The SEC Forum at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

as DKR said "only angry people win football games"

It was nice of A&M to keep us in the game so long.  That was the longest, most boring drivel I've seen in a long time.  

I agree about Mateer.  I'd draft him pretty high I think.  He's a gamer.

This made the wife so happy that not even Dallas' walk-off loss yesterday could bring her down.  

I had found my lucky LSU shirt (after having failed to locate it after surgery for the Ole Miss game....so that one was on me) and lamented that its mojo/juice appeared to have been used on the wrong game.  Sure enough, it was bone dry for the week by the time the LSU/SCar game came around.  Need to remember to only put that on right before the game.

Anyway, back to Texas...  There's only so much woulda/coulda/shoulda I'm willing to do re: Florida, because despite all the Gators problems, one thing that's true of them is their defensive line as a whole is legit, they're going to play in the NFL, and whoever faces them has probably faced one of the best DL's they'll see the entire season, if not the best.  When their DL ruins your play and your day, it's not an accident.  That said, last week's game between UF and UT had a similar feel to last year's game between UF and LSU.  It's just statistically unlikely UF is going to lose every hard game they have, and some team is going to cool Napier's seat inadvertently.  Last year it was LSU, this year it was Texas.  Given the way Texas' offense/Arch struggled up to that point, that side of the ball was what it was.  But it was shocking to see the listlessness and lifelessness of the Texas defense, and had they played the way they've played in their other games, I doubt the Gators tag them.  

The Longhorn defense returned this past weekend, OU was the unfortunate recipient to greet them, and they weren't ready for it.  The Texas D crashed OU's party, drank all the beer, threw up on their furniture, and left with their girlfriend.  

This is what obviously decided the game.  I knew Texas held the ball a lot in the third, but had no idea it ended up looking like this:

[img width=500 height=357.997]https://i.imgur.com/4g3Ps2p.png[/img]

I think we had a play from scrimmage at the end of the 3rd quarter, making it a grand total of 4 plays from scrimmage. After checking, yes, we did run one play before the end of the quarter. It was a 21-yard pass completion to Burks. That was either the longest or second-longest gain we made all day.

4 plays from scrimmage for a total of 26 yards in 15 minutes of  play. That's losing football no matter who the teams are.

Outside of a lackluster performance against Florida, the Texas defense has been superb.  Every raw stat and advanced stat I can find corroborates this, even with Florida factored in. 

Nationally:
#3 in points allowed per game
#9 in yards per play allowed
#5 in rush ypp allowed
#16 in passing ypa allowed
#2 in Stop Rate (drives that end in punts, turnover, or turnover on downs)
#1 in S&P+ (Bill Connelly's opponent-adjusted, per-play metric)
#4 in FEI (opponent-adjusted, per-drive metric)

That is a killer defense, any way you look at it. 

The Florida game appears to have been an aberration.  No need to worry about a broken defense, I suspect.

They were absolutely broken in the Florida game, though.  Worst game I've seen them play in over a decade probably, and that decade included some terrible Tom Herman and Charlie Strong teams.

So I stand by my statement at the time.  I'm obviously happy they played 100000% better in the Cotton Bowl.