How Do We Turn This Ship Around?

Captain Obvious Alert

We have big problems, to understate the obvious. I tend to believe that the solutions are fairly clear, but not simple.

To me there are three obvious and glaring issues that must be resolved:

QB

I personally believe that a healthy Casey Thompson would be more than adequate. Don’t forget that the losing streak started at the same time that Thompson hurt his thumb. To me, that is no a coincidence..

An upgrade at the position would be even better. Maybe Ewers sees the handwriting on the wall in Columbus and decides he wants to play next year, or perhaps Murphy — or someone else — surprises us. Wouldn’t that be nice?

I just can’t see Card being the answer. There are too many issues. The Kansas game was a microcosm. One beautiful pass — to Worthy the across the middle for a touchdown — followed by inexplicable turnovers on consecutive series.

OL

Do we need a wholesale reset? Well, we definitely need to upgrade the unit.

While the OL is a major liability, what is surprising is how we had a number of offensive explosions (even with our subpar OL) this year, not all of which were against teams named Rice.

None of us will argue that an upgrade is desperately needed. Hopefully the portal will provide some reinforcements next year, and allow us time to build up the unit for the future.

Defense

Even if our linebackers are subpar or approaching “terrible,” our safeties are mediocre and the DL has been disappointing, the abomination we have seen on the field this year is much more than a talent issue IMO. As I said in the game thread, great coaches modify their schemes to fit the skill sets of the players they have available. I don’t see any indication that Kwiatkowski has done that this year. So to me, the abject failure on the defensive side of the ball rests to a great extent at his feet.

Sark’s has a big decision to make. Does he stick with this DC, or pull the plug and go in a different direction? I have a hard time believing that Kwiatkowski can turn it around next year or even the year after unless he lands stellar recruiting classes and also adds a number of quality LBs from the Portal. That’s a tall order, and it shouldn’t be a prerequisite to fielding a “competitive” unit. This unit has been far from competitive.

The Good

We do have reason for optimism. To me, the running back room is about as good as it gets. With decent blocking and play-calling, we should have a representative at the Heisman award ceremony next December.

I also believe that the wide receiver contingent could be formidable with Worthy & JWhitt coming back, some of the injured players finally getting healthy like Omeire, and some of the talent we expect to land.

Then there are the TEs. Many are expecting a breakout year at the position in 22, with players like Juan Davis, Ja’Tavion Sanders, and Gunnar Helm emerging.

So again to me it comes down to the quarterback, the OL, and the defense. Of those three units, I tend to believe that the most challenging to fix just might be the defense. Of course, without a competitive and healthy QB, we won’t go very far next year either.

 

We need better talent. There is a solid core of players Sark will build around. With a good recruiting class, and some key transfers, you will see improvement in 22.

 

An enforcer like Ray Lewis who will not allow his teammates to play poorly and will seek to punish the opposing teams just because they were foolish enough to play us. I have never seen a decent team without an enforcer and Texas does not have anything close to an enforcer.

 

I submit to you that "the enforcer" is coming; probably not in the form of a player, but a University that can outplace a Jewish engineer into a Christian liberal arts school, knows outplacement. With no bowl game, we can start as soon as finals are over.

 

lol better talent. Better coaching is more like it.
New coach and staff is what’s needed. This so called upgrade gave Texas a downgrade with no bowl this year after 4 straight bowls under the previous coach, a 6 game losing streak and counting, a loss to Kansas at home, and an inability to adapt his coaching style to the players rather than the other way around. what should have been a farewell tour of the big 12 has ended up being a farewell mockery by the hateful 8 is if that’s what they are called.

Texas ought to cut their losses and find someone more competent instead of chasing the hottest sought after coach of the moment. I don’t buy the notion that these players weren’t his recruits. To throw the players under the bus is ludicrous for this season.
Texas has unlimited money to pursue another change.

 

You have all the answers, who are you hiring?

These players threw themselves under the bus along with help from their puppeteers

 

This is exactly what we need. We have a bunch of tough guys like Cliff Harris and not a single Lambert

 

Sink the ship. See who can swim and let the rest drown.

This is the worst representation of a Texas football team that I have ever seen. I didn’t think we could play worse than Charlie’s teams or as selfish as Herman’s teams, but we combined both and the result the poorest excuse of a UT poorest excuse of a team in our history.

I don’t know if Sark can right the ship. I don’t know if he deserves a chance. I am at a loss for this sh!t show we have now. I do know the strength coach needs to go and the dc should never set foot in Austin again. That would be a start

 

McHammer, could you please translate for us?

The questions is, could we have a worse record — and a program in a greater state of disarray— with virtually any other coaching staff?

 

It's true. We had 4 straight bowls with the previous coach. And four straight seasons without a conference title. With the other two previous coaches included, it's been 12 seasons since our last big 12 championship.

If going to a bowl game is your standard, that's cool. But some of us want the program to advance beyond that. And achieve its true potential.

Concerning the players: If you can make a case that our current roster is enough to win a conference championship, I'll happily listen.

 

Such ********, how can you possibly look at the last 10 years and think the coaching roller coaster we have been on is a good thing? You have to give a staff time to instill their system, and for f**k's sake, the coaches can't make the throws, catches, and tackles for the players!

 

Easy peasy - the University sent Fenves packing to Emory. What would you guys do without me?

 

You are D’Man.

 

This team may be as bad as 1988. We’ve gone backwards, not forwards this year. And Sark has a poor head coaching record.
If you all want to wait another 3 years, then please tell us now on what record is acceptable, before you change the goal posts…again.
Nobody wants a coaching carousel, but in the last ten years no coach should of stayed longer than he did.

 

I just think about some of the seniors on this team who have had 3 head coaches in their time here, and seen umpteen assistants cone an go.

we should not have fired Herman after last year. Not that he really deserved another year but the time was not right. We fired him anyway, over politics, and took a chance on a rehab project.
So dumb and we’re paying the price for that today.

 

How many posters on this board have said “just as long as I see competitive improvement” they would be happy? Well I submit this performance is not the equivalent to what we saw against OU. Little sparks now and again but then comes Kansas to show us where we really are. Sorry I don’t have the answer but I can readily see neither does the staff. For good or bad we were definitely better under the cancerous TH. And yep, I’ll be there to swallow the bitter pill Friday.

 

Herman had to go, precisely because of the politics.

He managed to divide the team, the fanbase, and the BMDs by foolishly and arrogantly getting way out in front of his employer on what would have been a divisive conversation in the best of circumstances.

Now, the best way forward would seem to me to be:
1) weed out remaining ride-alongs and malcontents,
2) bring in some hungrier (and better) talent via portal and recruiting,
3) develop some consistency in scheme and training/recruiting to that scheme, and
4) realize that the dysfunction in this program will take more than a couple of years or some mythic miracle man of a coach to fix.

Hook 'em!

 

I won’t argue with you on that 1983, but the timing was not right.
As soon as it became clear we weren’t getting a top flight HC we should have taken our finger off the trigger.

When we were having to roll the dice on a guy with a losing track record as HC, patience would have been prudent course.

well, we do have to give credit to Sark. We are united as a fanbase again. It’s clear to all of us we are way worse at football than we ever thought possible.

 

I'll take Sark and this record vs TH and his BS comments.

I'll leave it at that unless y'all want to take it to West Mall.

 

I intensely disliked TH for many other reasons. I would have stomached one more year for the long te good of the program.

We couldn’t do that and our brand is more toxic than ever. I hope to God sark can figure this out and turn this around. I am afraid to think of what happens if he cant

 

For me the Herman decision was a non decision. Even if we believed that there was a good chance he could have won the conference this year or more, I didn’t want him around.

I was supportive of the Sarkisian selection. In fact, optimistic. But as I may have said in August, we really didn’t know.

Sark may turn out to have been the right choice, and we all hope that will be the case. But based on the sample size so far, he, his staff and the team have been a colossal and historic failure, and there’s simply no way to put lipstick on that pig.

 

I am in my early 30s and not an old fart. I have an undergraduate and graduate degree from UT. As a child, college kid, grad student and young adult, I attended nearly every home game from the early 90s with Mackovic up through the 2018 season with Tom Herman. I have attended many OU games, many bowl games (Virginia Tech Sugar Bowl, both rose bowls, the alabama natty, etc). I have gone to many road games including the last A&M & Nebraska games. Even after dropping season tickets, I went to the okie state, ou, kansas state and alamo bowl games in 2019, the alamo bowl in 2020 and the louisiana and texas tech games this year (i was going to go to the kansas state game friday but it isnt worth the $4 tickets).

In 2020, I started attending UTSA games despite never having attended the school. I went all in on UTSA season tickets for 2021 with family and friends and it was the best football decision I ever made.

I say all this to preface where I am coming from:
Through terrible californian university leadership and just changes to the city of Austin, the UT football program and experience has grown stale. Some factors, like the loss of tailgating due to population boom and redevelopment of downtown were unavoidable I guess. However, UT barely has a tailgate scene now and still had a good one JUST 10 YEARS AGO! The city of austin situation also has caused getting to and from the games in traffic to be hell. Then presidents like Bill Powers and Greg Fenves and ADs like Patterson, Perrin and Del Conte "Pac12ed" and over commercialized our game day experience. They fired mack brown. They brought in a "legacy hire", then 2 California head coaches and valued those things over winning. They filled our athletic department with staff not from UT, or Texas or even football schools. Most of our athletic department staff does not get it or even care about Texas athletics. They jacked up ticket prices and made everything expensive. They quietly removed the six flags of texas from our stadium and anything else culturally unique and gave us rocket man. They encouraged woke politics with the team to the level of stupidity of protesting the school song and dividing the team and fanbase. The texas exes stopped being a place for alumni to gather and instead became a public club anyone could buy a ticket to get into, especially opposing fans. The whole horrible state fair knockoff in front of the stadium is a hinderance to getting in the stadium. Mack Brown put a winning product on the field and did not need that nonsense to fill the stadium. The athletic department also ran off long time season ticket holders by making it cheaper to just buy single game tickets than season tickets. They focussed instead on getting random newly imported Austinites instead of longtime longhorns to fill the seats. These imports tend to be terrible, not knowledgeable fans to sit next to at games. They want to be the university of california at AUSTIN, not the university of TEXAS. NOW they are going to the SEC in hopes of the filling the stadium with OPPOSING SEC fans! On top of all of this, I do not know any Longhorns that ever actually wanted to join the SEC and we've made yet another move to chase $ at the expense of our fanbase.

So how does UT fix it?

1. First off, football aside, our university is run by corrupt, greedy, incompetent individuals. Texans, whether they went to UT or not, need to demand that the Legislature replace these people with Texans who will put first the mission of AFFORDABLY educating the best and brightest high school graduates this state has to offer.

2. Next, there are plenty of longhorn alumni that get it and take pride in the school that need to be hired to fill the athletic department. When we hire non-longhorns, at least hire someone from a blue blood football school or a texan.

3. Sark is not a good coach and not the answer. He may be worse than Strong and is at this point. However, he can still do this program some good. He needs to run off every herman malcontent and try to put an end to the terrible, loser culture that Charlie Strong brought to our program and Herman fostered to new heights. Sark will be fired, but I hope he at least eradicates the entitled, loser culture by running off the malcontents before he goes.

4. UT has to hire the best football coach for the job. Not the most diverse or most californian. Right now, having watched Traylor for two seasons, that man in 1-2 years is going to be Jeff Traylor. He's a damn good football coach in the vein of Darrell Royal or Mack Brown. What he has done and his staff of Barry Lunney and Longhorn great Rodrique Wright is the exact opposite of the BS Ive seen under Strong, Herman and Sark. That UTSA-UAB game yesterday was the most fun Ive had at a football game since Mack Brown and gave me my first feelings of when I attended the 04 and 05 rose bowls since the 2011 A&M game! I want that again for UT, the school I actually graduated from.

I just hope UT hires Traylor when the time comes... otherwise it is hopeless and I'll keep merrily meepmeeping.

 

Very nice Htown.

 

Golly Htown, I can’t say I agree with everything but most of it was spot on and eye opening. Bravo.

 

The problem is that binder boy and hiring Sark have nothing to do with one another other than the fact we had a job opening. Just like BB we rushed and hired Sark after Urban said no. I remember we did the exact same thing when we hired Mack. Mackovic was canned and Gary Barnett was almost immediately announced but the fans revolted. That caused a hiring committee to be formed and we found Mack instead.

Charlie was a social hire. Binder was a rush "hot commodity" hire. Sark was the quick "sexy Alabama is a champion so we will be a champion" hire. If we would ever get our heads out of our asses and search for the best candidate we would not be in this situation right now.

Tom being here another year would have done nothing to help our program. The fanbase was done with his divisiveness and he lost our and the donors support. He needed to go, we just handled it wrong.

 

Htown, we have disagreed at times but this assessment is outstanding.

 

Hindsight bs. You probably loved Sark's hire before the season and now that things have gone bad you have turned back. Pathetic.

 

Htown made some great points. I agree with most of them, but not all.

A lot of the imposed cultural changes you mentioned came from the PAC/CALI-approach of the Dollar Bill/fenves administrations. With the worst of the two, by far, being fenves.

President Hartzell is not a California guy. He was born and raised in the Plains. He's also a Texas-Ex. I've been impressed by his stances on numerous topics, from defending the EOT, to going in person to the Texas Senate, where he took heat from State Senators and a scowling Bob Bowlsby...and didn't flinch.

The move to the SEC is certainly about the money. It also makes the most sense from a geographic, athletic, and football culture stand point. A conference that contains teams that move the needle. A league that features ALL of our major rivals, and is located in States that are right next door.

Simply put: the plan is to make the football team competitive again. And then pack the stadium with UT fans to see us beat the likes of LSU, Arky, Aggy, Georgia, Bama, etc.

Obviously, there's a lot of work to be done. We've had 15 years of bad administration. And 10 years of bad football. It's going to take some time. Hang in there. Don't give up. The reward will be worth all of the heartache we're going through.

 

Nobody can be worse than charlie strong.
Our problem is coach k and residual wokeness not Sark. He deserves time. I don't know what Sark is going to do with coach k. Probably give him one more season.
Players were/are not getting off blocks and covering gaps for some reason.

 

Like the optimism Major and hope and pray you’re correct.