Where’s the Longhorns’ sense of urgency?
Tom Herman insists he’s not mad at his players. But is that a good thing? There’s a fine line between coaching ’em up and demanding accountability. When Herman suggested Monday that the loss to Maryland was a “not very” big setback, was he coddling his team and defusing expectations? If so, could softness and entitlement be far behind?
I’ve never been fond of college coaches calling their players kids when they’re old enough to fight in wars, vote in elections and pack their shoulder pads in $9,000 lockers. Quandre Diggs once complained about not having flatscreen televisions in the team’s hotel rooms on a road trip to Oklahoma State, but he’s also one accountable guy who’d rip your throat out and play with passion, no matter what.
He also famously said Texas’ roster didn’t have enough dog in ’em. It didn’t then and still doesn’t.
We hesitate to compare anyone to Nick Saban, the consummate bully’s bully, but there’s an appreciation for a head coach who gets on one of his players even in midgame when Alabama is crushing an inferior opponent. He has a standard. Saban’s teams are
but he’s cement-footed in the pocket, not very good at avoiding that first wave of pass rushers. Ehlinger can get yards with his feet and, at times, throw a good ball.
So leave him in there and let him grow. No sense in panicking, despite the Maryland gut punch.
“I don’t think — certainly Sam didn’t play perfect, but nobody did, and his errors weren’t egregious enough to merit just dumping him on the depth chart,” Herman said when asked about a possible QB switch. “So you’re going to — if you start doing that, you’re going to start riding a roller coaster, and we’ve got a tremendous amount of confidence in him.”
On the bright side, Texas doesn’t have to play the Terps in 2019.
Did you hear the one about Tom Herman advising linebacker Gary Johnson to polish up on his Steinbeck?
Herman insists the Horns lost the opener partly because they were simply trying too hard to be perfect. Then came a literary analogy, out of nowhere.
“He had never read ‘Of Mice and Men,’” Herman said. “I told him he needs to read ‘Of Mice and Men.’ It was kind of Lenny with the rabbit and with George. Lenny wanted so badly to touch the rabbit and play with the rabbit, and he squeezed it so hard, he killed the rabbit.”
So he wants Johnson to read about a wascally wabbit when Texas can’t beat a bunch of turtles?
Herman said he went for two points in the second quarter instead of kicking the extra point “based on the chart that every coach has.”
That chart shouldn’t even be taken out of the bag until the fourth quarter. Texas isn’t good enough to say no to free points.
The NCAA rarely takes a strong stance on anything, but several conferences have been proactive when it comes to the area of bullying.
That thought crossed my mind after watching Nick Saban — the biggest bully in the coaching profession — go off on ESPN sideline reporter Maria Taylor, who asked him about the play of his quarterbacks Tua Tagovailoa and Jalen Hurts at halftime of the Louisville game. Saban, who blasted the media during the offseason for daring to ask about the QB battle, has avoided the obvious — Tua is the more polished of the two — but still blew his stack at Taylor when asked the question we all wanted to hear.
And he got away with it. Why? Because he’s won all those titles and is called Saint Nick by his minions?
To his credit, Saban apologized to Taylor for the outburst. First time for everything.
The Dallas Cowboys just cut the second-most accurate kicker in NFL history. Why, Jones boys? Why? Some old-school football fans among us may point to the fact that no team should ever pay a kicker $3 million a year — sorry, Justin Tucker — even if it’s Dan Bailey, who has been money, money, money since he arrived in the Metroplex seven seasons ago.
Now for the dreamers — myself included — the hope is that the following conversation took place before Jerrah dropped the hammer:
Jerry: “Hey, Earl Thomas, if we can get to over $19 million in cap space, will you leave Seattle if we can sew you up long term in the offseason?”
Earl: “Sure, Mr. Jerry. I’ll take the discount. Make it happen.”
If Dallas can somehow make a trade happen at the eleventh hour, this defense will add the one piece that could mean the difference between a 9-7 and an 11-5 season. Thomas is that good.
Bailey won’t have trouble finding work — he worked out for the Jets in the past couple of days — but if this deal doesn’t wind up with Thomas moving to the Metroplex, I will feel really bad for new Dallas kicker Brett Maher after he misses a kick Bailey could make in his sleep.