We're averaging giving up 6.4 yards per play!!! Think about that we give up a first down every two plays.
Yards Alabama has allowed on the ground, net, thus far ===== 69 Michigan 46 West. Kentucky 58 Arkansas 76 Fl. Atlantic 80 Ole Miss 3 Missouri ===== 332 Rushing yards Texas yielded net to OU ===== 343 Think of it... in one half a season, Alabama gave up less yards on the ground than Texas did in one game. These two programs played for a national championship 33 months ago.
Mack Brown will be along shortly to tell Jeff Ward about all the #1 in the country offenses he has to face every week in the Big 12
When an opposing player lines up, tells you what he's gonna do and you still can't stop it you've got a problem.
That's ok. Manny says it's all a matter of a guy moving 6 inches here or there and all will be much better.
Since playing with numbers to make a point seems to be the point of this analysis, you might want to know that we have outscored Alabama 255-243 to this point in our respective seasons. Against common opponents, we put up 66 points on Ole Miss - twice Alabama's accomplishment. Stats comparisons = meh. But then I'm not a paid commentator/writer.
So the fact that we have scored more total points than Alabama this year completely negates the original point that our defense gave up more rushing yards in one game than Alabama has in 6? Logic, how does it work?
When you actually have a defense, you don't have to score on virtually every posession just to stay in the game.
Many years after the 1961 game in which TCU won 6-0 at Memorial Stadium... the only blemish that year..... I was rooming with a grad student who had lived in Moore-Hill Hall (how's that for senior memory to still remember the name of the athletic dorm).... and he told me that after the game players told him... words to this effect... "All afternoon they just beat the living hell out of us." That TCU team was coached by Abe Martin. That team had earlier in the year beaten or tied both Kansas and Ohio State, each were very highly ranked that year, so TCU had the horses to get it done. Kansas had a legendary running back wish zombie-like eyes, and I can't remember his name. I was in the stands for that one. I was so stunned I mumbled a kind of delirious 'oh well' when my roommate looked as stern as can be: "THIS IS NOT FUNNY!" He went on to become a Texas lawyer, and judge. My point here is that any team can get it in their minds on a given game day to just go out and lay the wood. And I mean all afternoon. That is simply attitude and demeanor. The talent level has to be there, but it does not have to be all that great to factor in for the determination that's in the minds of the players. An awful lot of this game is in the mind. I've a friend who played at Indiana and then with Cleveland, on the O-Line. He played 13 years both college and pros... and later told me it took 13 years after that to clear up his body, including his emotional body. He went into holistic medicine so talks like that. But he told me that it wore on his physical body what he had to do in the locker room BEFORE the game just to go out on the field and not get killed. He had to work himself up into an emotional and mental state, and it took a toll on his physical body and health after a number of seasons of doing that. I think today there is better nutrition and legal supplements (the 'whole food' stuff) and training that can offset that, but still these players and, and many do, get out on the field on a game day and are prepared to assert their will over the other players. Enough scheme and technique is all you need to make that effective. But I think a big part of it is determination well before the game. In that 1964 Cotton Bowl with Navy that sealed Royal's first complete undefeated national championship year, he was interviewed just after the Navy coach had said, "We feel if you're #2 and you beat #1, then you're #1"..... the interviewer put the mic to Coach Royal, and he just said two words... "We're ready." And they were. I'm proud I was at that game. Good memories.
I've always thought Wayne Hardin took an unfair amount of heat for his comment. He had a valid point that Navy felt like they were playing for something meaningful and it wasn't just an exhibition game to them. He wasn't trash talking Texas, claiming we didn't deserve to be there, or saying Navy had already taken #1 from us.
Jeff Ward has not seen a Texas team he has liked since the last team he played on in 1985. Those teams, Jeff will tell you, "inspired fear" in all their opponents because of their rigorous physicality. You sometimes have to remind Jeff that he was the kicker on that team. He was a good kicker. He scored all the UT points in their 15-13 victory over Arkansas in Fayetteville. His oral account of that game and the swinish reaction of the fans is a classic worth recording. I was there with a group of exes that flew to Ft. Smith and bused to the game. My lasting impression is of groups of kids wearing Fellowship of Christian Athletes caps shooting the finger at the bus every time we passed them.
Alabama has only allowed 83 rushing yards in the first quarter all year - and we allowed more than that on one single first quarter play.
