Longhorns Update: A Blessing In Disguise?

Within days of Greg Davis “resigning” from the Longhorns, defensive coordinator – and “head coach in waiting” – Will Muschamp headed on to greener pastures. The SEC now welcomes Will as the next head coach at the University of Florida. I suspect a lot of 2011 opponents may be salivating right now.

Muschamp was at the University of Texas for three seasons. Total defense numbers looked great in years one and two. Last season, the Longhorns were 3rd in the nation in total defense. But this year took a tremendous nosedive. The pre-season talk was of “the best defense in the Mack Brown era”, with plenty of talented athletes, especially in the secondary. But as they say, talk is cheap. At home, the Longhorns could only muster #56 in the country (#3 in 2009) – never the best place to play your worst. The defensive secondary was consistently burned for big play after big play. The blitzing defense of years past became a rather pedestrian unit this year that really wasn’t that good at much of anything. Scratch that – they were very consistent at giving up at least one big pass play and one big run play per game – at the minimum. And they made a lot of mediocre offenses look pretty darn good. Can you say “UCLA”?

Muschamp used the role of “coach-in-waiting” to leverage his salary to double what he would have normally made, putting him at $900,000. This was with no guarantee of him ever sticking around to take the head coaching position. I am sure there was a pretty significant dose of “good faith bargaining” involved. But the bottom line right now is that the “coach-in-waiting” concept was a total failure, and an expensive one at that.

However, I would suggest that perhaps the loss of both Muschamp and Davis may in fact be a blessing in disguise.

The statistics would indicate that Muschamp jumped ship at a time when his defensive output had waned significantly. The team lacked discipline and fire this season. Would Muschamp have become a good head coach at Texas? That was always going to be a roll of the dice and quite the leap of faith.

On the other side of the ball, Davis was unable to deliver anything resembling a consistent offensive game plan this season. The teams that were strong offensively under his “watch” all had players that simply would not lose, regardless of the game plan. Vince Young, Colt McCoy, Jordan Shipley, Quan Cosby – I think you get the idea. But when presented with the task of building something around solid yet not All-World recruits, Davis always looked a little lost.

Both are now gone, and Mack Brown is faced with the coaching challenge of his career. This is a time of opportunity. It is a chance to build a revitalized future within the program, and to lay the foundation and groundwork for a true Texas dynasty. This assumes some sound decisions by Brown.

Now we will get to truly see what Brown is made of as a head coach. Sure, he has to hire both a new offensive and defensive coordinator simultaneously, a daunting task indeed. He is going to have to soothe the egos of plenty of recruits. He is going to have to make sure that the alumni remain happy. He is going to have to find solutions to the significant problems this year’s team faced. He is going to have to appease all of the Longhorn supporters after the first losing season in his exalted Texas tenure and perhaps the most chaotic season since the Mackovic era. Oh, and by the way, there were those losses this season to Oklahoma and Texas A&M, neither of which is ever well-received by Texas Exes.

Strangely enough, Brown has been silent in the media since the Texas A&M game. Rumors abound regarding possible candidates, but all is quiet in Brown’s world. I am not sure that silence is what the Longhorn Nation needs at this tumultuous point of time in the Brown era. It is time for Brown to step up and show us just what that $5 million per year is paying for these days. In the next 2 or 3 weeks, we will see the first signs of the future. Will this cement Mack Brown’s legacy at Texas? Or will it be the beginning of the end?

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