in the first half.

McCleskey and Rudolph teamed up again in the waning seconds of the second quarter on a 52-yard catch and run that expanded the Cowboys’ lead to 37-25. Rudolph’s throw, which was delivered under pressure from the Texas rush, was over the deep-dropping linebacker and between two Longhorns defensive backs and was punctuated by McCleskey’s you-can’t-touch-me move to avoid two tacklers.

Each team ended up with the same amount of total yards — 390 — in the first half, but each arrived at that total differently. Texas had a more balanced attack, with 205 rushing yards and 185 more through the air, while Oklahoma State got the majority of its work (310 yards) via the pass.

Oklahoma State added to its lead on a 1-yard touchdown run by Barry Sanders, Jr. two plays after Buechele was intercepted by Jordan Sterns on an ill-advised pass to the right flat. But Foreman bolted through the Cowboys’ defense for a 62-yard touchdown run on the Longhorns ensuing possession to keep Texas within reach, at 43-31, with 4:08 to play in the third quarter.

OSU kicker Ben Grogan, who also had an extra-point kick blocked in this game, padded the Oklahoma State lead to 46-31 with a 26-yard field goal with 11:54 to play. He added another just over five minutes later from 24 yards out at the end of a 61-yard, eight-play drive in which the Texas defense looked like it finally figured something out — albeit much too late.

Just like that, UT’s season has been put in desperation mode, and with a wounded but talented Oklahoma team waiting for revenge next week in Dallas, it’s nearly time to push the panic button on the 2016 Longhorns.

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