No. 8 Ohio State 28, No. 5 Texas 14: Five observations and chat

The season comes to an end in the Cotton Bowl for the Longhorns.

This was a tough one for a variety of reasons and I am going to get into a good bit today. Unfortunately, the season for Texas Longhorns came to a conclusion in Jerry World on Friday night in the Cotton Bowl in a 28-14 loss to the Ohio State Buckeyes. The Longhorns fought hard and put up a really good fight and the final score truly doesn’t tell the full story of how closely contested this game was until the final minutes.

There is a lot to take away from Texas’ performance in the Cotton Bowl and a lot of people will certainly walk away from it frustrated and disappointed given how some of the key moments played out. Those feelings are certainly valid. But this team fought and battled back like we’ve been accustomed to seeing them do over the past two seasons, and they deserve to be commended for that despite this game going in the other direction.

I hate this has to be my last iteration of my observations for the season, but it is time to get to it and dig into what went right and wrong in the Cotton Bowl.

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This game boiled down to two plays that will be discussed for a long time

This is going to be the most frustrating portion of my entire write up. Texas stood toe to toe with the most talented football team in the country on Friday night and was right in the fight up until the final minutes of the ball game. They withstood the early surge and conquered the adversity of getting back into the flow of the game. Texas had grabbed the momentum right before the half and it looked like they were going to go into the half all square. Then disaster struck.

Steve Sarkisian confirmed in the postgame presser that this was a simulated pressure. Texas rushed four and dropped seven into coverage, but Henderson ended up with a convoy and went completely untouched for 75 yards. An absolute backbreaker of a play after you had scrapped to get yourself all square just moments before and given the fact that Ohio State would get the ball coming out of halftime.

This play reminded me of the Ronald Jones play that occurred in Texas’ matchup against USC back in 2017. It also took place right before halftime after Texas had tied things up.

It is almost spooky how similar the situations were with the end result the same as well.

The second play is even more puzzling for me and I don’t exactly have a comparable play for it.

It was 2nd and goal from the 1-yard line. You were just stuffed on first down for no gain after giving Jerrick Gibson his only touch of the night. In my head, if you are going to try to get to the edge in this situation then I am thinking you are booting or rolling quarterback Quinn Ewers out off of play action and having some kind of flood concept or flat route dialed up. A toss play here against an elite defense with really good team speed is indefensible for me. Outflanking them in this situation is incredibly tough and there is a too high of a probability of there being a run through like we saw happen. Penetration on a play like that spells disaster quickly and in this situation you lost SEVEN yards and were forced into a very predictable passing situation against one of the nation’s best red-zone defenses.

I don’t even have to put the next play in here, because we all saw what happened. Steve Sarkisian is really good at what he does as an offensive architect and play caller, but I am not with him on this one. His defense was that if it gets blocked up then its a touchdown, but that was an incredibly tough ask from his personnel considering the circumstances and the opponent. If you want to go out trying to run the football in that situation then you are dialing up downhill run plays where you are not having to give ground to try to gain it. Yes, you got stuffed on the first down call trying to do just that, but I am at least giving your big fellas upfront one more bite at the apple. If you are subscribing to the theory that if you can’t gain a yard in that situation then you don’t deserve to be champions, then tee that shit up one more time and run it again.

There were several calls over the course of the season I wasn’t in love with, but this one will stand out among them all given the down, distance, and situation.

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The Texas defense gave Jeremiah Smith a really bad time

One catch for three yards. That is all Ohio State’s supernova true freshman wide receiver had to his name in the Cotton Bowl against Texas. Smith is absolutely the real deal and he was coming off back-to-back playoff performances where he completely shredded secondaries. With that said, the Texas defensive coordinators Pete Kwiatkowski and Johnny Nansen schemed up one hell of a plan and they absolutely took him out of the game by any means necessary.

Texas entered the game with the philosophy of making any other wide receiver outside of Smith beat them and it is the same philosophy I would have deployed. Smith is capable of totally wrecking a game plan and the defensive staff made sure he was not going to do that on Friday night.

This was probably Smith’s best opportunity to make a play in the game and it was a ball that was sailed high by Will Howard.

You have plenty of people on social media trying to take shots at Texas for how they deployed coverage against Smith and they should largely be ignored. The plan worked very well and if Texas had won this game, it would be one of the biggest talking points across all platforms. I don’t care if the kid is a freshman or a fifth-year senior, you have to do what is necessary to try to win the game. That might end up being the worst game of Smith’s career, and that’s a testament to the game plan that was put together by Texas and the execution by the Texas secondary.

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The Texas offense squandered too many opportunities

On the other side of the ball, we have to talk about how the Texas offense didn’t make the most of limited opportunities. Both teams in this matchup featured elite defenses, so you knew points were going to be at a bit of a premium coming in, and it ended up playing out that way.

Texas struggled to move the ball much in the first half — they had only three drives where they were able to make it into plus territory. The first drive of the game, they ended up turning over on downs and then the second opportunity resulted in them having to punt from plus territory due negative plays being inflicted. Their only positive result in plus territory came at the end of the half where they scored their only points of the half on the first wheel route to Jaydon Blue.

In the second half, outside of the touchdown drive in the third, the Longhorns offense was granted decent field position once and they ended up only managing one first down before being forced to punt. After that the only drive they sustained ended up being the debacle that took place inside the five-yard line that ended in disaster.

Simply put, when you are playing teams of this caliber, you can’t come up empty when you make it into plus territory. Texas needed to squeeze out one more scoring possession somewhere to change the trajectory of this game and they were unable to do that.

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Texas quietly had a good special teams night

This is something that probably won’t get discussed a bunch, but I think it warrants some mentioning considering how tough things had been leading up to this matchup. Jeff Banks’ special teams group had been one of the worst in the country all year long. The lowlight of this group had been Bert Auburn, who went from a very steady and successful kicker to a guy who clearly had his confidence rattled and shaken.

Last night we did not see Texas attempt a field goal, but we did see kickoff specialist Will Stone step in for Auburn on PATs and go a perfect 2-for-2. I would have liked to have seen how he fared in a pressure kick situation, but alas we did not get to see that.

On top of Will Stone taking care of business on Friday, I have to give a little shoutout to Texas punter Michael Kern, who had a very mediocre first season as the starting punter for the Longhorns, which resulted in the coaching staff hitting the portal to grab an upperclassmen in recent weeks. With that said, Kern probably had his best performance of the season against the Buckeyes, as he recorded a punt of 51 yards and dropped three of his punts inside the 20-yard line.

This is a very encouraging sign for me in regards to Kern’s trajectory going forward and hopefully it is confidence booster for him heading into the spring window.

On top of the kickers doing a solid job in this matchup, the coverage and return teams had a clean game and if I remember correctly were not flagged. You will take a clean card in this phase of the game every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

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David Gbenda: A Lifetime Longhorn and a program guy

Shoutout to David Gbenda, man. Here you have a super senior (sixth-year guy) who was considering transferring out for his final year, but decided to stay. He knew he was potentially looking at a diminished role and he still stuck it out anyway. On Friday he made impact plays on back-to-back drives and one of them was picking off Ohio State quarterback Will Howard when he tried to force it in to Smith.

Gbenda could have left and could have complained, but he did neither. Just showed up and did his job and he showed up in bright spots throughout the year for this Texas defense. With the transfer portal and recruitments truly never ending these days, it is rare to see guys like Gbenda stick things out for as long as he did and not bolt for greener pastures. It should be commended and praised when you see them and they should not be taken for granted.

It was awesome to see Gbenda have himself a big moment in a big spot on Friday. Really hope his football story didn’t reach its conclusion in the Cotton Bowl.

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Bonus: Colin Simmons was the best freshman on the field

Going into this matchup, a lot of the focus was on Smith being the phenom that he is, but by the end of this game it was clear that Smith wasn’t the best true freshman on the football field — that honor went to Texas edge rusher Colin Simmons and he was the recipient of the Shaun Alexander Award, which is awarded to the most outstanding freshman player in the country. Ohio State fans were not pleased with this development, but they got to have front -row seats for what Texas fans have seen all year. If Ohio State fans want to talk about how Smith was being covered by the Texas defense, then they probably should look at how their offensive line was trying to slow down Simmons as well.

Simmons had several good rushes on the quarterback against the Buckeyes and he also got his hand on two passes, which led the team in the matchup.

Simmons ends his true freshman campaign leading the team with nine sacks coming up just short of hitting double digits and putting himself in very select company in Texas program history. Simmons has firmly established himself on the radar moving forward and has a very bright future.

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A 13-3 record is the final tally for the 2024 edition of the Texas Longhorns. This also means this will be my final write up of the season and I mean it when I say it truly bums me out for that to be the case. I was hoping that I would have the opportunity to publish one more after this, but it was not to be.

I say this every year, but this is always one of my favorite things to do in the fall. I truly love being able to watch and study the game and bring you all my thoughts and analysis from game to game and week to week. I appreciate each of you taking the time to read my football ramblings and musings and give me your feedback and thoughts. Even if we didn’t agree on something, I appreciate you taking the time to stop by and weigh in with your takes.

This isn’t goodbye, it is just see you later. As in see you later this year, when we will be able to resume being football sickos together.

Love you all and hook ’em!