Texas Longhorns: What We Learned From Saturday’s Loss

By Curry Goff | Sep 23, 2015

1-2 isn’t exactly the start that Charlie Strong would have been envisioning at the beginning of the season for his Texas Longhorns.

Despite the record itself, once you break it down, UT fans have a bit of consolation.

Week 1’s loss may very well be written off by season’s end, considering Notre Dame looks to be the real deal. Week 2’s less than impressive win over an undersized and underachieving Rice team (in comparison to Texas), was exactly that; less than impressive, but still a win.

The first thing Saturday’s loss showed us: this team has resolve.

My dad used to tell me growing up that when I wrote down my score on a hole in golf, I didn’t have to draw pictures. The score did the talking. You could share the story if you wanted. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a world where college football wins and losses are judged in terms of black and white.

In the time of 24/7 sports coverage, SPI indexes, AP polls, and SOS rankings, your wins are no longer wins. They’re style points; they’re point spreads. Your losses have to come early if you want any hope of reaching the CFP (just ask Ohio State). They also can’t be in demoralizing fashion. They also can’t this…they also can’t that.

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Each journalist/pundit/expert/armchair analyst has their measure for how they rate certain wins and losses, and no two are the same. All this to say, the manner in which you win or lose affects not only the morale of your football team and your fanbase, but also the way the public perceives the health of your program.

Thankfully for the Texas Longhorns, the manner in which they lost Saturday night’s game to the Cal Bears speaks much more to the health of the program than does the 1-2 record they’ll bring to the table Saturday afternoon against the Oklahoma State Cowboys.

The first thing Saturday’s loss showed us: this team has resolve.

As the first half was ending and the third quarter rolled along, there was a sinking feeling in the pit of every Texas fan’s stomach. We had read the script and knew how the scene would play out.

It would be another valiant effort that gave us a lot of false hope (almost like the first half of the Rice game), only to then be taken away piece by piece, touchdown after touchdown. When the score was 45-24 at the end of the third quarter, this team could have laid down and let Cal finish them off.

Instead, they fired off 20 points in a row to get them back into the game, and really should have sent the game into overtime.

Disclaimer: I’m not here to bellyache over Nick Rose’s missed extra point. Like bad referee calls and fluke bounces, things like that happen. Rose is not the first kicker to blow a game like that, and he definitely won’t be the last.

The second thing Saturday’s loss showed us: Jerrod Heard has some serious game.

If your team isn’t going to lay down and accept defeat, your quarterback has to spearhead the offense and get them moving. In the years since Colt McCoy’s departure, that spark has been missing. You had the occasional Case McCoy rally, but nothing consistent enough to be considered an asset.

Jerrod Heard’s unpredictability gave Cal fits in the fourth quarter. When a pass wasn’t there, his scrambling was deadly. When you stopped his scrambling, he would dump it off in the flat to a wide open tailback for another first down.

Heard’s billing coming out of high school was his dual threat capabilities. In his first big test, Heard lived up to the hype. When he needed to pick up his team and carry them down the field, he did just that.

If you told me before the game that Texas would lose but find their viable, long-term quarterback in the process, that’s something I would take all day long, and so would every other Texas fan with a brain. Would both have been great? Absolutely.

But Charlie Strong’s hire was not about immediate success. It was about the process. Even though he admits that, at Texas, you have to win, everyone knows that what Strong is trying to do takes some time.

Jerrod Heard may have bought Strong a little more time with his performance Saturday night. This Saturday’s game at home to OK State will be another litmus test for the young quarterback. Has there ever been more pressure on a Texas quarterback to duplicate a performance? Not for my money.

Next: Texas: Malik Jefferson Provides A Spark

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