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On Texas Football’s Lunch with the Coach: Texas has to shrug off OU loss, get back to improving every week

Steve Habelby: Steve Habel10/09/23stevehabel
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Jonathon Brooks (Will Gallagher/Inside Texas)

On the latest video edition of On Texas Football’s Lunch with the Coach, Inside Texas’ Bobby Burton and former state championship-winning coach Bryan Erwin discuss the Longhorns’ loss to then-No. 12 Oklahoma in the Red River Shootout in Dallas and how the team can move forward through its bye week and through the rest of the season.

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“Now is the time for Texas to step forward, to not dwell on the results of the Oklahoma game and prepare for playing Houston (on Oct. 21),” Burton said.

Erwin said the Longhorns didn’t play their best game and Oklahoma was just better than expected.

“We know we didn’t play as good football game as we can play – we had three turnovers, we had a bunch of penalties, we had a bunch of sacks,” Erwin said. “But at the end of the day, if we finished the game the way we finished the game against Alabama and we go down and close it out with offense and don’t give Oklahoma a chance didn’t get the ball back, maybe you’re kicking a field goal four seconds to go on the game to win.”

Texas has to get better with every game, with every practice.

“This football team has to continue to get better – we got to see a football team that does get better each and every week,” Erwin explained. “And this is ‘go’ time. This is the time of the season where champions become champions and everybody else is just everybody else.

“We’ve got to start that process now becoming a great football team or a very, very good football team. We’ve got to take the step now from an execution standpoint and a physical standpoint, to become a great football team. But we’ve got to take the next step. You got to keep getting better every single week. 

“I don’t think we got better from Baylor to eventually Oklahoma. I just don’t think we improved a ton. We saw some setbacks. Defensively, we didn’t look as fast. We didn’t look like we were playing like our britches were on fire.”

Erwin said he thought Texas dominated the line of scrimmage against Oklahoma in the running game on designed runs and through rushing the football. “We have to be able to protect the quarterback better – that’s the bottom line,” he added.

Erwin said the Longhorns were too conservative on defense on Oklahoma’s final drive, playing soft in the secondary rather than attacking the Sooners.

Erwin said the Longhorns had difficulty talking in space, something that has not been an issue for the first five games of the year, and looked dead-legged and slow, especially in the linebacker corps and from the safeties.

Both of our experts believe that Texas will take the steps it needs and earn a rematch with the Sooners in the Big 12 Championship game.

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To find out how, go check out the rest of the video for that and plenty of additional insights from Bobby and the coach.

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