Looking at Texas’ schedule coming into the 2025 season, it seemed fortuitous that Texas had its two bye weeks come at what, at that time, appeared to be very critical junctures of the season: the first one coming the week before SEC play was set to start and the second one coming in the week before what many thought would be a supremely consequential trip to Athens to try once again to slay the Georgia dragon.
Don’t get us wrong, the UGA game still looks to be extremely consequential, but if you would have come from the future to SEC Media Days and told us that the bye week would actually be better to take in the week following Mississippi State before taking on Vanderbilt at home, we’d have looked at you like you had a third eyeball!
But, boy, Texas could use that bye this week. Not just because Vanderbilt is actually a dangerous football team. They aren’t a punchy and fun storyline like last year, they’re actually scary. This article is about the defense, but clearly the bye coming a week earlier would help with getting Arch Manning back from concussion protocol — as well as give the QB on the side of the ball we’re actually writing about — Michael Taaffe — an extra week to heal from hand surgery in preparation to face a Top 10 opponent at home in DKR.
But mostly, Texas could use its bye right now because the defense has to be running on fumes. In two straight road games, the unit has been on the field for 87 and 86 snaps respectively which is a pain for us at the Deep Dig and 1000-times more so for the players actually out there giving it their all and sucking wind. It’s clearly not sustainable to have the defense on the field this much, and we’re frankly surprised it did not cost Texas one of these games.
Texas has got to avoid these track meets.
CLICK HERE FOR ALL THE PROPRIETARY PRODUCTION AND EFFICIENCY GRADES, SNAP COUNT DATA AND HISTORICAL COMPARISONS
Despite from frustrating plays in the Mississippi State game (a Manny Muhammad coverage burn *where it looked like Jelani McDonald blew his assignment for over-the-top help*, a Graceson Littleton coverage-burn-turned-DPI, multiple missed tackles by Derek Williams and Liona Lefau, penalties from Littleton, Maraad Watson, Colin Simmons and Jelani McDonald, multiple blown contains from Simmons, and a whole cavalcade of bad pursuit angles on an impromptu desperation shovel pass-turned-long-touchdown-strike from Blake Shapen to Davon Booth that should have been D.O.A.), the defense never gave up and came up biggest at the biggest points in the game.
Anthony Hill came alive as a total monster and was the MVP of the defense. He was not only a tackling volume machine, he also had 3 sacks, 4 QB pressures, a TFL, a run-stuff and a caused fumble.
Ethan Burke popped back into uber-productive mode with a sack and forced fumble of his own, along with 4 other total tackles plus one TFL and a separate QB pressure. On the other side, Colin Simmons was a nightmare with 2 QB hits and three separate pressures. Jelani McDonald was all over the place as a tackling machine. The school logged him with 14 total while the Deep Dig had him at a cool baker’s dozen.
Alex January and Hero Kanu had their biggest contributions of their Texas careers, Lance Jackson, too. If you look at the trend lines above in these players’ efficiency and overall production, the unit is really not showing the effects of having to be so strained by playing almost 175 snaps over the last two road games.
The string of track meets is unlikely to continue versus Vanderbilt, thankfully. As Sark has said all week, Vandy is a team that has shown it will limit possessions and not a squad likely to get into a back-and-forth tit-for-tat — it will especially not be part of their M.O. heading into hostile territory with a team that has the stable of playmakers on both sides of the ball that Texas does.
Onward to a must-win home matchup with the Commodores.
