Five quick thoughts: Texas runs through the Flyover D
Iowa State’s defense is designed to invite runs, only to spring a trap in the form of big, thick linebackers backed by big, downhill safeties all closing on what appeared to be running lanes. Yet the pass over the top is hard to come by because of their three-deep safety shell.
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Tom Herman’s Texas Longhorns always wanted to find a way to spread them out well enough to run the ball, only to repeatedly fail. Steve Sarkisian seems to have figured out the art.
Bijan Robinson had 28 carries for 135 yards at 4.8 ypc while Roschon Jonson added 11 carries for 71 yards at 6.5 ypc, including the game-winning yardage on the final 3rd-and-1 after being hit in the backfield (props also to Jordan Whittington for the Bush-push). All told? 43 carries for 191 yards at 4.4 ypc and amusingly all the actual touchdowns came from Quinn Ewers flipping the ball in.
Texas’ ability to run the ball, particularly in the second half, was massive in this contest. The defense was struggling badly with Iowa State’s dropback passing game and avoiding another game where the Cyclones could repeatedly take the ball down the field was very helpful. More helpful still? A couple of game-winning turnovers forced by the defense to erase their misdeeds.
Here are the standout themes from Texas’ narrow win at home.
Quick thought no. 1: Texas’ D saved their own bacon with turnovers
The Horns played hard and physical on defense in this game, which was extremely important because they didn’t play particularly smart. The Iowa State passing game was chewing them up for several parts of the game, especially on 3rd down (more on that later) but Texas killed two potential scoring drives with turnovers, both involving Mike linebacker Jaylan Ford.
First the Texas backer let Cyclone quarterback Hunter Dekkers‘ eyes take him to the ball on the goal line and he undercut a poor decision to force a slant into coverage at the goal line.
The game flipped here. Iowa State hadn’t been dominating, but they were up 7-0 with a chance to get to 10-0 or 14-0 and instead had a good drive end with zero points. Texas responded with a touchdown drive on offense and took over the game until late in the 3rd quarter when the Cyclone passing game took over again.
Texas won the game on a Ford fumble recovery. Major credit goes to Anthony Cook who came downhill violently and launched his shoulder on the ball without incurring a targeting penalty to force a fumble on a Dekkers zone-read keeper around the edge. Matt Campbell was beyond furious with the lack of a targeting call and review showed the ball coming out in the nano-seconds before Dekkers’ knee hit. However, Cook lead with his elbow on the ball, it was a violent yet precise hit to save the game.
Texas missed Cook in the middle of the game when he was out for Kitan Crawford for some reason, more on that in the next section. He finished with three tackles. Ford lead the team, as customary, with eight tackles in addition to the two turnovers.
Quick thought no. 2: 3rd down thrashing
With a victory safe in the books, the big focus on this game is going to be around the atrocious defensive performance (again!) on 3rd down. Iowa State was 9-15 on 3rd down for the game, an outrageous 60%, and nearly had the game in hand as a result if not for their turnovers.
If the math above is confusing, note that completing a pass on 3rd down doesn’t guarantee a conversion. It can help set up 4th down though, where Iowa State was 1-1.
There were a number of issues for Texas in this game in those “money down” situations.
Their coordination on coverages between players was often atrocious. Before the fumble the Cyclones erased the mistake of a near-touchdown to a wide open Xavier Hutchinson which was dropped by getting the receiver wide open on the following 3rd down. Texas’ nickel Jahdae Barron literally just traded him off on a crossing route to absolutely no one.
There were some confounding factors as well. Star boundary cornerback Ryan Watts left the game early with a shoulder injury and one of his back-ups (Austin Jordan) got beat on a RPO glance route for a 54-yard touchdown. Curiously there was no help inside from him. Cook may or may not have been responsible for the lack of help and was not seen again until the final drive where he atoned for any mistakes he’d made earlier with the forced fumble.
Cook’s back-up Crawford struggled mightily with his assignment in Texas’ bunch formation coverage checks, which routinely had Iowa State receivers running wide open. It was a hideous game with Texas routinely springing leaks in coverage, usually at the worst times. Dekkers finished the game 25-36 for 329 yards at 9.1 ypa with two touchdowns and a rushing touchdown to boot.
Quick thought no. 3: Sark’s unbalanced sets
The other trick to attacking the Flyover defense, which Mike Gundy routinely employs, is to mix in a lot of unbalanced formations. Iowa State’s 3-3-5 has to distort itself to handle unbalanced sets in ways which can often eliminate the advantages it otherwise creates for its defenders in allowing them to outnumber the offense all over the field.
Texas used a ton of 4×0 sets, with every skill player except the running back, aligned to one side of the field and covering up a tight end to make him ineligible as a receiver. So you lose the ability to throw to someone, usually Gunnar Helm or Andrej Karic, and you gain some leverage on the Cyclone defense. For Texas that was a great trade to make.
The long drive to take the lead in which Texas ran the ball for 72 yards until Ewers punctuated the drive with a fourth down touchdown toss to Xavier Worthy included repeated use of the 4×0 formations.
Here’s play-action from the 4×0 set:
They made hay running counter or weak outside zone at the “zero” side where Iowa State would have a cornerback involved in defending the point of attack. They also hammered the Cyclones with “Duo” throughout the game from the double tight end sets. Great job by Sark to find and land on a gameplan which took pressure for winning the game off Ewers while helping the run game to get established.
Texas’ chances to run the table down the stretch in this league are going to involve the offensive line continuing to improve so they can hammer increasingly worn down opponents with the run game as the weather cools down.
We should see the “Ezekiel’s wheel” RPO play with a wheel and flat route out of the backfield come back in future weeks as well. Iowa State’s drop 8 coverages allowed them to defend it without overloading their flat defender. Texas ran it unsuccessfully on the first two plays of the game and mostly shelved it for the rest of the game with a few exceptions.
Quick thought no. 4: Texas’ passing game
A really interesting and mixed day for the Longhorn passing game. Ewers avoided interceptions but also “fumbled” early when he tried to kill a busted screen play and then realized he’d thrown the ball backwards to do so and had to dive on the ball to avoid a turnover.
On an early 4th-and-3 Texas cleverly dialed up a slot fade to Casey Cain. Those short-yardage plays on 3rd and 4th down are an IDEAL time to take a shot at the end zone. You’re never going to get an easier coverage to beat then in those moments when the defense is banking on you playing for the line to gain instead of the end zone. Sure enough, Cain broke wide open, but an errant pass (into the wind) fell incomplete and an opportunity was wasted. Cain would later be hit on a wide open route down the field and bobbled the ball while looking downfield to maximize.
Ewers hit this amazing play by Bijan Robinson…
…and also hit an RPO to Whittington for the senior’s first touchdown of the year and this whip route to Worthy for the winning score.
Overall Ewers was 17-26 for 172 yards at 6.6 ypa with three touchdowns and zero interceptions. It was noted in fall camp he was named starter after a strong performance on the goal line in a practice. Ewers definitely made good there in helping Texas punch the ball in, otherwise the passing game didn’t hit their ceiling in this game and it was the rushing attack which carried the day.
This is only the second game Ewers has quarterbacked for Texas where he didn’t get several extra weeks of prep like he did against Alabama and Oklahoma. It was a good performance but less than the superstar show we saw more glimpses of early against Alabama or in the Red River Shutout.
Props in this game to Whittington, who continues to block and excel underneath, and Worthy who demonstrated a greater range of skills with his speed than just running by people down the field.
Quick thought no. 5: Survive and advance
This was an ugly win by Texas. Their 3rd down coverage weakness has never looked worse, some of the defensive substitutions were confusing, and they blew a lot of opportunities overall to blow this game open and avoid a tight finish.
They’ve got probably the nastiest game of the year next week visiting Stillwater to play Oklahoma State (currently leading TCU 14-7 as of this writing) and then they’ll get a bye week to rethink or shore up some things on defense. Winning this game was huge for giving them margin for error to potentially drop the road game in Stillwater and still be in contention for the Big 12 Championship Game.
Sark’s Horns still have a lot of untapped upside on offense and could potentially win out simply by out-scoring everyone left on the schedule. They’d be well served though by rethinking their 3rd down game planning. I’d suggest they’re doing too much and would be better off trying to match the Gary Patterson TCU method of simply clamping down everything from tight, two-high coverage, perhaps with a safety subbed in at linebacker (not Diamonte Tucker-Dorsey, who lacks speed for those situations), while using line stunts to help the pass-rush.
A young team in a tough league was always likely to lose some games they shouldn’t. It was a bit of a moral victory for Texas not to blow this one and have a chance to shore up some weak spots to avoid another similar game.
