Where Texas needs to improve in its rematch with Georgia in the SEC Championship game

The Longhorns need a surging ground game to show up in Atlanta after rushing for 29 yards against the Bulldogs in Austin.

The No. 2 Texas Longhorns face off against the No. 5 Georgia Bulldogs for the second time this season in the SEC Championship game in Atlanta on Saturday, and it’s no secret that the last matchup got ugly quick.

“I think we’re a pretty good football team. I don’t think we played very good against them the first time out and I think ultimately they deserve to get our best shot. I know we’re going to get their best shot; they deserve to get our best shot. And I think the fans and the people watching this game that are all going to tune in deserve to get the best version of Texas football,” Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian said on Monday.

In the 31-15 win by the Bulldogs in October, Georgia head coach Kirby Smart had a great defensive game plan, shutting down the run game by limiting Texas running back Quintrevion Wisner to 52 yards on 15 carries, giving quarterback Quinn Ewers absolutely no time in the pocket by sacking him five times with the help of various pressures, and effectively shutting down one of the more prolific offenses in the nation in the process.

Texas allowed seven total sacks in October as things went so poorly that Sarkisian benched Ewers for backup quarterback Arch Manning at the end of the first half. Manning was sacked twice, the second resulting in a fumble that led to a late field goal by the Bulldogs.

The Bulldogs also contributed to a host of mistakes by the Longhorns, including four turnovers, four false start penalties, two holding calls on special teams, and two burned timeouts in the first half because of substitution errors. The turnovers were particularly costly, as Georgia converted the giveaways into 17 points in a 16-point victory.

“We’re going to have to play a better version of football than we played the first time around. We were out of character, out of sorts — we had four turnovers in that game, we had eight penalties, four of which were false starts. We were 2-of-15 on third down, 1-of-5 on fourth down. I think we only ran the ball for 29 yards in the game. So we’re going to have to play a better brand of football offensively,” Sarkisian said.

With the defense up against short fields throughout the first half, Georgia was able to take a 23-0 lead at halftime for a win probability of 94.4 percent — although Texas showed some mental and physical toughness after halftime, including cutting the deficit to 23-15, by that point the Horns had lost all margin for error. And so when the Dawgs finally put together a long scoring drive that ended midway through the fourth quarter, the game was out of reach.

In the last matchup, the Texas defense did their job with three early interceptions, the offense just wasn’t able to play complementary football. But with Georgia quarterback Carson Beck seemingly starting to find his rhythm from last season that he has been missing all year, things may not come so easily for Texas defensively on Saturday.

“We all know Carson Beck is one of the most talented, gifted quarterbacks in the country. He is a bonafide first-round talent. No doubt about it in my mind. He has plenty of opportunities to work his way back into the first round. It was just a matter of him understanding, ‘I don’t need to be Superman,’” former Georgia quarterback Aaron Murray said this week on SiriusXMRadio.

“I think it has been an ongoing mental process for Carson to get to where he is now, but I think he’s playing his best football when it matters the most — end of the season, heading into championship weekend here in the SEC, and heading into the Playoff.”

Beck threw 11 of his 12 interceptions in four games during the middle of the season, but has an 11-to-0 touchdown-to-interception ratio over the last three games as the Georgia passing game has been more efficient and explosive.

The rematch will ultimately be a testament to Sarkisian’s ability to make adjustments and game plan against arguably one of the best defensive coaches in the nation.

With All-American left tackle Kelvin Banks questionable to play this week, Sarkisian and the Longhorns face a difficult challenge in order to win an SEC championship in their first season in the new conference.

Since the loss to Georgia, Texas has made significant strides in the running game after a midseason swoon that saw the Longhorns gain 134 yards on 61 carries against the Bulldogs and Commodores (2.2 ypc).

It was a point of emphasis for Sarkisian over the last month, especially to fix problems running outside zone, the scheme in which Sarkisian likes to major from year to year.

“We do have a variety of run schemes, but the one scheme that that if we don’t get that right, the rest of them never work quite as good is when we’re running our outside zone stuff. When that gets going the right way, then the other things kind of come off of that,” Sarkisian said on Sunday.

As the run game stalled, it wasn’t just one issue — the Horns were struggling in multiple areas of execution on outside zone.

“We made an emphasis about a month ago that we had to improve upon it — our rhythm was off, our timing was off, we were getting penalties, the running back’s tracks weren’t married with where the offensive line was so on and so forth,” Sarkisian said.

“So I think the commitment to getting that cleaned up gave me more confidence to call more stuff running the football, but also allowed for the variety in the running game really to come to life as well.”

Since the Georgia game, Texas made some tweaks with outside zone, including man blocking it on the backside with a pass attached, according to senior center Jake Majors, allowing the line to limit penetration while optioning off the backside linebacker.

It’s paid off, as Texas had no trouble establishing the run game last week against one of the better defensive fronts in the nation in Texas A&M, racking up 243 rushing yards on 47 attempts, seemingly running at will against the Aggies.

Over the last four games, the Longhorns have racked up 839 rushing yards and five touchdowns on 169 carries (5.0 ypc). More than just gaining yards on the ground, Texas is doing it when it counts, and when opponents know its coming.

In Fayetteville, the Horns took the final 6:55 off the clock in the 20-10 win over the Razorbacks, running the ball nine times on the 14-play drive before kneeling out the final three plays.

Against Kentucky in Austin, Texas mounted a 15-play, 86-yard touchdown drive entirely on the ground to take a 31-14 lead.

Last week in College Station, the Aggies defense got wrecked by the Longhorns in the first and third quarters as Texas rushed for 87 yards on six carries in the opening 15 minutes and 83 yards on 18 carries out of halftime, leaving Kyle Field littered with A&M defenders needing medical attention after physical runs by Texas.

“We’re not a one-dimensional team maybe where we were at that juncture of the season,” Sarkisian said this week. “I think with the running game, it forces defensive play callers to have to have to defend the run and make sure they’re gap sound or we can hurt you there. It allows us to play-action pass and do some of those things, to maybe use a little bit more max protection.”

Now Texas has to prove that it can execute against a Georgia defense that seemed to be in the offensive huddle in October — Smart and the Bulldogs defense seemingly knew every hole the Longhorns were trying to hit, flooding gaps and clogging rushing lanes on every play in addition to dialing up effective pressures that produced two sacks on first down and three sacks on second down. At times, it looked like Georgia knew when Texas was going to run outside zone.

The Texas running game was simply too predictable on early downs and linebackers knew they just had to wait for the gap to open and fly in like an Oklahoma drill. At that point in the season, the Longhorns were also having trouble with defenders crashing outside zone plays from the backside because teams were slanting play side based on the alignment of the running back in shotgun — in shotgun zone schemes, the running back’s alignment tips that the play is going to the opposite direction, a reason why running Counter is so important for balance in the run game.

Another tweak made by Sarkisian in recent weeks to limit that slanting? Switching the running back’s alignment right before the snap to disrupt any line games.

Establishing a run game will be paramount to win on first downs and avoiding obvious passing situations on third-and-long.

Georgia Tech was able to dice up the Bulldogs last week by running with their quarterback, so it will be interesting to see if Sarkisian employs more Manning packages for designed quarterback runs against a defense that was torched by Haynes King last week.

On passing downs, the game plan for Georgia was to get to the backfield as quickly as possible, loading the box, and running single-high man coverage on Texas’ receivers. With the potential loss of one of the best left tackles in the nation, we might see some 12 personnel to add protection to Ewers’ blindside. We saw how dangerous Georgia can be on that blind side last time these two teams met after cornerback Daylen Everette’s cornerback blitz resulted in a strip sack late in the first quarter, causing a turnover on the Texas 13-yard line.

Handling those pressures better on Saturday will be key for the Longhorns after numerous miscommunications contributed to the seven sacks by the Dawgs.

“Part of it is what they’re doing and then having the ability to win your one-on-ones — they create one-on-one situations and you’ve got to have the physical ability and use your fundamentals and techniques to block them,” Sarkisian said.

“On top of that, you have to have the ability to get open and you got to be able to beat man coverage, and we struggled at all three of those. In the first game, we didn’t identify a couple blitzes very well. We had free rushers. We got hit. We struggled to block them at times one-on-one when we had those opportunities and then we struggled to get open versus man coverage down the field. So there’s layers to this that we have to play much better at if we want to be victorious Saturday.”

Against Georgia and Vanderbilt, sacks on early downs hurt Texas.

“I think we’ve avoided some of the, I guess I’ll call them nonsense sacks, like we’re calling an RPO and, oh shoot, the guy’s not open, and the offensive line is blocking for a run and the quarterback gets sacked because he’s got nowhere to throw the ball. We’ve kind of eliminated some of those to go along with I think we’re identifying fronts better. I think our guys are running backs are pass protecting better,” Sarkisian said.

If Georgia plans to load the box again and force their defensive backs into man coverage, the game plan should be to get the ball out quick and let this talented group of wide receivers make plays after the catch. High-percentage throws to the flats, quick slants, and shallow crosses to inch the ball down the field, and hopefully draw the safeties in.

If they want to press Isaiah Bond with zero or single high coverage, give Ewers some extra protection in the pocket and let it fly over the top. But to do that, the Texas receivers have to win one-on-one matchups against man coverage, an area where the Longhorns also struggled in October.

And with Bond still struggling with the ankle injury sustained against Oklahoma and DeAndre Moore Jr. playing through a turf toe issue, one question mark for Texas is whether some of the team’s best receivers are healthy enough to beat man coverage by Georgia.

The Longhorns offense also needs to do better in capitalizing on the opportunities that the defense gives them — not a single interception by the Texas defense resulted in points. If the Longhorns want a different outcome this time around, they need to execute better on offense, limit their turnovers and simple mistakes, and take advantage of any turnovers produced by Texas defense.

Last time around the Longhorns got punched in the mouth early and were forced to play behind at the pace of the Bulldogs all game — that cannot be the case again this week, but if Texas can improve in the areas in which it struggled against Georgia in October, Sarkisian and his team could bring an SEC title back to Austin in its first season in the conference.