Here is what Tom Herman told Max Olson about the injuries last year
The obvious excuse Texas’ staff could point to on that run to 7-5 was the long list of key players who missed games or were banged up. And when they got a month to heal up and trounced the Pac-12 runner-up in a 38-10 Alamo Bowl victory, that was the resounding message: Look how good Texas is when they’re healthy. But if Herman really believed injuries were the only issue, he could’ve run it back in 2020 with the same staff and dismissed the 2019 campaign as an anomaly. He knew it wasn’t that simple.
Injuries put a program’s player development to the test. Herman didn’t like what he saw on defense. When six of Texas’ top defenders missed games last season, the head coach sensed their backups weren’t ready. “I look around the country and people are playing true freshmen on defense all the time,” he said. “That shouldn’t be an excuse with the way we recruit at Texas. Develop ’em or figure out what they can do and let ’em do it really fast.” Considering the Longhorns had just signed back-to-back top-three recruiting classes, he has a point. Maybe the defense was too complex for those young players. Maybe they needed to pivot to a much simpler attack, learning to play fast with just a few fronts and coverages. Whatever the reason, the results were concerning.
“We weren’t ready with the guys behind them,” he said. “And at Texas, you should be ready.”