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Inside Texas Football
Deep Dive: How the Texas Longhorns Beat the Florida Gators
- Welcome to the deep dive. We are off the bye week, Ian Boyd, and we are going to talk some football. It's time. We've got some energy, we've recharged our batteries. We're ready to break down the Florida Gators. First, I want you guys to make sure you like the video and subscribe to the channel. Of course, go join inside Texas. The best conversation about Texas, about college football. Nate, sports in general can be found on those boards. Ian, how's it going, man? Going good. Rest is ready. - You ready to talk about the Gators? - Yep. - Well, I feel like this is an anti-climax because two weeks ago, we would have been having a deep dive, which says, hey, this Florida team's a little better than people think, and they're starting to play well together and they've got these weapons and they've got underrated skill players and they've revamped their defense and they're playing better ball. We better not take these guys lightly and that Florida team no longer exists after a series of injuries. So what we want to talk about is like, how do we make sense of this new revamped Florida football team? So without any further ado, let's talk about the matchup that I think a lot of Longhorn fans, I guess are insecure about the most, at least on our side for our part. And that's the Texas offense versus the Florida defense. Texas offense, not exactly setting the world on fire against either Georgia Vanderbilt or frankly even Oklahoma, although that was a little different game. The Florida defense, playing better after simplifying some schemes, but they have been ravaged by injury, particularly at cornerback. So is this a great opportunity for Quinn Ewers to get right? - Every week is a great opportunity for Quinn Ewers to get right. They need him to be much better to win the championship. - Wow, look at that. The wits, there was a little reflex. Did you just cauterize the wound on your thigh off camera? Is that what's going on, Ian? - I just think, it's a tough question. It's like, would you rather face a better version of Florida's defense and then kind of know what you have? Or is it better to get not perfect version of the Florida defense and then basically have another week to kind of tune up? - Well, let's talk about what that Florida defense is. - Okay. - So they did exactly cover themselves in glory early in the season. - No. - They got blown out at home by Miami. They had Ward put on a clinic. - Texas A and that went in there and put up some offense on them as well with Marcel Reed. - That's the more concerning one. - They look like they were busting a lot. They looked uncoordinated. And then apparently, whether this is propaganda, something shifted, apparently a lot of Florida defenders got together, went to Austin Armstrong, the DC, went to Billy Napier and said, "Hey, we're doing too many checks. "This is too complicated. "Can we just run some basic defense?" And almost immediately, Florida's defense improved. So did you see that change and what is it that they're doing on defense, Ian? - You know what? I haven't really studied what it looked like when they were bad. I can tell you that when they've been good, it's definitely been relatively simple. But they still have... They brought in Ron Roberts, I was talking about this with Connor, in yesterday's live. And so their defense is similar in a lot of ways to Dave Aranda's Baylor defenses when they were good. Where they're relatively simple, but they have some built-in complexity and just very efficient designs to how they do things. Like they're one of those teams that can play a base defense, but the base defense has a lot more to it than somebody that has maybe even more playbook. So when you watch them now, they're for sure, just kind of playing sound football and lining up and going. But they still have a pretty difficult blitz package to handle. They do all this stuff where they like show pressure from one spot and then bring it from somewhere else. And their hybrid edge player, Pibern, is a really good zone dropper in coverage that makes a lot of that work. He's not even a good pass rusher. He has zero sex. - Yeah, you know what's interesting about him. He's a runstopper and a zone dropper. Not what you technically would put at Jack, right? - Unless you're Randy Roberts. - Yeah, when he's really good at, he's about 265. He's a big, strong, physical guy. And he is great at jacking up, pulling linemen. He's great at squeezing down tackles. He's great at Stonewalling the run game. And he's good at pass drops. He's got a good feel for it. I'm not sure he wants to be singled up in coverage with Jaden Blue, but he's good at what they're asking him to do, but not really a very good pass rusher. Kind of interesting for an edge guy. - I was telling Connor, he's like what? This whole system is like what Orlando was aiming for. Where your edge is truly a hybrid linebacker and you create pressure by picking on weak spots with different positions and not by having a pure bendy future NFL end. Obviously Orlando didn't really know how to do that. And he wasted some potential NFL defensive ends, chasing this like money ball version of defense. Florida, it's kind of a weird fit for Florida too, but it can work if you know how to do it. - Here's the problem they've got in cornerback. Pretty important position in college football in general. - Yeah, essentially. - Jason Marshall, arguably Florida's best cornerback. He's out, done for the year. They have another cornerback, their other starter, who I think has actually played better ball than Marshall, statistically at least. He's injured, I don't think he's playing against us. We're not sure, I think Napier's being opaque on that for good reason. They had to play second and third string guys to close out the Georgia game. And you could tell, I mean, obviously Georgia won the game by 14. It was not that comfortable. It was 2020 midway through the fourth quarter. But they made some mistakes on offense and then their defense kind of finally fell apart. So, what on earth would you do if you're Austin Armstrong? You're depleted at corner. You don't necessarily have a great pass rush, particularly from their 450 pound nose tackle. What are you doing, are you just gonna drop eight? Are you gonna mix it up a little bit? Are you gonna play three across high? What are you gonna do to limit this Texas offense if you're depleted at corner and you don't have a great natural pass rush? - Well, I think they're too beat up to mix in anything exotic. That would require, they're already elevating young guys in the secondary, just to fill out their unit. So, I think I would do more of what they did against Georgia and what they've been leaning on, which is play a lot of too high. Hope that your corners can hold up outside and dare Texas to sustain drives like Vanderbilt did. I would even tell the safety is like, don't let them get behind you. If you see a guy breaking open in front of you on a dig route, don't worry about that. Let's get the tackle. Forged Texas to earn their way down the field 'cause they may not, they're maybe rusty from having a week off, but they've just not been that explosive or really just consistent. They haven't been consistent enough to kill us that way. - Here's what I'm gonna do if I'm Austin. I'm strong and Ron Roberts on film. I'm gonna show the inefficiency of the Texas offense, whether by virtue of open guys not getting hit, penalties or turnovers. And I'm gonna say, if we tackle and stay in front of these guys, they'll stop themselves and we give ourselves a chance. If you take dumb risks, if you decide you wanna be the hero or if we just play a lot of man coverage and try to blitz or bring pressure and manufacture pressure 'cause that is tempting with yours, right? He's not necessarily been comfortable with a collapsing pocket. But I'm not sure you wanna give that Texas the opportunity to take those shots. So to me, I think you're gonna see not only too high, too safety is deep. I think you're gonna also see off coverage from the corners. I don't think they're gonna like press or even play like man under that heart. I think they're gonna concede a lot. What do you think? - I don't know. They have Cormani McLean is one of them and they're kind of developing him as a press corner. It probably depends on if their corners are actually good playing off 'cause there is an art to it. And if you're not used to it, then they can be worse. - True. - But maybe they also, a lot of their blitzes, what makes them a little unique is that they have all these blitzes that work from too high. Where they only bring four because Pyburn is a good dropper. So they'll bring a linebacker, they'll bring the nickel and they'll still stay in too high behind it. Yeah, I think I'm basically in the exact same page though. You dare Texas to execute all the way down the field. Their offensive game plan, which we'll get to later, is also gonna be oriented around, let's shorten the game and see if we can get Texas rattled. Maybe their first few drives don't go so well. And then it's a low scoring game and Texas can't get going and we're holding onto the ball and they're getting in SARCs, getting antsy and he's calling up shots and yours isn't hitting them and they're throwing checkdowns. That'd be for sure what I would wanna encourage with my game plan. - Yeah, I think it's gonna be really interesting. I think tackling is gonna be big for them. That's something that they've not always been great at. Douglas, one of their safeties, not a good tackle. So it's gonna be very interesting. I think this is a, it's kind of an interesting defense too in general in that it's hard to find stars and they play a lot of guys but they seem to have a lot of above average guys. If that makes sense. - Yeah, I think they are rounding into form. If they fire a billionaire pure, I think that's going to be a catastrophic mistake. Unless they had somebody like awesome lined up. - That's probably the key caveat there, right? You don't fire him blindly. You get your ducks in a row before you make that kind of move. To that point Ian, before you make a big move in life and firing a coach and hiring coach, that's a big financial move but we don't deal with that. You know what we all deal with? We deal with buying a house. We buy it with fulfilling the American, we deal with fulfilling the American dream and that's the biggest financial commitment that any of us are going to make. You need the right guy in your corner. You need Gabe Winslow. You can reach him at 832-557-1095. Gabe has a compendium of raving reviews on Google. The kind that you can trust from like actual people with real names and profiles and like six paragraphs written about all the things that Gabe did to solve a problem. That's the kind of review that should give you some heart. And also, you guys are a great guy. Lifetime Longhorn, 20 years in the industry, has a law degree, former national merit scholar. This guy's overqualified to be doing mortgages. I don't know why he's not solving all the nation's problems but he can solve your problems in acquiring a new house. Give him a call 832-557-1095. We're going to talk about the Florida offense versus the Texas defense. Ian, call it bias, call it analysis. This is not the defense on the road in Austin, Texas, that you want to break in your third string quarterback to his first real start. What do you think? How's Mr. Aiden Warner going to fair against the University of Texas, passed him? - I think poorly. - Yes, I agree. - You know, I didn't even realize this until this morning that their slot receiver, Eugene Wilson, just one of their better players is out. - Done. That's really bad. That's the kind of guy that's like, the plan with Aiden Warner would be, we're going to do a lot of short passing that suits his range and his command of the offense and that'll be our constraint against the, whatever Texas does against the run game, you'll try to punish it with rollouts and underneath passes and to lose that guy for that purpose is just, it's really unfair what the schedule did to Florida this year. And Texas is very well poised to benefit. - When you're an inexperienced quarterback, your best friend is the eligible receiver closest to the ball. - Yeah, yeah, we'll play. - And the guy in fairness, the guy they have replacing him actually played great against Georgia. - Who is it? - His name is Aiden as well. It's Aiden Mazzell, I think. And he had four catches for 66 yards and a touchdown. So he's not without talent, but he's not Eugene Wilson. Eugene Wilson's magical power was catching very short, easy passes and then adding five or six or eight yards of yak. And he was really good at it. Now Florida actually did a really judicious job, a really nice job in the portal, getting other receiver talent in the off season. They got Elijah Badger from Arizona State. They got Khmer Dyke or DK, I think, from Wisconsin. Badger, DK, according to Homer, thank you. Badger has been an amazing deep threat for them. He's averaging 23 yards a catch. Unfortunately, Ian, that was a function of having who in the lineup, who is not gonna be in the lineup. - Yeah, DJ Lagway. - DJ Lagway, who say whatever you want about that dude? Can, gorgeous, deep fall, not just a cannon, accurate. - Yeah. - It lands right where it's supposed to. And Elijah Badger had just been unlocked by that. I think the Badger's gonna go underground with the third string quarterback that doesn't have that kind of arm. - I think that's true. I think that this is why Napier has been obfuscating over whether Lagway could be available. 'Cause everybody knows, if you have a bad hammy, he's not gonna go out there and be DJ Lagway. But you, I mean, I think everybody knows he's not gonna play, but you don't want Texas to draw up their game plan, knowing that they can like sit on everything shallow. - Texas will draw up a game plan, knowing that they're gonna sit on everything shallow. - I know, but you just try, you try not to make it easy. - If they had been smart enough to say DJ Lagway sustained a high ankle sprain, they might have had a more plausible argument that they could take him up, drug him up, and roll him out there and throw bombs, right? - If you weren't holding his hamstring the whole time, - I get it carted off. - Yeah, the carted off, he could still sell the high ankle, but the fact that he's like mouthing my hamstring, my hamstring on TV, maybe we'd make that a little. - That's a good point. Yeah, I just, a hamstring is not gonna work. And if he does play, he'll be so ineffective that it won't matter. - So, and you're not gonna ask him to dodge Colin Simmons and Anthony Hill with on a bad hammy. You're just asking for him to tear it so bad he misses spring. - He'd be a sitting duck and yeah, further exacerbate the injury, which you can do with hamstrings. I've only had a hamstring injury once in my life 'cause I don't run fast enough to hurt my hamstring. - That's my trick as well. - Even a minor injury to your hamstring, you have a level of terror just sort of doing basic stuff. Like, oh, you know, let me run these stairs and then you kind of go, oh, am I gonna rip my hamstring? It's crazy. The only thing worse is like in the killings. All right, so what does Florida need to do? They need to run the ball on him. And they've been pretty effective on a down-to-down basis in terms of just basic efficacy, getting positive gains in the running game all year. And they've run the ball on some pretty good fronts. And I've seen them do it. They do it from different sets. They really, I think, excel from the pistol, which I think will be interesting. However, Montreal Johnson, their best running back, their most experienced running back has been out. He could return this week. We're not sure. In his place, they've had a freshman and a more experienced player that have been alternating. They're pretty good backs too. But Georgia, I mean, pardon me, Florida has not had a lot of explosivity in their run game. And if, I mean, are we looking at them running a Mississippi State game plan? Is that their best hope? And they hope that the Texas offense self-destructs. - Yep. They're actually, I guess they're, so they're just now occurring to me, but they're stylistically probably more akin to like ULM. Only with enormous lineman and talent. And I think, would you agree that they have, Napier has actually built a better run game at Florida in a couple of years than Sark has at Texas? - Yes. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of what you and I have talked about in that Sark relies on - Multiplicity. - Multiplicity. Maybe the talent of the running back a little bit. Spreading the, you know, having people worried about a lot of stuff to kind of muddy up the run game. Napier, it's kind of like ULM in that it's kind of pure scheme. Like they're scheming stuff up with a lot of bells and whistles and deception to run pretty basic run plays. And a lot of them are power runs in various forms, but kind of, you know, they're left handed a little bit of a run game behind Damian George and the other big tackle to transfer from Louisiana. But they like to run it inside. And then, and then they keep you honest with a lot of spread out quick passing game. It's another thing to mention. The Florida passing game has been pretty good about avoiding sacks and negative plays. That's because they have two types of pass plays Ian. When they throw it short, it spread you out and they immediately get rid of the ball. Or they bring everyone in, they run two man routes, they max protect and they let it go. What they don't do is three wide receivers, a tight end, a running back in the backfield, play action, drop back passing game. Here's my different reads. That's not the Florida passing game. But I think that simplicity and that predictability of their passing game doesn't play well against Texas and our defensive back. - Yeah, they're just not going to be able to get enough. They won't be able to be, they won't be able to get enough explosiveness out of it. It, you know, now that you mention it at Louisiana, they would routinely win like lower scoring games. - Yeah. - And the style that you're describing, they were really good at Napier and his quarterback, Levi Falk, right? We're able to control games without making mistakes, but they weren't able to get a lot of margin 'cause they just weren't very explosive, except for like one or two years where they maybe had a crazy downfield threat in the passing game. I think with Lagway that they could eventually have that. But now what they're bringing to Austin is gonna be just, the talent is not gonna be good enough to ball control their way to victory. - So what about the idea that, and I know fans hate this, but, you know, Mississippi State, Colorado State, ULM, they had a little success running the ball on us, right? At midfield, meaning they'd run for four yards or something and everyone freaks out, you gotta stop the run, that team sucks, but what they couldn't do was anything explosive in the run game. What they couldn't do was anything explosive in the passing game. And then by the end of the game, you realize the team's gonna have 10 points on the ball, right? So, is there a path? I mean, so I've read a lot of Texas fans saying, "Hey, we should go zero, we should go eight man front, one safety high, and just dominate them." Or, "Should we just kind of play our defense and not allow any explosives whatsoever?" And just say to them, "Hey, we don't think you can drive the ball up and down the field, and we're gonna turn you over on third down." - We've been pretty good at that, so we might as well just do that again. - Yeah, that's my feeling. - Me and you both thought we should attack Michigan and do the eight in the box, whatever. - We didn't, no, we did more of the then don't break an attack on third down. And this roster is just very good at that, because the third down package is so nasty with Simmons and Hill and Burke and everybody. So yeah, I would just run more of that. I think Michigan actually had a better offense than what Florida will have in this game by maybe even a decent margin, right? - I think Davis Warren and Aiden Warner might be the same guy. I think Warren is better, but it's close. - Yeah, you're probably right. Yeah, that's an interesting comp. And I think that there's some validity to it in that I just don't see how Florida can have sustained success on offense. And particularly, you have to have such a narrow playbook for a young inexperienced quarterback. By the way, it was very poised against Georgia. He wasn't like panicking, he wasn't freaking out. He avoided the rush well. But they gotta limit the playbook for him. And I gotta think we're gonna figure out what that playbook looks like after three series. I don't think it's gonna be much complexity. - Yeah, it's a really tough draw to get Texas coming off a buy with all their playmakers healthy and geared up for the stretch run. And you're like limping out of a tough loss to Georgia and you just lost your quarterback. It'll be an interesting test of Napier to see if he can rally the troops and get them to buy in on a game plan and execute it well enough to have it like to even keep it close. I think would be kind of impressive. - Yeah, I agree. I think beyond that, we expect to turn the Gators into shoes, wallets, belts. Boots, leather jackets. Can you name any other Gator goods? - Fried appetizers. - Yes, very good. Anything else? - Can you use them in gumbo? - What? - I think you can use them in gumbo. - Oh yeah, you can put anything in a gumbo. You just let it simmer long enough with some good spices. You could put anything in it. You could squirrel, you could Gator, anything. You're good to go. Have you ever encountered a Gator in the wilding? - I visited my wife's grandparents in the villages outside of Orlando. And I was surprised to hear on the, like you take like a shuttle from the airport out there. The guy was talking about how like all the, there's like Gators everywhere in Florida. And like you could see them out the window and I was like, really? And then it like got to their neighborhood and it was like every retention pond, if you looked at it closely enough, you would see a small Gator sunbathing or swimming or like just like your retention pond like that. Probably half of our listeners living in like planned communities in the suburbs have these retention ponds and you don't have alligators in them. But in Florida they do. - Yeah, not just retention ponds, obviously golf courses, but also decorative sort of community ponds in your little HLA subdivision, which is all we're going to do is. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - You don't idly throw a tennis ball in that for your dog to go get. - Yeah. - And even if you go like, well, there's no Gators in there. Gators move around at night, surprisingly far distances. So. - I was asking, I was like, is there ever like, they like eat the old people, you know? And their grandparents were like, oh, you know, every now and then somebody'll lose an arm or a dog or something. And they try to keep a good watch on it. If the Gator gets too big, they just take them out and relocate them to the Everglades or something. I was like, okay, it's just part of life here. It might get bit by Gator. - When I was a kid, we had a Gator in Town Lake for a while, but he had not gotten there naturally. Someone had bought a little Gator 'cause they're cute and then realized they're not as cute when they're six feet long or bigger. And so they threw him in Town Lake 'cause, you know, why not. - And then the local Austinites refused to allow them to be removed. (laughing) (indistinct chatter) - You say he's an invasive species, praying on birding nests. And then you get the local birding community on your side and you could do anything to an animal that you want. FYI. All right, we hope this has been an informative deep dive. We may have meandered slightly off of our original topic, but hey, what am I going to say? I think Ian and I are feeling fairly confident that Texas is going to win this game through no fault of the Florida Gators. They've gotten a run of bad luck. And hey, no one feels much sympathy for Texas when they have the run of bad luck. So it's part of football. Ian, any closing thoughts that say goodbye to the people? - Nope. No closing thoughts for me and perfect. Thanks for joining the deep dive and hook 'em.
Here's how the Texas Longhorns can beat the Florida Gators. What do you think?