Inside the Gameplan: Building Blocks

Every year, college teams have to revamp their strategies and team identities around a new cast of players. Ideally, each team is designed to feature the strengths of the senior class (with exceptions for talented, younger players) and each year the team evolves to emphasize the players who are best prepared and equipped to be the constants in a winning formula.

In 2008 it didn’t look like Texas had a particularly talented team going into the season, but older players on the team with complementary skill sets allowed the team to find an identity and the result was the 2nd or 3rd best team of the Mack Brown era.

They had upperclassmen leaders at WR in Jordan Shipley and Quan Cosby who knew how to get open in Greg Davis’ offense against Big 12 defenses and they had a QB in Colt McCoy who knew how to get them the ball. The entire offensive strategy was built around creating space and opportunities for that threesome to dominate games and dominate they did.

Meanwhile on defense, Will Muschamp parlayed the presence of two freak pass-rushers on the roster in Brian Orakpo and Sergio Kindle into a host of 4-2-5 nickel packages that were devastating for Big 12 passing games even with a very inexperienced secondary.

When a team can find a strong identity to build around, then everyone else on the roster becomes a role player who needs to find a way to complement the strength of the team. Perhaps the next year some of those role players become the building blocks of a new identity, but in the meantime their job is to fit in around the cornerstones of that year.

Here are the players that Texas is going to be building around in 2016.

Offense

Texas has five main players they need to be building around in 2016 on offense, guys that can be expected to execute no matter who they are lined up across from that will create opportunities for everyone else on the team to find complementary roles.

Those players are Kent Perkins, Patrick Vahe, Connor Williams, Caleb Bluiett, and John Burt.

Obviously Texas has a nice stable of runners, including Jerrod Heard, Chris Warren, D’Onta Foreman, and others but those guys are all likely to find spot roles that revolve around the abilities of those OL and Bluiett to blow open holes in opposing defensive fronts. The success of said runners will depend much more on the blocking in front of them than on their own abilities. There are runners that you build around, but the difference here is that the priority isn’t getting Warren or Heard the ball where they like it but getting someone the ball who can make the most of what those blockers can create.

Ideally Perkins and Vahe would serve as the left and right guard respectively, with Williams obviously resuming his post at left tackle and suitable complements plugged in at center and right tackle. For center, Texas will primarily want someone who can make the line calls, show the ability to reach DTs on down blocks and reach blocks, and avoid giving up penetration. If they can just accomplish the first and last point that will probably be good enough. At right tackle, Texas mainly wants a guy that can avoid allowing disaster.

The one skill player that Texas should really be building around is WR John Burt, who regrettably never touched the ball more than five times in a game last year (Tech, five touches, 21 yards), but is Texas’ most fearsome player for opposing teams to try and handle with a 1-on-1 match-up.

Burt can pretty much do it all. He can’t be really be guarded without either a corner who can really tackle playing with a big cushion or a double team coming from a safety helping over the top. There really aren’t that many WRs that can kill you if you don’t double them or concede easy gains underneath and the ones that can are special.

Given that the rest of Texas’ offensive identity will undoubtedly be geared around running the ball with a variety of different people behind the Perk-Vahe-Williams-Bluiett group up front, Burt’s value as a guy who can command attention away from the box is even greater.

Hopefully they can move both Bluiett and Burt around to different spots in order to hit the vulnerable areas in a given opponent. In my estimation, the boundary outside receiver and the field slot are the positions that are best equipped to punish the average cover 4-oriented Big 12 defense that is trying to get numbers into the box to stop the run.

If the defense has a really good corner over that Z receiver, then they might be able to get away with sneaking that strong safety ($) into the box to help stop the run, even if the Z receiver is John Burt. In that event, you’d like for Burt to be able to play in the slot as the Y receiver and force the defense to determine if they want to use their nickel to stop the run or if they have him hang back to make sure the Y receiver doesn’t get to run around against a free safety playing in tons of open space.

It’s easier to get a guy going at that Z spot since he’s closer to the QB and the slot is really only looking at easy access to open grass on running plays where the nickel is heading towards the box. In that even though, there are major opportunities here because most of the league’s free safeties aren’t very good.

The X spot on this diagram is hardest to attack since he’s lined up so far from the QB on the opposite hash.

Incidentally, from this set Texas could run power to the left and have Bluiett and Vahe leading while Perkins and Williams double team the tackle and climb up to the weakside linebacker. No one in the Big 12 is excited to defend that play 5-10 times a game.

It doesn’t really matter if it’s Foreman, Warren, Heard, Swoopes, Johnson, or whomever getting the ball they’re probably going to find success on that play, particularly if Burt is preventing the nickel, free safety, or strong safety from having a chance to be an active participant in the play.

Defense

The future here is very bright for Texas, but the day when Charlie’s defense runs this league is probably less imminent than the day when this offense is able to run over people if they can just find a QB and some role players.

The main building blocks on defense are Bryce Cottrell, Malik Jefferson, and Holton Hill and that might be it for 2016. Cottrell started eight games last year, was stuck out of position as a strongside end at 6-foot-2, 254, and still managed to get four sacks. He’s arguably one of Texas’ best pass-rushers and a guy that they need to scheme to get into position to do some damage.

Malik Jefferson was a freak that had to be accounted for as soon as he stepped onto the field. Texas usually had to use him in a more traditional LB role since they didn’t have anyone else they could trust to make tackles if ball carriers broke through to the second level and even as one of the better options there he barely knew what he was doing. In 2016, Malik should be a more well rounded player butTexas needs to get him in position to do what he does best;wreaking havoc in opposing backfields.

Finally we have Holton Hill, who will probably be the best cover corner in the Big 12 before he’s done and it might bein 2016.

These three guys are going to need a lot of help to emerge around them, especially in the middle of the field where Texas needs to find some DTs, inside-backers, and some safeties this spring. However, it’s not hard to find an application of these three guys’ talents in a way that could make life hard for Big 12 offenses.

Let me start by noting that Peter Jinkens, who was often more freed up to blitz than Malik in 2015, led the team with 6.5 sacks last year. If aggressive deployment of Jinkens can yield those kinds of numbers, what could happen if Malik was blitzing regularly? His two sacks against OU alone as apart of an aggressive game plan suggests the possibilities are pretty exciting.

If Texas still relies on their normal 3-3-5 stack defense next year than there’s little reason to move Malik from his “middle” linebacker position, that is probably better described as a “Sam” linebacker, since it positions him on the edge where he’s most effective.

That’d be Cottrell that Malik is lined up behind to the left and they could alternate who attacks the edge and who shoots the B-gap. You want Malik blitzing the edge or shooting backside gaps whenever possible since his elite speed makes him virtually impossible to deal with in those scenarios. If Texas can find a nose tackle they could do worse than this set up, even though it doesn’t perfectly suit Cottrell’s skills.

Texas is unlikely to field a defense with terrific fundamentals that excels in shutting down every play with precision in 2016, but if they can find ways to set up Cottrell and Malik to get after opponents then they can inflict negative plays that will kill drives.

Meanwhile, Holton Hill has another crucial part to play in this set up. In 2015 Texas had to play a great deal more cover 2, particularly early in the year, in order to protect their young corners and to avoid taking knockout blows on the chin.

The emergence of Hill (as well as Davante Davis) down the stretch of 2015 offers Texas a chance to play more of Charlie’s preferred single-deep safety coverages that require corners on the outside that can hold up on islands down the sidelines.

Vance Bedford often distributes the corners as left and right, with the left cornerback often finding himself on the boundary more often and also more frequently enjoying safety help over the top when Texas mixes in their cover 6 defense (cover 2 on the boundary, quarters to the field). Hill is more of a right cornerback who would spend more time isolated in coverage. However, because each corner has to be able to play either field or boundary based on where the ball is lined up, the Longhorns are also free to have their corners shadow particular receivers if necessary.

If Hill can hold up in man coverage against the league’s best outside receivers, not lock them down but hold up without getting killed, that will make life much easier for Texas this coming season. At that point they can use their safeties more aggressively and get someone like DeShon Elliott to help outnumber the run in the box.

Pounding the ball on the ground against soft Big 12 defensive fronts and hoping to bend without breaking against the league’s explosive offenses is a formula that has worked before. If Texas can build that kind of team around these cornerstones in 2016, there’s a chance we could see them win eight or more games and propel Charlie into a Year 4 with a chance to make hay when all of his young players really start to get it.