In modern era, defense scrambles to keep up
As national title game nears, ESPN’s Herbstreit says offenses have edge
Let’s begin the new year with a few numbers and one big question.
Eight of the 10 11-man UIL championship games in 2016 featured more than 50 total points, and six of the 10 winners scored more than 40 points. This week, Oklahoma and Georgia rang up 102 points in the Rose Bowl to determine one of the spots in Monday’s championship game in Atlanta.
And that leads to the sort of question that gets asked by grumpy old men who remember 10-7 slugfests fondly: Whatever happened to playing defense in this part of the world?
I think it’s a decent question. Kirk Herbstreit, who will call Alabama-Georgia for ESPN on Monday night with Chris Fowler, thought it was a good one, too, and his answer reflects the concerns that I have with the manner of football that is being played in the state these days.
“When you have a Big 12 style of offense, if you don’t recruit defensive linemen who are first round-caliber defensive linemen who just win up front, whether it’s the run or the pass … you’re always going to be at a schematic disadvantage, always,” Herbstreit said. “With the rules of the sport and the way people have gone to this offense, you have a quarterback that essentially has the chalk last in the discussion.
“And these (run-pass options) that are kind of built into most of these offenses, and you have a smart quarterback, it gives you a chance that if you see the defense cheating to stop the run, no problem. Flip it out to the receiver who is left one-on-one out there and make a guy miss. … A good quarterback will always win in these systems unless you’ve got defensive linemen that are differencemakers.”
We’ve got a lot of good quarterbacks coming out of this state — J.T. Barrett at Ohio State, Baker Mayfield at Oklahoma and Jalen Hurts at Alabama, just to name a few.
But when it comes to defensive linemen, once you get past Ed Oliver at Houston and, a year ago, Myles Garrett at Texas A&M, the names dwindle down to a precious few.
“Defensive linemen that are big and naturally fast and strong can still be disruptive,” Herbstreit said. “But if you don’t have that, it makes it incredibly difficult for very smart defensive minds. (Oklahoma coordinator) Mike Stoops is a smart guy. It’s not like he’s forgotten how to coach. (TCU coach) Gary Patterson hasn’t forgotten how to coach defense. You’re just at such a schematic disadvantage.
“My only answer would be go pound the pavement and find those difference makers up front. It’s your only chance you’ve got.”
Let’s hope they’re out there somewhere. Texas FBS teams this year were 2-5 in bowl games and 64-87 (.424) overall this season. Against out-ofstate opponents, they were a combined 42-68 (.382). Not good.
Texans’ ratings plummet
As the Texans nosedived down the stretch, their television audiences cratered as well. Houston’s season-ending loss to the Colts registered a mere 10.4 Nielsen rating with 356,000 viewers on KHOU (Channel 11), less than half of what the team has averaged recently.
For the year, Texans games in Houston had an average audience of 663,312, down by more than 25 percent from 892,312 for the regular season in 2016. They were averaging 810,000 viewers until quarterback Deshaun Watson’s injury and never got above 660,000 for any game the rest of the way, culminating in the New Year’s Eve loss to the Colts.
Things have been going so badly for the Texans that even Marc Vandermeer, the team’s director of broadcasting, was playing hurt in the season finale, suffering from laryngitis.
With a new year, though, Vandermeer is looking for better days and notes that even with a bad ending, traffic on the team’s website was up by about 10 percent.
“There’s a ton of curiosity about where we are going with the general manager’s search and with Deshaun Watson’s health and all that,” he said. “(2018) has the potential to be our best year as far as broadcasting and digital performance.”
Sports viewing down
Brian Wieser of Pivotal Research Group, one of the sharpest analysts on the media front, says 2017 sports viewing was down 12 percent from 2016 and down 6 percent with the three weeks that included the 2016 Olympics removed from the equation.
Football accounted for 42 percent of total sports viewing and, not including the three-week period that matched the time frame of the 2016 Olympics, was down 7 percent for the year. The NFL was down 8 percent and college viewing was flat, Wieser said. Baseball accounted for 8 percent of viewing and was up 4 percent while basketball accounted for 14 percent of consumption and was down by a percentage point from 2016.
Viewing of sports commentaries, led by ESPN’s “SportsCenter,” was down 15 percent for the year.