Welcome to Inside Texas football powered by Inside Texas.com. This is the deep dive. I'm Paul Wildlington. That gentleman, that rugged gentleman is Mr. Ian Boyd. And we've got some great content for you today. If you want great content of both the written and video variety, go to InsideTexas.com and go join. We're running a promo right now. Use promo code IT1 to get two months of Inside Texas.com for one dollar. I did the hard math on that. That's 12 and a half cents a week. That's bargain. Well worth your time. And this is a great time to join. There's a lot going on. Everyone's excited about the SEC debut for the University of Texas Longhorns. And we want to talk about that SEC debut as we do on the deep dive, specifically with respect to whether Texas can adapt to SEC offenses. So Ian and I did some crack research for hours and hours before this broadcast. Basically breaking down the SEC opponents that Texas will face into three different tranches of offense, three different phyla of offense, if you prefer. And that is the fear and shoot, the spread run and pro style. And of course, we'll explain each grouping as we go through them. But I think we want to go through those and talk about the challenges to personnel and to exes and knows that those different offenses represent the University of Texas defense. So Ian, I'm going to throw it to you. We want to talk about the fear and shoot first. And when it comes to the fear and shoot, there are still some adherence running around in college football. They've added their own spin on it. And two teams come to mind when you talk about fear and shoot offenses. That's the University of Oklahoma, OU, and Mississippi State, now led by Jeff Levy. So talk to me about the challenges that the fear and shoot will pose to University of Texas defense. I think maybe the differentiator of the fear and shoot versus these other offenses, there's a lot. But at its core, it's that these offenses throw to set up the run. And the pro style wants to run, set up the throw, and the spread to run wants to spread to run, right? Those two. It's in the name. So the variant, you know, they use blazing fast tempo. They use the extra wide splants with their receivers. Their outside receivers are hugging the sideline and their slot receivers are lined up wider than Texas's outside receivers often are. It's all about creating big open space that linebackers and safeties have to defend while balancing, do I worry about the past or do I worry about these inside power runs these teams are coming at us with. So Texas has faced it a few times. They've faced Kindle browse twice, right? At Arkansas 2021 and then at TCU last year. And then they faced our browse other son is son-in-law, Jeff Levy twice, both at Oklahoma and 22 and 23, only one of those years in which he even had functional quarterback. And the results have been, I would say pretty unimpressive for Texas. Wouldn't you agree? I would agree. In fact, Ian wrote a really good article about this. If you want the specifics on it, you can of course join inside Texas for mere pennies. And you can figure out how Texas fared. But Arkansas, of course, Texas fans will remember got lit up Texas 471 total yards. And they actually really did the running version of the veer and shoot. They ran. They did a number on Texas in that regard because Texas didn't defend those interior gaps and those wide spaces very well. They sort of played. And this was personnel driven a little bit as well back in 2021. They sort of played almost like they just rolled out their standard defense with with too high. And it didn't go real well. KJ Jefferson and Arkansas ran the ball almost at will at times. And then you saw a version of it that was different with an updated PK defense in 2023, which has been his best performing defense at Texas today. Frankly, I thought OU kind of had their way with him and scored 34 points, 486 total yards. Dylan Gabriel had a big performance both throwing and running the ball. And I don't think Texas did a very good job adjusting. So what do you think we're going to try differently against this veer and shoot approach that Oklahoma and Mississippi state are going to bring, albeit with very different levels of personnel probably. Well, one of the inherent like challenges and questions that these offenses ask you are, are you going to let us throw to one-on-one matchups? Or are you going to let us run on a lightbox? And PK pretty much in every matchup is trying to have his cake and eat it too. He's had zone defenders that are theoretically in position to stop one or the other, but he often couldn't stop either because there's too much space. In last year, they were obviously just counting on, hey, we have NFL defensive tackles on this team. We're going to shut down the run and then they're not going to have enough to beat us, which probably would have been true if not for Dylan Gabriel running for over 100 yards, largely on scrambles and for an adjustment Oklahoma made to bench a little Appalachian state transfer lineman who was getting mauled by sweat for a Caden Green who basically saved their bacon in that game. So I mean, it was not the worst bet, but it was overly conservative and it didn't work out. They don't have all those NFL tackles anymore. I think they need to pick a spot to go mono a mono against these teams. And, you know, right now it looks like that would be the secondary. I would make man coverage in single high coverage. If not a priority for the season, a major emphasis in this matchup against this team and also against Mississippi State. And make them prove they can beat man coverage, maybe with some pressure added, rather than trying to stop all the RPOs with guys spread out across the field. That makes a lot of sense. And I think I saw what you saw last year with OU and that there were players that were given sort of optional responsibilities. But the danger of that is I think OU repeatedly put those players into conflict. You saw very slow and late reactions from the linebackers and safeties, not only in coverage, but when Dylan Gabriel would keep the ball and take off up the middle of the field, you saw linebackers that were kind of paralyzed by it instead of reading reacting, you know, anticipation Trump's reaction on a football field, particularly on defense every time. And you could see that the Texas defenders were reacting and always reacting a beat late to what OU was doing, particularly evident when the pressure ratcheted up. OU went and scored at the end of both halves. And that was the fundamental difference in that game. And those that should be the time period when your defense, if you really believe in it, should shine. You know, if Texas gets stops, end of the first half, end of the second half, Texas not only wins, they probably win with margin, right? They probably win by double digits. So that's something to look for. In terms of Mississippi State, they're going to be led by Blake Schapen, a transfer from Baylor. We have talked about him before in a prior deep dive. And I think people were probably surprised to learn that he's been a pretty competent college quarterback overall. Even with some limitations, I would say of playing an orandas system and preferred methodology of playing. What is Schapen going to bring? He's not quite as good a runner or as athletic as a Jackson Arnold. He doesn't quite have the arm, but he does have a lot of experience. He started a lot of games. Is Mississippi State well positioned to try to, I don't know, make some lemonade out of lemons because they're not going to have overwhelming personnel on the offensive side of the ball? Yeah, they did do some decent work in the transfer portal to find a couple receivers. Kind of the trick with this offense is that you isolate defenses and potentially their weakest defender so easily with the wide splits that if you have a functioning offensive line and then a quarterback that knows where to throw and then one or two pretty good receivers, you can really do a lot of damage. I'm really curious to see how that plays out against the SEC, which is not... SEC defensive coordinators have not blown me away with how they reacted to Tennessee running this offense the last couple seasons. Now, they've had a couple of years now to adjust, so maybe Jeff Levy's coming in at the wrong time, but they may be sneaky good if you don't handle the stress of the system. I still that way about them as well. And frankly, Tennessee, I think they presented some problems because it's in some ways the purest distillation of the veer and shoot, at least the shoot part of it. And you know, when you've got a really strong arm, the accurate quarterback down the field, not Joe Milton, but more Hendon Hooker, that's you've got those receivers who can run, which Tennessee had two years ago. Man, that they put a lot of pressure on your defense and it's not fun. Last year's version of Tennessee was a little bit more run oriented. Tennessee, not on the Texas schedule yet, so we're not going to discuss them, but they are in that phyla of the veer and shoot. So let's talk a little bit about the next group that we're going to see Ian. That's the spread run. And that's probably a broad designation, but I think you'll kind of see as a viewer or listener what we're aiming for, which is this is a team with a dual threat quarterback who is more than content to spread you out almost like the veer, although in some different ways, sometimes you'll see multiple tight ends on the field. And we can talk about that. But they are very interested in finding ways to attack you with the run using both the traditional running back or the quarterback. And then of course, they're going to play action off that when you overreact and they're going to scheme up open shots for their quarterback. So the two teams that Texas will face that will do that are Vanderbilt and Arkansas. And speaking of built, both teams built very differently at the quarterback position Vanderbilt has a former state champion wrestler who's about 5'11" and dense and he could run named Diego Pavia, the transfer from New Mexico State. He who has won me many bets last year. And then Arkansas will have the transfer from Boise State, another group of five team, in Taelyn Green, who is every bit of 6'6". He's a former Lewisville, Texas quarterback, had success at Boise State, didn't really meld there with the offensive direction transferred out to Arkansas. And he's trying to save Sam Pittman's job. But this guy, I know everyone likes to compare any African-American quarterback at any time an announcer sees a guy take off and run at the college level. They say Vince Young and the guy can be 5'10". But I swear if you watch Taelyn Green go, it looks a little like VY. He's every bit of 6'6", same weird deceptive stride length, all that stuff, the shiftiness. So what are Vanderbilt and Arkansas trying to do with their spread run? They're just trying to create angles to run the ball. It's basically like an old school like option, wishbone even, although because the spread they necessarily have to throw the ball a lot more. But they really just want to use the the past game as like a release valve and moo keep the chains moving with option run plays. It's funny actually Arkansas is coordinated this year by Bobby Petrino. You think Petrino, you tend to think a little more pro style. The last good FPS offense he coached was at Louisville with one Lamar Jackson. And I'm going to have an article about this maybe this weekend or later this week about Petrino and Arkansas and Taelyn Green. But Petrino is all about the pistol option run game now. And they were running that in Arkansas spring game in a way that just looked like, looked like Lamar. It looked like Lamar Louisville, looked a little bit like Lamar at Baltimore with, um, help me out with the offense coordinator they recently got rid of, um, the Jim Harbaugh acolyte. Don't have no one vacation as the fine curtains behind me. Uh, you know, it's interesting to me about Arkansas is, look, this is probably Sam Pittman's last hurrah his attempt to keep his job. And by the way, it's possible, you know, just when you, you queue up the funeral dirge for a coach Neil Brown in West Virginia, right? He's headed out and he goes and surprises everyone with a huge season gets re-upped on his contract. Sam Pittman's capable of the same if they surprise. And I think a game they pretty clearly got circled late in, in the season is Texas travels to Arkansas. So if the veer and shoot obviously personnel and exes and knows matter in all of these matchups, if the veer and shoot, we're encouraging PK and Manson and the rest of that defensive staff to adopt a little bit of a different exes and knows mindset in defending that. I think Ian and I might be on the same page that the spread run is going to be a little bit more about personnel stepping up because if Arkansas can just repetitively run the ball, uh, up the middle or get the edge with the quarterback and then they're getting influence blocks on the edge or, or they're double teaming the edge and getting your driving guys off the ball and that that playside linebacker isn't, isn't stepping out and doing his job. Um, we've got a personnel issue. And frankly, that's a harder thing to address. So what is it that Texas needs to do to step up to stop both Arkansas and Vandy? I'd say probably number one is discipline. Like usually when you play a team like this, your game plan is not that complicated. The more complicated the game plan is the more likely you are to get shoot up when people get out of place against the option, right? So you end up usually with a simplified game plan and it's just, hey, this is how we play the quarterback option. You do this. You do this that you need to be here. You need to be here. And so bar number one is just don't let guys run through uncontested gaps, right? And then number two is after you successfully execute whatever your simplistic game plan is, just normal beat blocks, make tackles like you're saying. Like you know, no game plan against the option works if, you know, your if Vernon Broden gets blown off the ball or if the safety can't make a tackle and run support or what have you. We've seen that, you know, back in the day, remember, uh, the main ideas days, Texas had some major problems against the option because they just had a lot going on and they lacked discipline and assignment awareness or, um, you know, back in the Francione days at Texas A&M. Texas A&M always had fits defending the option against Francione. Um, just agonizing watching time after time, somebody go to try to kill Stephen McGee and McGee just embrace it and then pitch it at the last minute to Mike Goodson for a 30 yard run on the edge. Yeah. I mean, even going, uh, higher level coaching and higher level defenses, I don't know if you'll remember, but there was a few years back, a classic Alabama team with a really good defense. It's one of NFL guys played Georgia Southern in noncon and Georgia Southern back then was a pure option team. And because Alabama didn't see option and most modern college football teams see less and less option, right? You'll see some quarterback run, but it's not pure option, right? And, uh, Georgia Southern kind of chewed up Alabama and, and really gave him a bunch of fits and saving after just kind of shrugged and was like, yeah, you know, we would like to have played it better. Our guys don't see it and Georgia Southern executes it beautifully. And, you know, execution is, is eight tenths of it. One more really fun example of that was 2018 when Oklahoma drew army. Yes. With cut, they had Kyler Murray and they drew army like at a really inopportune time in the early schedule where they obviously had not really spent a lot of time installing an option defense because Mike stoops had like a hundred other ideas he wanted to get to. So they're like, whatever, we'll just play good defense and do our best. And army held the ball for like 15 minutes or something. Yeah. He kept Kyler Murray off the field. I think it was like a field either went into overtime or it was like a field goal away from an overtime outcome. It was a great fun. Yeah. They did a similar thing to Texas A&M too. I don't know if you recall that. Yeah, like maybe a decade earlier, right? Yeah. And I'd never understand ADs who schedule service academies. No. Or, or, or really high leveled like, you know, North Dakota state or South Dakota state type teams. But yeah, well, if I was a coach, they're doing you no favors. But well, we talked about the importance of execution and personnel. We've got that personnel who will execute for you if you are in the market for a mortgage. This is the most important financial decision, most important purchase that most of us will make in our lives. And you need to call a guy who's going to be in your corner and that's Gabe Winslow. You can reach up at 832-557-1095 or go to mortgages by Gabe. Gabe is really sharp at what he does. Over 20 years in the industry, he's been on both sides of the industry in terms of being a mortgage broker, but also being on the title side. He is a problem solver. He's not just a guy who's going to quote you a rate and then plug and play and, you know, 30 days later, you get your paperwork. He's a guy who solves problems all through the process. Former National Merit scholar also has a law degree. He's overqualified to be doing this work Ian. And yet he does it really, really well. We've got dozens of people, scores of people who have just raved about the service they've gotten from Gabe. And if you don't believe us, we're biased, go look at his Google reviews. He's got about 150 and you'll find paragraph after paragraph of people just raving about the problem he solved and how he saved the day on a mortgage. Here's the deal. When you go to get a mortgage, you probably should shop around. But if he's not your first call, I highly recommend he be your last call, because at the very least, as a fellow Texas fan, Texas fan, he will tell you if you got a good deal. And if you don't have a good deal, he'll beat it and probably improve upon it substantially. If not, he can also just give you some advice on how to make the process work for you and not for the lender. Give him a call 832-557-1095. We want to talk about the final group of offenses. And this is the biggest group of offenses that Texas will face. And will probably be the most interesting group of offenses we'll face in terms of personnel, in terms of different styles on this broad archetype that we're going to discuss. And that is pro-style. What is a pro-style offense anymore? That used to actually mean something 25 years ago, because there was a real delineation between an NFL offense and a college offense. In terms of protections, in terms of convention, of course, the college game and the NFL game fundamentally have different hash marks, which does change the game, right? Some of the veer-type stuff, veer-and-shoot stuff doesn't really work quite as adeptly in the pro game because of spacing issues. And also, you don't want to have two and a half yard splits against an NFL defensive lineman sometimes. They can run up those splits real fast, the faster than you can hand the ball off. So, but that all said, there is still a group of offenses called pro-style. And that's Florida, Kentucky, Georgia, and A&M. So let's talk a little bit about what does pro-style even mean to you anymore in the college game, Ian. Given that the college offenses have trickled up to the NFL and that we've got more spread, more quarterback run-friendly offenses, all sorts of... So, what is the proliferation of this mean with this big intermixing? Is there still something we can point our finger at and say, "That's kind of a pro-style offense?" It's almost... I mean, the way we're doing it today, it's almost like whatever's left. I guess maybe the main delineations now would be like, you want to run the ball so that you can throw on play action. It's probably the core philosophy, the core tenant that would define a college pro-style offense. Usually, the quarterback is... He's the quarterback because of his decision-making or his ability to push the ball deep down the field. And he's not necessarily a runner or involved in that dimension of the game, although he could be, right? Well, I don't mean this as a criticism or actually, but would you say that a pro-style offense is more conventional in its approach, meaning the veer and shoot or the spread run are creating extremes in the offense to elicit a reaction in your defense. The conventional pro-style, which includes... I think we'd include Texas in the subheading, right? Pro-style says, "No, we're going to line up in a more conventional way. Now, what we might do after the snap is very creative and very interesting, but we're going to re-wide and it's not exactly like crazy or two tight ends. That's a former pro-style. We're not going to line up too conventionally. We're not going to create these extremes to elicit a reaction or force a reaction in your defense, but what we do after that may vary in creativity and we may have different ambitions of what we're trying to do with the ball. Florida, if you watched them play last year, very short, very ball control passing offense. Graham Mertz, three-step drop where he's releasing the ball and half of those throws were happening at or behind the line of scrimmage in some kind of screen action or a quick outlet. Georgia, Carson Beck, a little bit more classic NFL dropback, pro-style quarterback, drops back, he's got multiple reads and he'll push the ball down the field or drop it off depending on what he sees. A&M, I think, might be somewhere in between there. Do you have any thoughts in general on any of these four teams, Florida, Kentucky, Georgia, A&M? They are very different from one another. I think the balance is important. They don't have the extreme systems like you're talking about. They're not trying to create the extreme stress. Although they often first off teams do things such as they have greater multiplicity concepts and they often use things like motion or often more adjusted routes and things like that. There's stuff more offense to throw at you. I think while you need scheme to handle the veer and shoot, you don't need a complex scheme. You just need a little more of an outside the box thinking kind of scheme. The pro-style teams, you may need a lot of scheme because all the different little battles are so marginal. These like different layered concepts with different techniques and your guys have to have a wider toolbox to counter all of them. Even though they're often not as dramatic in the stakes because it's not like in the spread where you throw the ball to a guy in space, you miss a tackle and it's a touchdown. These teams have a little bit of that, but a lot of times they're hammering you on the margins with little leverage points here or there so that they can control the ball and pick up first downs, protect their defense. Yeah, I think that's fair. Two evolutions that I think are interesting to note, and particularly this will be new for for Texas fans, but Kentucky last year, if you watch them play, if they could run the ball, if they're a pro-style offense, but if they can hand the ball to Ray Davis and get some traction, he was going to carry it 35 times. It was up to you to stop them. Kentucky actually revealed a couple of teams that couldn't stop the run that were better teams that they kind of pushed around a little bit. And then they played some inferior teams that actually could stop the run and that gave Kentucky fits. So that was interesting. And then Georgia, people conceive, and I think a lot of not just broad college football, but Texas fans perceive Georgia as a conservative balanced or maybe even run preference to offense. And that is not the case. That has not been the case since not just Carson Beck took over, but I would say the last year of Stetson Bennett, particularly when they played higher end opponents. This is a pass first down the field passing offense that was pretty aggressive. And if you just even look at Georgia's stats, they averaged almost 300 yards passing per game last year with Carson Beck. Now they still had a very prolific offense over almost 500, I mean, I think 500 yards a game total. So they were still ran the ball successfully and effectively. But I think that there is a perception of Georgia as sort of a more conventional, balanced or maybe even run biased team. And that just isn't the case anymore. Is it, am I off or do you kind of perceive it that way as well? I think, I think you're mostly right. I mean, they also they have the lad, my cocky and Brock Bowers as like senior third year players. And those are the best players on their team and two of the best players in the country. So that definitely influenced it. They've always maintained like at the end of the day, they just want to be able to line up and mash you inside. And that's that's remains like they're a guiding star. Well, after they play a lot of teams, they would load up inside. And Georgia was like, we're happy to throw the ball 30 40 times to these guys and set up our run that way. So they're like much more truly balanced that year. This next year, will that be the case without my cocky and Bowers? It feels like that's kind of one of the big questions in college football this year, right? Because the Carson Beck is back. So then, you know, people naturally assume, well, they're going to build the offense around Carson Beck. I don't know if they will actually. I think he was I mean, he's a good player, but I think those skill talents were a major component of it. I'm not totally sure they have like transfers coming in. They have young guys. So maybe they just reload at the skill talents and they're fine, but they could vacillate back to a little more run heavy this year. I can't really tell. So I'm doing a lot of my preliminary research for my thinking Texas football preview, which will be the first it previews the SEC. So I've got my work cut out. I think Georgia is going to replace those guys a little better than people anticipate. They've got some dudes. Maconky, I'm sure Bowers, I kind of doubt it. Well, Bowers is unique. Yeah, a unique creature in college football. But you know what, even their returning tight end who's going to be replacing him is an NFL tight end. He just has a different skill set than Bowers. So yeah, Bowers is unique. They're not trying to replace him one for one. They're just going to try to replace a greater totality of their passing game, which I think they'll be able to do. Quick preview on Georgia, they're going to be real good. And that game in Austin is going to be an awesome battle. You know, one thing, if you wanted to talk about Texas, we probably agree we put them in the pro style. Yeah. And I think if they if there's a team they resemble the most in the grouping of Florida, Kentucky, Georgia and A&M, I would say stylistically, maybe Georgia. But I think Sarkeesian goes about it a little differently and a little more creatively. Do you think that's fair? Yeah. I think I mean, Sarkees generally regard it as one of the more creative and precise play callers and offensive minds and football right now. Yep. Usually compares pretty favorably to all the other similar teams. Agreed. Well, folks, this time has flown. I love talking ball with Ian Boyd. And we love that you joined us. We talked about the beer and shoot. We talked about the spread run. We talked about the pro style, the different challenges that these SEC offenses are going to present to our defensive brain trust. And tell you what, they've got their work cut out for them. There's a lot of variation in these offenses. But frankly, there's some really good personnel that Texas is going to face. And I'm looking forward to the challenge. If you want the challenge of being a part of the best damn site on the internet, when it comes to talking college ball, when it comes to talking to Texas Longhorns, if you want that expertise, use promo code IT1 to get two months of inside Texas.com for one American dollar. Pretty good deal. They say that inflation is out of control, Ian. I don't see any inflation there. So pretty good deal for y'all. And then finally, if you're in the market for a mortgage, we're really proud that Gabe Winslow is sponsoring us. Make sure you give him a call 832-557-1095 for rugged Ian Boyd. I am Paul Bob Wildlington saying thank you for joining us on this deep dive.
Paul and Ian dive into the types of offenses Texas will face in the SEC and how we could combat them. Use Promo Code “IT1” To Get 2 Months of InsideTexas.com for Only $1: https://www.on3.com/teams/texas-longhorns/join/
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Chapters:
00:00 Veer and Shoot (OU, Miss St)
10:15 Spread to Run (Vandy, Arkansas)
20:13 Pro Style (Florida, Kentucky, Georgia, A&M)
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