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Texas CAN’T Keep Relying on Arch Manning — Sark’s Offense Must Evolve | Longhorns Football
00:21:20
Rod Babers and Jeff Howe explain why Texas cannot continue treating Arch Manning as its most dependable short-yardage runner. With a talented collection of running backs, tight ends and receivers, Steve Sarkisian must develop a more diverse offensive...
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, what's up, folks? Welcome back to only Texas Football. And welcome back to another edition of Football Theory. I'm lifetime Longhorn Rod Babies. Pleased to be joined by fellow football theorist, my good friend, esteemed colleague, Jeff Howe. Today, today's edition of Football Theory brought to you by accomplished Austin realtor Laura Baker. We'll tell you more about her coming up a little bit later on. But Jeff, you have two very compelling questions. Did you want us to discuss here on Football Theory today? And Ponder and I love both of them, both of them could be know 20, 30 minute discussions. We're going to try our best. All right. To you know, to get this, to get, to narrow this down to just a little bit of the, the nuggets that you need to know about these two questions, one for offense and one for defense.
- [00:41]
B
Burning hot Rod like scrambled eggs on the black top in Austin, Texas in, in the month of August, which it is that hot outside right now. But these are burning questions that we'll see if we get them answered in camp or it's kind of. And I want to credit the OTF fam because we've gotten some form of these questions on a couple of live streams this week. It had and I wanted more time to dig into it because. And Football Theory is one of our shows that kind of lends itself into guests getting in the deep dives. So the first question, Rod, we'll start with the Texas offense. What is this net? What is the schematic evolution in Sark's offense that we can hear about during camp? And I don't know if it's an evolution per se, but to me it's gotta revolve around whether it's personnel formation, whatever you do, how do you maximize your ability to convert short yarded situations, running the football without just snapping it to Arch and hoping something good happens? Because you can do that. Like we've talked about it a lot this off season and I really believe this. Like, this is not a bit. This is me being as honest as I can. Your best short yardage running option, your most proven commodity move, the change in short yardage on the ground is Arch Manning. And as much as I love Arch's legs and his versatility and his athleticism, that doesn't need to be the case this year. Like Arch, front of the football needs to be like break glass in case of emergency or it's opponent specific or you've got it in the game plan. So that to me, Rod, like I want to see, like what are your power Packages look like. And, and it's got to go beyond, like the old school. Oh, let's just throw a defensive lineman in the backfield and then let him block. Like you've got enough personnel at running back and tight end and even you've got big enough guys, a wide receiver where you should be able to have power packages that you put on the field that you feel like, yeah, we can go. We can go convert this, this third and two, this third and three, whatever it is.
- [02:38]
A
It's so compelling. This is why this question deserves such a deep dive, right? Because you start looking at the history, right? Let's talk about history first, because I always love studying football history. I think that's a big part of football theory. When Texas has won a national championship. Let's look at those offenses, right? You had cutting edge, innovative creativity with the wishbone combined with elite Texas talent. And then, boom, you get your. Your first dynastic run with Texas football and dkr, right? And then your next evolution was, was Greg Davis going to kind of steal that rich rod, you know, zone read, read option, you know, uptempo offense, putting the perfect specimen in that system in Vince Young. And it was at the time that was. That was the most kind of creative, innovative cheat code offensively, and boom, you end up winning a national title. Now, I'm not saying Sark's gotta, you know, he's gotta lead the next innovation offensively, but he does need to be on the cutting edge with this talent. And I think if he can find a way to, you know, construct this, an amalgamation of the most innovative cheat codes right now in football. And there are a ton of them. We talk about them all the time, right? There's something we've been talking about for a long time. Present power, personnel and pivot to play action or past principles. The NFL is doing that right now. That's why the 12 personnel renaissance is happening in the NFL, right? Everybody's running 12 personnel, but essentially they're running spread ideology out of these heavy sets. And that's something that Sark probably needs to do more of, right? Heavy sets, when you're talking about 6o line packages. Something else that's trending in the NFL. When you're talking about 21 personnel, you got two of the best backs that you had a combination of since Sark has been there. So the pony package should be. Should lead the country in some of those elements. Something that you talked about earlier, which I love. You should be one of the national leaders in empty formation with your. With the receivers and the skill talent that you have with Arch Manning as a dual threat quarterback. So that's, that's one thing. And then in addition to him figuring out what's going to be the innovative creative identity of this offense, what's going to put you ahead of the rest of your peers. Right. Philosophically from an ideological standpoint, but also critical moments in the game. You have not been elite yet. I keep bringing this up on third down in red zone post Bijan and Rojo at Texas and I just don't see you winning the national championship if you're not at least considered a good third down team and considered a good red zone team. And you have not been that post Bijan and Rojo. And that's something Sark's got to figure out too. And I think a big part of that is that will be fixed is a lot of that is on potentially on his receivers. One thing we've talked about here at Football Theory, his receivers at Texas have not necessarily been good against man coverage. You go look at the analytics, they're not great versus man coverage. And if you look at the stats, every team pretty much in the power four increases their, increases their man rates on third down and pretty much, I would say probably about 80. I went and looked up the top 15 red zone defenses a couple of weeks ago. The top 15 red zone defenses, 80% of them, over 80% of them increase their man rates in the red zone. So a big part of this is, do you have enough man beaters on the outside at Bama you did in Bama, you had elite third down, elite red zone. I don't think that's a coincidence. So here at Texas, that theory will put to the test too.
- [06:19]
B
Bottom line for me, Rod, on this is don't leave it to chance just expecting your offensive line to get to the point where, yeah, we can have a dominating offensive line and they can just roll people off the line of scrimmage and consistently reset the line of scrimmage because you haven't had that at Texas under Sark. And you know, we could talk about interior personnel or whatever. Like you've been great at tackle and you're still really good at tackle with Trevor Goosby and Melvin Ciani on this team. But go into the season expecting your offensive line to be average. If they get above average, better than that, then great. But put enough, for lack of a better term, put enough fail safes in your offense. Yep, that can help bail out the offensive line to where it's not just going to be all on the offensive line. You're too talented, Rod, and you've got the potential to be too close with this offense to lose an SEC championship game, a critical regular season game, a playoff semifinal, because, well, our offensive line just couldn't get a push when it mattered. Well, no, you should have other things in your offense to help your offensive line. You should be dynamic enough and diverse enough to where if you're facing, if your offensive line is facing like or better personnel on the opposing defensive line, you can help them out a little bit. You can insulate them a little bit.
- [07:37]
A
Yeah, no, I agree with you and that I, I, for Shark, that's the diet. I. Look, the diversity is the key there. Kind of going back to when Sark admitted that essentially when he made that deep playoff run in 2024, they kind of ran out of. Yeah, ran out of place. Right. Just ran out of ideas because he had got exhausted the playbook pretty much because he had made such a deep run. He had pretty much admitted that. And by the way, I don't, I'm not judging him because of that, actually. I love that he admitted that because I noticed it. I, I really, I said it before that I was like, man, seems like, sorry, it's not enough. You know, I'm not seeing enough diversity there. Where's the new stuff? Where's. Where this deep in the playoffs, in critical moments, where are the plays that you've been pretty much kind of saving? Where are your tendency breakers that I talk about all the time? And he didn't have enough tendency breakers and I, that's another big part of this too. And getting to your point is tendency breakers and critical moments because you're right. And in those moments where it's a goal line situation or a short yard situation and everybody pretty much knows what you hang your hat on. Everybody knows, like, well, Texas runs like three plays pretty well in this situation. We're gonna be ready to fit them. Three plays. I need your attention to your point. Where's the fail safe? Where's your tendency breaker? He did a good, a decent job of that later on in the season, last season, actually, with a couple of things and I think this season I want to see him at his best with Tennessee breakers plays that we have not seen or not seen a lot of that we realize, like, oh, man, Sark hasn't run that play a lot in that situation or that's, that's a new formation and the new formation with that concept and we haven't seen it even though Me and you, we study the Sark offense as much as anybody. Right. And if we get surprised by, we're like, holy, that's. That's new. Guys ain't seen that.
- [09:17]
B
The Nick Town sweep against A and M, perfect example.
- [09:20]
A
Boom. Exactly. I mean, we should, we should have more moments like that because there's so many big games this coming season. So many big games. You, you're at Tennessee, you're at lsu, you got to play Ole Miss, you got at A and M, I mean, you got all these big games. And what we know about big games, there's a lot of prep done for big games, a lot of preparation. You're doing preparation right now. Brent Venables is doing preparation for Texas right now. Big game. Right. And the only way for you to be able to, to. To basically flip the scenario and flip the script where that preparation can blow back on them. All right. And it could actually be advantageous to you is for you to break tendency at the right time. Use that information that they're. They're game planning with and preparing with. Use it against them. And I need to see more of that from start because I think that's your fail safe and that diversity that we're talking that you're talking about at the right moment.
- [10:07]
B
Yep. That's what I want to hear in camp is you're not forcing it with your offensive line. You're figuring out as you go along what they can do and then building your offense around that rather than do the. The square peg round whole bit. Second question, Rod. And again, this one also needs some nuance. How closely will this Will Muschamp defense resemble the 2008-2010 defenses? And another way this was phrased was Will Muschamp run his defense like we've known it. Well, I think if you're a Texas fan and you didn't watch Will Muschamp watch his Florida teams or South Carolina teams, or even maybe you didn't watch much Georgia when he was a CO DC there with. With Glenn Schumann, even though we know Kirby smarts over the defense. But at any rate, so much has changed, Rod, in the football world and especially in the sec philosophically, just how people move the ball, what people value on offense, personnel packages, quarterback play it. I think you'll see some similarities. Like they're going to run some form of quarters coverage, they're going to blitz like it's, it's kind of that Kirby smart, Nick Saban blueprint as well. Musham runs his defense. But I don't. You Know it. I. I want to see. What I'm anxious to see, Rod, is how much has Will Muschamp evolved as football has evolved to be what we believe he is, which I still believe at the end of the day, maybe the top defensive coordinator, the top, the top in game defensive play caller in college football. Is he still that he can be that and he will be that if he's properly adapted to where football has gone since the last time we saw him call defensive Texas.
- [11:51]
A
Yeah. It's interesting because, you know, I went back to look at that 2020 defense for South Carolina because I was really interested, you know, the last time he was calling plays and calling all the shots. Right. You know what the defense looked like. And I'm still kind of doing some breakdown, but I am almost 100% sure that he's going to play some aggressive man coverage. They had some of the highest rates of man coverage in 2020. South Carolina did corners and safeties and even going back to the spring showcase, what I could track would have had you over close to a 50% man rate there as well. Now that's just spring showcase. But I'm going off and you know, people are like, well, what about Georgia time? Yeah, Georgia. He had input and influence. There's no doubt he was a co def coordinator there. But on record he wasn't calling the plays. And on the record, that's Kirby Smart's defense. Kirby Smarts calling the shots there. We all know that, right. So even with shooting, right. Kirby Smart's gonna. He's the one that's vetoing everything. So I think going back to that 2020 defense, I think your man rates are going to be through the roof. That's no doubt. And you're going to be able to create more havoc. I went back and looked at and I make sure I get the stat right here because I was a little surprised by it when I looked at it. But it's not. It shouldn't be surprising because mush champs defense are known for creating. Ha. But if you go look at takeaways for must champ defenses when he was D.C. at LSU, just take out the Georgia time basically is what I'm doing. Lsu, Texas, Auburn, Florida, South Carolina, just take out the Georgia time. So he's calling most of the shots. His teams finished first or his defenses finished first or second in the conference in takeaways on six different occasions for four different programs.
- [13:38]
B
Yeah.
- [13:39]
A
So that's just. His defense is going to create havoc and they're going to take the football away. So Those things, Those things. I'm, I'm really sure because he's got enough talent at Texas that he can, he can do what he wants. He, he's not really limited. I'm sure there's something that he'd like ideally to be different defensively. He probably won't admit that, but he's got as much talent as he needs to construct the type of defense that he wants. And I think he's going to play a lot more man coverage and I do think you're going to create a lot more takeaways. Not to say that that's crazy because Texas led the SEC in takeaways the last two years. So it's not like you, you're a team that hasn't been taking the football away. You already got that instilled in your DNA as a defense anyway with PK the last couple years. So I, I think that to me is a no brainer. More take, more to the same amount of takeaways on that level and a lot more man coverage. And Sark is pretty much admitted to they want to play stickier man coverage. And I think that creating that havoc is something that's going to be done by more aggressive blitz rates and more twists and stunts up front. And that's also something that I think in 2008, the Texas defense did a lot of too. I'm still in my deep dive study to figure out how much similar the lines of scrimmage are going to be. The secondary is a little bit easier because there are people that keep up with coverage rates and stuff like that. Nobody really keeps up with, as you know what kind of front you're playing. You know how often you twist and stunt up front and blitz rate, stuff like that. So I'm still trying to figure out some of that stuff, but I'm, I think the best way to do it. I'm gonna try to talk to some of the 2008 guys and try to ask them just straight up like, hey, how often were you guys, you know, running, you know, blitzing from the second level? How often were you guys six man pressures, five minute pressures, that kind of stuff? I think that's probably the best way to do it. And honestly, I'm still doing some deep dive, so I have some more about it. But is, I think you will get a very similar philosophy, which is attack. And we, we don't, we don't, we don't agree with organic disruption. We want forced disruption. That's what Mushroom's about, forcing the issue.
- [15:45]
B
Yeah, my My thing, Rod, when I look at the defensive front, I think the big thing that's changed really since Will Muschamp was last at Texas, which you gotta remember, like, that's a long time ago. That's almost 20 years ago, right, like to go back to 2008. But you know, one thing that has changed is I think teams now, the really good teams, the championship caliber teams in college football to me are so much deeper on the interior defensive line and really on, on a defensive line, period. Where defensive lines in college football, like, yes, if you've got a Colin Simmons, you know, Dylan Stewart of South Carolina, like, if you've got one of those guys, yes, have him on the field at all times in multiple situations. Other than that though, your defensive fronts have almost become like baseball bullpens. Like, you've got situational guys. I got my long relievers, I got my short relievers, got my closer, got my setup guy. Like you can just mix and match and do different things because at Texas, yeah, you can be that deep in terms of personnel. It used to be like, man, look how deep Alabama is. Like they've got a row guys and you found a couple programs like that. But now the programs that have the resources to put into having really elite defensive lines, they're just loading up like the more the merrier. Like, hey, we got guys that can be disruptive or a guy like Angel Fraud that can be a, you know, just a big space eater and occupy blockers. Like just get as many different types of guys as you can. So I think that's different. But it's interesting, right, to think about when will much champions last to Texas? Obviously Texas was in the Big 12. We talked about at that point the Big 12 was really starting to change philosophically, offensively. And it's almost like now that Will Muschamp steps into the SEC, you know, the SEC is kind of almost where the Big 12 was when he left Texas. Like more people are running space and pace. Like, you've seen the veer and shoot influence, the air raid influence, Lane Kiffin and Jeff Lebby and some of these guys are really big on tempo. But you know, you've also got a healthy amount of NFL influence in the SEC where Mustard's talking about he loves going against Sark's offense in live periods because hey, when if we see motions and shift and pre snap movement during the season, nobody's going to show us more motion shift in pre snap movement than all the offense we face in practice every day. So you're getting A really good look at. So I think that stuff has changed, but it's really weird. And where I was going with the Big 12 thing was you talk about havoc, it's almost like yeah, you're willing to, hey, if you give up a touchdown, you give up a big play, that's fine because if it, if the end result is number one, an extra possession for the offense or two, yeah, you're going to give up something but you're going to get a couple of those back because of how much havoc you create. I don't think they really sweat giving up the big blades. I almost think I'm just going to get inside Sarkad for a minute. I almost think Sark would be more willing to like if you're going to give up a touchdown, let me give up a bomb like a 60, 70 yarder on a 2, 3 play drive
- [18:35]
A
rather than at least get the possession back.
- [18:37]
B
Rather than you going double digit plays like 13, 14, 15 plays and just like just body blowing me to death, like just punches to the gut over and over to where eventually you just kind of bleed out and that's it. And like oh, all of a sudden there's eight minutes drained off the clock and now we have left. So I again topic of the off season. Why did Stark make the change? I think because he wants someone aggressive like Mushroom. Because hey, they make his defense this scheme. They may give up a big play but I trust them. At some point they'll get it back.
- [19:06]
A
Yeah, no, I agree with that. I think that's what the complimentary football element is for for Sark is that that's the complementary elements that he wants an aggressive offense that you know is also kind of rolls the dice at certain times. Right. And he also wants a defense that's aggressive forces the issue and too often with pk, PK light on organic pressure and would allow the offense to kind of dictate the terms and then he would adjust and adjust pretty well. But I don't think Sark liked that because sometimes the adjustments didn't work or sometimes, often the adjustments came too late. And I think Sark wants to force the issue early play with a lead. I think that's something he wants to do this year too. And a must champ defense is good for that because you can create some of that havoc early, get you some turnovers early, get you some negative plays early and then your offense. We know Sark, right. He's a script guy. Sark's offenses are better early on rather than him adjusting that's something he's still working on. And I think Sark wants to play with the lead this year. I think the mush champ defense at least philosophically talking about complimentary football, if you open up with a good script and you get a turnover early or you get some negative plays early, good field position, that may help you get a lead to play with the league. So that's something else.
- [20:14]
B
It's, it's the race to make the opponent predictable because if you get into predictable passing game now you're turning Colin Simmons loose, you're just unleashing the hounds. And hey, it's all bets are off at that point. So we'll see if it what happens in camp, Rod. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, good stuff.
- [20:31]
A
I can't wait. Camp is opening up pretty soon. Of course OTF will have it covered. Let's thank our sponsor Laura Baker before we end things. Football Theory brought to you by accomplished Austin Realtor Laura Baker. Laura and the Andy Allen team at Keller Williams can handle all of your real estate needs in the Austin area. Laura is not only a die hard Longhorn fan, but a long time Austin real estate expert. So please give her a shout today. 512-784-0505 that's 512-784-0505 or reach out@laura andialnteam.com and thank you very much to Laura Baker and her team for being part of our team here at on Texas Football. Thank you Jeff. Great stuff as always. Appreciate your knowledge and expertise. Thank you to Matthew behind the scenes. He's the real mvp. And thanks to each and every one of you out there for watching and for listening. For Jeff and for Matthew and for accomplished Austin Realtor Laura Baker. I'm lifetime lahorn Rod babies. Until next time. Hook them Horns.