Defense seeks third-down boost
AUSTIN — Texas coach Steve Sarkisian was relieved to escape last Saturday’s game against Iowa State with a win, which snapped a three-game losing streak to the Cyclones and kept No. 20 Texas alive and kicking in the Big 12 title hunt.
Sarkisian also acknowledged the Longhorns (5-2, 3-1 Big 12) can’t hope to beat No. 11 Oklahoma State this weekend playing like they did against Iowa State. Sloppy football isn’t going to get it done against the Cowboys (5-1, 2-1) during homecoming weekend at soldout Boone Pickens Stadium.
More than anything else, Texas needs to work out the kinks with its third-down defense. The Cyclones converted 9 of 15 tries last weekend, two weeks after West Virginia succeeded on half of its 18 third downs.
Overall, opponents have posted a 41.4 percent success rate against Texas on third down. That ranks 88th among Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) teams, a slight improvement over last season’s 101st-place finish. But still, clearly, not nearly good enough.
Sarkisian didn’t name one culprit for the defense’s struggles against Iowa State during the game’s most impactful situations. He named several.
For one, the Cyclones would often overload one side of the field with multiple receivers with Texas in zone coverage. All those bodies flying past one another, or occasionally into one another, made a big mess of things and led to some breakdowns in the Texas secondary.
Whenever that happened, Iowa State quarterback Hunter Dekkers usually made the right read. He completed 11 of 12 passes for 118 yards and one touchdown on third down.
“They did a couple nice things kinda of flooding zones and then they were throwing the ball accurately and they were catching it,” Sarkisian said. “So when they flooded the zones, it was an issue. When we played man, they had a couple good man-beaters on where even on one particular third down, we kind of ran into one another. So it was kind of a Catch-22: Do you want to play man or do you want to play zone? But they made their plays against both. In the end, we’ve got to find a way to be more combative on the ball and force more incompletions.”
A pair of self-inflicted wounds — third-down penalties on fifth-year tackle Keondre Coburn and cornerback D’Shawn Jamison — also extended two Iowa State drives. One penalty led to an eventual touchdown. The other nearly did, but Texas linebacker Jaylan Ford sprung up for a key interception on third-and-goal to prevent the Cyclones from taking a 14-0 lead in the second quarter.
Otherwise, the Longhorns made Dekkers look like a Heisman candidate the way he moved around and hit open receivers to extend drives. Dekkers also ran in an 11-yard touchdown on third-and-9 when the traditional fourman pass rush Texas sent got spread too wide, leaving an open lane to the end zone.
“It just felt like such a combination of things,” Sarkisian said. “We have two third downs where we jump offsides. Boom, there’s two conversions. The third-and-9 in the red zone, we don’t have very good pass rush lanes and the quarterback walks into the end zone, so that doesn’t help you.”
Oklahoma State has been average on third down this year. The Cowboys have converted 40 percent of their tries in Big 12 play and 39.8 percent overall, the latter ranking 64th out of 131 FBS teams.
But fifth-year quarterback Spencer Sanders is more than capable of giving Texas fits with both his arm and his running ability. In six games this season, Sanders has thrown for 1,639 yards with 13 touchdowns and three interceptions and has rushed for 309 yards and eight scores.
“We just have to be more disciplined with our coverage and having great communication” junior defensive back Jahdae Barron said. “It was just us being in the wrong spots, and we have to fix it.”