2019 Longhorn Football Prospectus: Thinking Texas Football

By Paul Wadlington

The 7th edition of Thinking Texas Football is the best Texas Longhorn and Big 12 football preview on the market; the season companion that all serious Longhorn football fans can't do without.
Expect smart insight, clean analytical writing and dry wit that you won't find anywhere else. Written for the smart fan who wants more than the typical preseason pablum, the 2019 Prospectus features breakdowns of the Texas offense, defense, special teams, coaching staff, every individual player and position group, a comprehensive, detailed scouting report on every season opponent, Big 12 predictions, analysis of the NFL draft by conference, and thoughtful evaluation of the Longhorn recruiting class with an emphasis on early contributors. And surprise special features with terrific action-packed photos throughout.
Believe the reviews. This is the Burnt Orange bible preview you can't do without.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Wadlington
• Release date: Jul 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463968116

Paul Wadlington

Texas graduate and long-time corporate monkey turned media entrepreneur and writer. Currently living in San Francisco, CA.

Book preview

2019 Longhorn Football Prospectus: Thinking Texas Football

written by

Paul Wadlington

design by

Scott Gerlach

photography by

Will Gallagher

Smashwords Edition

©2019 by Paul Wadlington

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the authors, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

Contents

Introduction

As The Worm Turns: Year Three

Offensive Overview

Quarterback

Running Back

Wide Receiver

Tight End

Offensive Line

Defensive Overview

Defensive Line

Linebacker

Defensive Back

Special Teams

Louisiana Tech

LSU

Rice

Oklahoma State

West Virginia

Oklahoma

Kansas

TCU

Kansas State

Iowa State

Baylor

Texas Tech

Schedule Difficulty

Big 12 Conference Predictions

2019 NFL Draft Analysis

2019 Recruiting Class Overview

Walk Hard: The Texas Preferred Walk-On Program

About the Authors

Introduction

Welcome to the 7th annual 2019 Longhorn Football Prospectus: Thinking Texas Football.

This book is a Texas football preview, a Big 12 season companion and reference guide, and a resource for the entire football season.

This publication fills an underserved niche in the market. Like many passionate football fans reading regional or national publications, I was dissatisfied with the state of previews.  I realized that I knew more about college football, the Longhorns and the Big 12 conference than the experts. Further, most publications are written in April for June publication. Thinking Texas Football writes and edits up to an early July release to guarantee the inclusion of recent developments like transfers, injuries, and offseason intelligence guaranteeing the most accurate information possible.  

Thinking Texas Football, in deference to its name, is written for an intelligent football layperson. It won’t insult you by writing down to the lowest common denominator nor will it try to overawe you with technical babble. The book’s best ambition is to provide you with different tools - while plainly communicating an awareness of its own biases and blind spots - so that we can engage in a conversation that mutually enriches our shared passion.

If you like it, write a positive review and tell your Longhorn network.  This endeavor can’t continue without your support.

Hook ‘em!

* * * * *

As The Worm Turns: Year Three

The 2018 Texas Football season started out exactly like the 2017 season: inaugurated by another embarrassing loss to our mid-Atlantic master Maryland.  The Terps were once again a double-digit underdog, outplayed Texas on both sides of the ball, and remains a school that takes football about as seriously as Texas takes lacrosse and BBQ without brisket.  

A few moments after the final gun on September 1st, as Longhorn fans watched veritably dozens of Maryland fans cheer the sweet upset over a college gridiron blue blood, the Terrapins well on their way to a brilliant 5-7 campaign, it would be hard to guess at the success in the season to come.  It would be difficult, at that very moment, for a Longhorn fan to envision a ten win season, a triumph over a heavily favored SEC opponent in a New Year’s Bowl and a #9 ranking in the final College Football AP Poll.  

Yet it happened.  Every week, Texas managed to play up and down to their opponents and by season’s end, the Longhorns found themselves with a second place finish in the Big 12, a thrilling win over #4 Oklahoma in the Red River Shootout, and a pair of conference losses by a combined four points to Oklahoma State and West Virginia.  The Big 12 title rematch against the Sooners didn’t finish well for the good guys after a deadlocked game through three quarters, but a motivated Longhorn team (and motivated Bevo XV, get some big guy) put a whipping on the 5th ranked Georgia Bulldogs in the Sugar Bowl to provide a sweet ending to the season, a double-digit win total (the first since 2009) and added another plush hide to the staff’s bowl game trophy room.  

TEXAS IS BACK!  Again. You’ll recall that Texas has been back every couple of years since the late Mack Brown malaise of 2010.  

Maybe Texas really is back after a near decade of hard living, lowlighted by an execrable 23-27 record since 2013 before last year’s turn of the worm.  Or is this just a temporary blip provided by a senior laden team that took advantage of a perfect matchup against an undermotivated Georgia squad that allowed Texas to jump six spots and crack the Top Ten in the final AP Poll?   

2019 will tell the tale. 

It’s pretty straightforward.  If the Herman program is working, Texas will have a good year.  The Herman regime is building a program that identifies, recruits and develops to a system that will be self-perpetuating and self-sustaining once it achieves a certain critical mass and momentum.  The maximization of inherited assets serves to buy time and goodwill to engage that process, so, Year Three, however incomplete in its assessment, represents a clear transition from what Herman got to what Herman brought.  Ultimately, Tom Herman’s legacy in Austin will be determined by his ability to commit his preferred athletes, integrate them into a productive culture, coach them up, put them through the first competent Strength and Conditioning program that the program has seen in years, and create a program that reloads instead of reeling from year to year with results resting on freshman saviors, wrecked depth charts, overhyped recruits and brief talent bubbles.  

Year Three is the hinge moment where Tom Herman’s young recruiting classes, placed early on the big stage by the graduation of a starter-heavy 2018 senior class, will be asked to demonstrate exactly what this program is about.  They will be young. They will be inexperienced. They will need seasoning and reps. But if they are good and well-trained, it won’t really matter. They’ll win. And they’ll keep winning until Herman is playing the game with his deck of cards rather than his predecessor’s inherited hands.  

A brief scan of the 2018 All-Big 12 teams will tell you that this Texas team doesn’t return many established stars.  For the record, only three Longhorns return that earned either 1st or 2nd team honors. Kansas also returns three. Does that put it in perspective?  Similarly, Texas doesn’t return many total starters, with the defense particularly gutted. From a pure productivity index standpoint (an advanced statistics measure that encompasses all aspects of offense and defense) assessed by ESPN’s Bill Connelly, Texas ranks 121st out of 130 FBS programs in returning productivity.  By any conventional understanding of football, these are bad indicators.  

However, an inflection point in Austin won’t be reflected in retrospective numbers and inferential data.  Seasons are prospective. The assumption that the replacement of lost productivity - Tre Watson’s rushing yardage, Patrick Vahe’s starts, Anthony Wheeler’s tackles, Kris Boyd’s distracted by shiny tinsel in the stands incidents - means worse football simply doesn’t hold true if the replacement talent is better than their predecessors.  In several instances, it is.  

This team brings tidings of the program to be.  If Tom Herman and his staff really have changed Texas from the soft, culturally negligent program that characterized the late Mack Brown era and the disorganized surreality that characterized the Strong regime, it will show up in 2019 and beyond.  Texas will finally start to earn its own version of program wins. The last two seasons were about maximizing inheritance. While that will still be imperative in 2019, this is the first season where the third-year head coach will be starting mostly his guys developed by his staff.  This is the year of the Texas Program. If that program is getting it done, it will show up in the box score on Saturdays.

* * * * *

Offensive Overview

Between 2010-2017, Texas has been largely miserable on offense, ranking an average of 66th nationally by advanced analytics S+P rankings. 

Note the S+P unit rankings since 2010:

The 2018 Texas offense jumped 72 spots in the rankings, the single largest increase for the Horns since advanced analytics data have been recorded.  The Longhorns did not do it with explosive plays, big gains or consistently scintillating offense. In fact, the offense was a bit up and down all year and, at times, quite frankly, boring.  Texas did not notch a single play over 48 yards during fifty six quarters of football. Longhorn runners did not break a gain for more than 39 yards all season. The offense averaged a workmanlike 5.5 yards per play, 31 points per game and an unremarkable 412 yards per contest.  Numbers that Oklahoma posted in a single half last year. 

The Longhorns moved up the ranks running offense that would make Bill Parcells grin.  It focused on time of possession, ball control, a deliberative pace, third down conversions, red zone scores and no turnovers.  Especially no turnovers. The Longhorns only lost eleven all year. Only the mighty Black Knights of West Point and Georgia Southern - both triple option teams that throw as often as Todd Orlando attends Pilates classes - had fewer turnovers per game.  Very good quarterback play from Sam Ehlinger, ball security, and the offensive line improving from awful to average under the guidance of first year hire Herb Hand were the primary catalysts. It would be hard to describe a Longhorn offense with that many governors on the big play engine as good, but you have to describe the offense as winning.   Which it was.  And did. The Longhorns won three more games than the 2017 season, despite the defense diving in its own advanced metrics rankings.  Defense winning championships is an enduring platitude, but error free offense drove the rise in Year Two.   

Last year the preview opined: 

"How does Texas get out of its eight year offensive wander in the desert?  Hold serve on defense under the excellent coaching of Todd Orlando and move a historically bad 99th in the country offense into the 40s. That sort of jump may seem aggressive, but merely competent performances from the men wearing the headsets, lined up behind center, and