Training a Poodle to Hunt When I played football, we had players on our team who looked like they could eat Ford V-8’s for breakfast. Oftentimes they had to be talked into going out for football by our players and coaches who drooled that the thought of these monsters on the team wreaking havoc like Godzilla in Tokyo. The results were often hugely disappointing. Many times these all-star poster boys would get benched and then quit. The problems were often in the form of one insurmountable Achilles heel. One guy had no sense of balance. If he was touched by a finger from the side, he would fall over. One guy had no lateral quickness. All his incredible speed was in a straight line. One guy was simply too passive to play. One guy was too dumb to remember his assignments. The list goes on and on and on. On the flip side, we had many players on the team who looked like physical disasters on a beach or in a weight room, but who morphed into natural born killers on the football field. They were always good for breaking people’s ribs, knocking someone out, tackling someone eight yards behind the line of scrimmage, pancaking someone 12 yards past the line of scrimmage, etc…… !!!! People are always talking about the IT FACTOR as it relates to quarterbacks. I am witness to the fact that all football positions are subject to an It Factor. The hardest I’ve ever been hit in my life was from a guy who had legs so skinny that he had to tape his socks up AND his pants on! He was an absolute terror on the field. He had the IT FACTOR!!!! It seems painfully obvious to me that there are many players on this Longhorns team, and many from the teams dating back into the Colt McCoy years who were never endowed with the football it factor; sluggish, slow to react, passive, a step late, out of position, high pad level, soft, apathetic, undedicated, etc. I think that Quandre’s comments at the beginning of the year about many players not loving football were dead on. That lack of passion manifests in many different ways. All of those manifestations eventually come out on the field. Football is so intense that it eventually separates the grain from the chaff. It can be pretty painful to watch happening to our team in real time. We’ve seen a bunch of it for the last eight years or so. I think that the Mack Brown staff grew too fond of the tape measure and the scale and the marquise numbers of recruits, and forgot to look for the more telling and harder to find clues of a player’s true ability. It is pretty obvious to me that Charlie Strong is one frustrated guy right now. He is dealing with a glut of players who simply have no clue how to play football. They look great getting off the bus, look great running a 40 yard sprint, look great parading in front of the fans…..but they don’t know how to switch into football gear when the whistle blows. These quick first steps, good angles, getting off blocks, all awareness, mean streaks, violent tendencies, and situational tactics are all in extreme short supply on this team. For instance; How do you teach Steve Edmund how to read and react quickly on every play? How do you teach Dalton Santos to have great lateral movement? He’s great when he’s running in a straight line forward, but how do you teach him to run fast, loose, and with flexibility and balance sideways? How do you teach Desmond Harrison, Estelle, Bergeron, and the two rapists to give a shit? How do you fix a recruiting effort so bad that you have to start a natural 250 pound freshman Jake Raulerson at center? A third string defensive tackle starting on the O-line? A walk on and a freshman at starting safeties? A quarterback from a 2-A high school with 20 mop-up plays as his only college game experience. How does Charlie Strong come into a program that was built with the laziest backdrop in recruiting imaginable, with no hint of positional continuity (NO D-Tackles? No O-Tackles??), with players who were recruited for their numbers and looks (Ooooh says the fan base!!! Look at all those pretty 5-stars!!! Mack and staff are really setting the woods on fire this year!!!!), and dealing with players who went through Pop Warner, High school and three years of college and still can’t tell you where the football is on any given play. Or….players who stand in one spot while the other team take six steps into their play!!! Or players who give one push at the line of scrimmage and then stand around and watch the play develop!!! And while we’re talking about the Give a shit ……do the fans actually think that the malaise was isolated to the dope smokers and the rapists? What about the players who suffer from the same I don’t give a shit mentality, but who never got caught or whose malaise wasn’t illegal? What about the sober I don’t give a shit players? What about the guys who dogged it in workouts for 3 years, or skipped workouts completely? What about the guys who never watched game films? What about the guys who ate junk food, smoked, drank, and….?? What about the guys who give up on plays? Charlie Strong is now dealing with players who were allowed to come to Texas with that mindset, and were allowed by the previous staff to continue that mindset for three whole years. He is also dealing with players who might have the right mindset, but who have no practical football skills, who were recruited for their image and their star ratings. Does anyone remember the almost shocked new staff in the springtime talking about the lack of fundamentals on this team? Were we surprised?? Can any of our fans go and look at the play of our teams of the last eight years (victories or losses, no matter) and see great fundamentals at work across the entire team? The O-line of the Colt McCoy era was a joke. That O-line was never fixed, and was joined by the Manny Diaz defense to make a shit soup on both sides of the ball. Garrett Gilbert was lucky enough to be called to lead that bowl of crap at the beginning….and David Ash was there at the end. Charlie Strong and his staff are now dealing with all of it. What he has is this; A team with only a few actual Ballers (see last year’s NFL draft for a trendy reference) A team where Give a shit was optional and not particularly valued (From team AND staff) (see Hicks and McCoy’s romp pre bowl game, and Applewhite’s romp with the intern, and rapists, dope smokers, petty criminals, etc, etc… Does any fan in their right mind think that this lack of discipline cover only the non football issues? …….and the weight training catastrophe where Trey Hopkins increases his totals more in 6 weeks with a private trainer than he has in 4 years of Longhorn workouts. Does anyone in their right mind think that this malaise was isolated to Hopkins? Picture an entire line plagued with the same soft attitude….YEP!!! It should have been obvious as far back as the Colt McCoy era) A team where the lack of recruiting has left gaping holes in the most important positions (see third string D-lineman starting at O-line) A team where lack of recruiting has left paper thin depth at ALL Positions (see freshman across the board as second string) A team where there is only one game breaker, and he has been on the sidelines all season And we think that Charlie Strong is supposed to come in here and train this poodle to hunt within a few months??? I think that accountability is lacking in the fan base too. It will take Charlie Strong the same amount of time that it took him in Louisville. I know that it hurts Longhorn football fans to think that we’ve slipped to this level. We are Texas, right? What I hear fans now saying is a new chant; WE are NOT LOUISVILLE! Guess what? Louisville (that basketball school) could probably kick our asses all over the field. Who built that program, huh? Texas is no different than GM; Ford, Chrysler, K-Mart, RCA, Zenith, Oakland Raiders, Sears, or any other entity that let things slide for too long. It hurts our pride, doesn’t it? Thank God that there’s still pride to be had. That’s a great sign, and a sign that we will be right back eating teams for breakfast if we buckle up and get behind Strong as he leads us out of this shit bowl. It will take him four years. Are we ready for that? If not, then we should shoulder the blame. If we are not ready to support this coach with this team for four years, then we shouldn’t complain when the players act soft too. by WileyCousins on Oct 28, 2014 | 4:42 AM reply
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 02:22:56 +0000
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