I’ll have all the breakdowns for the Deep Dig when I’ll actually KNOW more of what I’m talking about after all the film review, but shooting from the hip post-Texas/Ohio State some things I THINK:
– Graceson Littleton is a baller. He had back-to-back PBUs on a series that would have ended it if not for a Colin Simmons facemask penalty that negated one of them. The dude was out there carrying Jeremiah Smith on crossing routes as a true freshman. He also had the clutch open-field tackle on the third down at the end of the game that got Texas one more shot to go down the field and score.
– The Neto Umeozulu breakout is probably not going to happen. He did get to play some at LG, but Connor Stroh coming out of nowhere to beat him out of a starting job is definitely an indictment. One of the things I’m most interested to see this week is how Stroh scores out in the Deep Dig, because based on the eyeballs in real-time he sure didn’t look like he was really out of place or bad. Stroh dominated the snap share over Neto.
– Jack Bouwmeester is a beast. I don’t think Texas has had a punter with his potential to flip the field since Michael Dickson.
– I actually liked the halftime adjustments that Sark made on offense. It didn’t amount to points, but I think the tempo Texas came out of the half with was one of the more effective half-to-half adjustments I can remember Texas making in recent seasons. It really opened up the flow of the game on that drive.
– The red-zone offensive play calling is going to continue to get brought up as long as it remains a problem. Sark hates answering questions about it, but it’s fair to ask them.
– It goes without saying that Arch Manning had some terrible throws but the dime down the sideline to Jack Endries and the deep TD to Livingstone showed flashes of awesome. He needs to get this sidearm stuff out of his system ASAP. I like that Texas has three lower-level opponents to help get him warmed up and into rhythm for the SEC stretch. Getting humbled like this to start the year coupled with that month of development time could be a nice combo to help get things right moving forward into the season.
– The Parker Livingstone .5 TDs over on PrizePicks was always a lock. Just too easy.
– At the end of the season, this game will be a distant memory. If Texas is in CFP consideration, this game will be looked at as the first game of the season between two young teams that were tops in the country and just so much different at that point in the season than the versions of themselves they’ll be in late November.
