Bevo’s back
Texas proved it’s a strong team again, Jenni Carlson writes.
Sam Ehlinger had a message for the raucous burnt-orange bunch at the Sugar Bowl. “Longhorn Nation,” he said after the game. “We’re baaaaack!”
Thing is, that message was delivered loud and clear to all of college football before the Texas quarterback’ s post game missive.
And it wasn’t because Texas beat Georgia, a team that some believed (wrongly but still) deserved a spot in the College Football Playoff. It was because of how the Longhorns beat the Bulldogs— with tough, physical football. Texas is soft no more. The Longhorns have been giving indications that their creamy-center days were over. Their physicality, for example, wore down Oklahoma in the Red River Rivalry back in October. But playingin the Big 12 where finesse rules and tactics trump brute force, it was difficult to knowfor sure if Texas had really toughened up.
Tuesday proved it. Georgia is a smash-youin-the-mouth team. Big and strong up front on both sides of the ball.Punishing on defense. Pounding on offense. But on Tuesday, the Bulldogs weren’t the bullies.
The Horns were.
They stopped the Bulldogs
from running the ball. D’Andre Swift and Elijah Holyfield, Georgia’s main running backs, combined for only 74 yards on 20 carries.
Georgia entered the Sugar Bowl averaging 254.6 rushing yards.
Against Texas, it managed only 72.
While the Longhorn defense was dominating, the Texas offense was doing what Georgia couldn’t. The Longhorns not only ran the ball for 180 yards, the second-best performance against the Bulldogs this season, but also did it with a pounding mentality. No tricks. No gimmicks. For the most part, they ran between the tackles and up the gut.
Georgia couldn’t stop them.
The ultimate example came in the fourth quarter when Ehlinger scored from the 1-yard line. He’d failed to get into the end zone from that spot on the three previous plays, but on the fourth one, he took the snap, looked for daylight, then dozed his way into the teeth of the defense. Touchdown.
It wasn’t all that long ago Tom Herman was asked about a situation such as that. More specifically, the Texas coach was asked back in the spring why his team couldn’t line up from the 1, blow somebody off the line of scrimmage and score.
He hated the question largely because of the honest answer — Texas wasn’t physical enough.
“It’s practiced,” Texas defensive coordinator Todd Orlando said the other day when asked about improving physicality. “It’s not one of those things you can turn on and turn off. You have to do it all the time.”
Toughness at Texas started to lag in the latter years of Mack Brown’s tenure, then try as Charlie Strong might to correct the problem, the Horns still got pushed around. Tom Herman didn’t magically change that — Texas did lose to Maryland earlier this season — but the improvement was evident as the year went on.
The way Texas beat Georgia crystallized the change. These Longhorns looked more like Texas teams of old. Physical. Rugged. Gritty.
Ehlinger didn’t have to say it.
Texas showed it.