Every second counts.
That line becomes the calling card of the second half of season two of FX’s The Bear, when Richie (played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach) is sent to stage at a three-star Michelin restaurant where he learns that it isn’t just cuisine that matters in high-end restaurants, it is attention to detail, attention to customer experience and attention to self-worth and taking pride in what you are doing is making an imprint on others.
Every second counts.
The 2022 Texas Longhorns finished the season with a record of 8-5 after falling to Washington in the Alamo Bowl by a score of 27-20. The game followed a disconcerting theme of the season in which the Longhorns finished 2-5 in one-score games, losing five games by a combined total of 25 points.
Sometimes in football you just get beat – ask Oklahoma about that game last October. But sometimes in football, you contribute to the loss – preventable, recurring mistakes.
It is what makes the difference between 8-4 and 10-2 or 11-1.
I don’t think anyone would argue with the notion that this is the most talented Texas roster since the 2009 season – and yeah yeah yeah to all the Junior Stewart Mandels out there, look at the rosters and not just the recruiting classes – it is time for it to culminate into success.
Defensively the Longhorns return much of a unit that finished 15th in the country in defensive SP+. They will need to replace some starters on the defensive line, but talent wise the Texas defense should have no drop-off this season.
Their focus needs to be on that attention to detail. Money downs. The Longhorns finished in the bottom half of the Big 12 last season on third and fourth down defense. Forcing turnovers. The Horns finished in the bottom half of the conference there as well. And there is the hidden turnover – quarterback sacks.
The Longhorns finished second in the country in quarterback pressures with 277 – yet that only equated to 27 sacks. That is almost impossible to do. One more sack against Alabama, one more against Texas Tech, that could have been the difference in the game.
Offensively it is easy – Quinn Ewers must take that next step.
It was expected for Ewers to struggle at times last season, he was effectively a true-freshman quarterback who had only taken a handful of snaps the last couple of seasons and had not played a full season since his sophomore year at Southlake Carroll High School.
But if the Longhorns are going to accomplish their goals in 2023 Ewers will have to show the talent that made him one of the most coveted quarterback recruits this century.
All indications are that he is in a much better space than he was last season, but until the lights come on, we don’t know.
He’ll need help, of course. The offensive line returns every starter for the first time since the John Mackovic era. They’ll need to live up to their potential to be the best offensive line in the conference.
The impossible task of replacing Bijan Robinson and Roschon Johnson must occur – even if the unit is able to replace the yardage production of a year ago, can they protect Ewers, can they do the little things that the experienced Robinson and Johnson did without ending up on the telestrator the next play?
The Horns were terrible at complimentary football last season – when the defense was struggling to stop a Texas Tech offense last season, the offense went into a shell and couldn’t bail them out. When the defense was stifling a potent TCU offense last season, the offense couldn’t sustain anything.
And that brings us to Steve Sarkisian.
I’m not going to bring up any of the cutesy bottom of the barrel sophomoric nicknames that national media types use to get the proletariat going, but Sarkisian himself must make the jump from master planner (there is nobody in the country better at forming on offensive script than Sark) to master technician – your quarterback is having trouble on the road so let’s throw our gameplan in the trash and start over in the next commercial break – the Horns have to win the battle of the headsets most weeks.
Finally – we used this phrase a few years back and it turns out the team wasn’t anywhere near ready – be humble.
Every week is a new week. If you go into Tuscaloosa next weekend and manage to defeat Alabama, two weeks later Baylor isn’t going to give a flying you know what that you did – if anything that puts a BIGGER target on your back.
Football coaches like to say don’t let a team beat you twice (lose a game and then lose the next one because you feel sorry for yourself). Don’t let a win get you beat either.
Every second counts.
For the fans the season begins this Saturday afternoon, but for you the season began those blistery January mornings many moons ago. It continued through the hottest summer in Texas history.
The mushrooms are peeled.
All there’s left to do is run.
Every second counts.
Coastal Carolina @ UCLA –14.5:
You might think that Coastal Carolina and UCLA have a long, storied history but they do not – this is the first ever meeting between these two teams.
The Chanticleers celebrate their 20th anniversary of the birth of their program this year, the first year for new head coach Tim Beck. Beck will have a tall order replacing Joey Chadwell, who won 31 games the last three seasons.
Slowing down a Bruins offense that finished third in the country in SP+ last year will be a tall order for new CC defensive coordinator Craig Naivar, another familiar name around these parts. That UCLA offense is, of course, missing Dorian Thompson-Robinson, Zach Charbonnet, two of their top targets and two all-conference guards from that offense, but Chip Kelly is at a place now where he can reload.
The Bruins defense is not as special, finishing 90th in the country in scoring defense last year – and they’ll have to face Grayson McCall, Tim Beck’s best recruiting project of the off-season. McCall has thrown for more than 8,000 yards in his Coastal Carolina career along with 78 career touchdown passes. McCall was in the portal earlier in the off-season, but Beck convinced him to stay.
UCLA 38 Coastal Carolina 31
Florida @ Utah –4.5:
The Utes have won 77% of their home games in the Kyle Whittingham era, including 14 in a row. Even with Cam Rising being uncertain due to an injury suffered in the Rose Bowl, I can’t see new Florida quarterback Graham Mertz and his career 59% completion percentage going in there and getting the win – but stranger things have happened.
Billy Napier went 6-7 in his first season in Gainesville, the second of back-to-back losing seasons for the Gators, which hadn’t happened since the 1970’s. They haven’t had three straight since the 1950’s...they’re not getting off to a promising start here.
Utah 28 Florida 17
Florida State vs. LSU (Orlando) -2.5:
Last year’s opening weekend Labor Day affair was a battle between unranked teams, this year’s match-up features two Top-10 squads.
Jayden Daniels is back for yet another year, I guess he just can’t get enough of Brian Kelly’s dancing. Jordan Travis is back for Florida State, he threw for 3,200 yards with 24 touchdowns to only 5 interceptions on the season last year.
I think the question here is if Florida State can generate enough of a running game to keep LSU from pinning back their ears and rushing the passer – if they do that, Travis can take over the ballgame.
The Seminoles played three ranked opponents last year and lost all three. We’ll see if they can turn that around in week one.
LSU 28 Florida State 24
West Virginia @ Penn State –20.5:
This will be the 60th meeting between these two, but the first since 1992 in what was Kerry Collins’s first career start for the Nitanny Lions. The Mountaineers haven’t won in State College since 1954.
Penn State finished a quiet 11-2 last season, which happens when you are the third-best team in your own division every year. Sean Clifford has finally left State College, and now it is time for Drew Allar, a former five-star recruit. His top three pass catchers from last season are gone, but Kent State transfer Dante Cephus, who had nearly 2,000 yards and 12 touchdowns the last two seasons, should fit in nicely. The Lions also have a trio of running backs that ran for 2,200 yards and 25 touchdowns last season.
Neal Brown enters his fifth year at West Virginia. With a career record of 22-25 in Morgantown he is definitely on the hot seat, and it is hard to imagine a harder opener. Garrett Greene is the starter at quarterback, he completed only 55% of his passes last season.
Penn State 37 West Virginia 20
Colorado @ TCU –20.5:
I am of the opinion that Deion Sanders will work out just fine in Boulder – he won’t be in the playoffs anytime soon, hell he might not be competing for conference titles anytime soon, but for a program that has had one full-season winning campaign since 2005, it needed a shot of adrenaline, and it got the save shot from Pulp Fiction this off-season.
You know those college football magazines that we read growing up that would list the important coming and going players for each team? They would need more than a few sheets of paper for the Buffaloes this year. Out is...the whole team, in are 50 transfers.
One of those transfers is Prime Time’s son Shedeur, who threw for more than 7,000 yards at Jackson State in two years to go along with 70 touchdown passes. His offensive coordinator will be former Kent State head coach Sean Lewis, who brings his up-tempo fast attack offense to Boulder.
TCU had their magical run all the way to the national championship game last season but begin anew this season after losing Garrett Riley, Max Duggan and several others. In are several transfers, including Kendal Briles, JoJo Earle (Alabama), J.P. Richardson (Oklahoma State), Jack Bech (LSU), Trey Sanders (Alabama) and Tommy Brockermeyer (Alabama).
It will take both of these teams a little time to find themselves this season, but TCU will find themselves a lot sooner.
TCU 42 Colorado 17
Rice @ Texas -35:
The goal of this game is to have the Rice players cussing JFK and his famous quote by the mid-second quarter in 102-degree temperatures, but as USC proved this last weekend, sometimes that is better said than done.
Rice isn’t a terrible football team. They made a bowl game last season. Ok, I know, I know half of FBS makes a bowl game now. And yes, technically they only got in because of the APR qualifier – but they played in a bowl game and finished 5-8.
It was easily the high watermark of the Mike Bloomgren era at Rice, where he is 16-39 in his five seasons. The competition even gets tougher this season, as the Owls are making the jump up to the American Athletic Conference. They beat Texas here and that yokel the Big 12 has acting as commissioner is liable to invite them to the Big 12 Richard Nixon style after the game in the Rice locker room.
Winning is going to be a tall ask for these Owls, who likely start West Virginia/Georgia/USC transfer J.T. Daniels at quarterback, who will, as I’m sure you have heard ad nauseum this week, will be making his third start at quarterback for his third different team at DKR.
The guy has more starts at DKR than some legendary Longhorn quarterbacks such as Richard Walton. It remains to be seen if he can get a modeling job during the telecast ala Marty Cherry.
Anyways, my favorite J.T. Daniels stat remains his career negative 295 yards rushing, his –6 yards rushing in 2019 remains his career high. If Pete Kwiatkowski assigns a spy to Daniels this week, Sark had better be on the telephone to Gary Patterson in the fourth quarter.
Rice will try to play a plodding, three yards and a cloud of turf pellets offense this season, which will be good practice for next week’s matchup in Tuscaloosa, although that is where the similarities between Rice and Alabama rightfully end.
They did have some talent at receiver coming back this season but then this summer one transferred and one medically retired. The good news is that Rice has McCaffrey, the bad news is that it is Luke, the one chosen second at the annual McCaffrey Flag Football Thanksgiving game. But hey, no shame in that.
Defensively the Owls do have some talent at linebacker, but they still gave up nearly 7 yards per play last season and 34 points per game last season.
Texas has covered the spread in four-straight season openers. That streak should continue.
Texas 52 Rice 10
For entertainment purposes only. Save your money for the IV bus on Sunday.
Excellent as usual. "Yes Chef!!!"