It looks like the Longhorns may have found their formula for success. Channeling my inner Bud Kilmer, “We are a runnin’ team!” The Horns are too running 59 times vs 29 passes against the Spartans on Saturday. Chris Warren especially is the guy I’d give the ball 80 times a game. He had 16 carries and went for 166 yards or 10.4 yards per. I mean the guy goes 6’4″ 250, and as a ballcarrier that’s just a load. For whatever reason it seems that coaches try too hard to get the pass going. Last year Oklahoma struggled against Houston and Ohio State. In both games they threw more than they passed and went on a tear once they figured out they needed to run more than they passed. Since then when they run more than they pass, they win and win decisively. The Longhorns in my opinion need to dance with the one that brought em, and let that O line dig in and flat out beat people up. Against Maryland last week the Longhorns threw 34 times and ran only 31. Against USC this week, they’re going to need to keep the ball out of Sam Darnold’s hands and that Trojan offense on the sidelines. Chris Warren and Toneil Carter need the ball…a lot. Also Jerrod Heard at 6’3″ 205 needs to be in there running the 18 Wheeler a lot as well.

The motion here really tipped the hand of the defense. The two bottom blue arrows saw the Spartans fly up in anticipation of the swing pass. This left San Jose St(SJS) exposed by making the D-End the outside player, and he’s lined up on the hash.

A lot of teams would try to hook em (no pun intended), but the Horns just lead on him. The Horns have a numbers advantage out to the right, and Warren peels off about a 25 yard run here. Brilliant play design here yielded great results.

Coming back left now on 3rd and 1 a couple of plays later, this is just smash mouth line up and run em over. The two blue lines show the guys leading up on the defenders, and leaving Chris only one guy to beat. The defender doesn’t have a great angle to shut down the 250 pounder…

And Warren is unfazed as he’s off to the races behind McMillon and Kendall Moore.

When Texas decides to line up, dictate matchups and scheme to numbers advantages, they can be lethal offensively. This poor DB had zero chance of bringing Warren down on the way for 6. Again, why he’s not getting at least 30 carries a game is puzzling.

Once you get a run game established, it makes pass pro that much easier. Yeah yeah I know it’s San Jose State, but this is picture perfect protection on a deep drop. You need to see execution like this to build on the little things, and the guys up front did a great job here.

Dun nuh nuh….dun nuh nuh! This it’s a SportsCenter worthy catch here as Lorenzo Joe makes an amazing play on the deep ball dragging the left toe. Man alive, that’s how it’s done!

Here’s what you call stacking 8 in the box. With teams only being able to put 11 guys on the field there’s always going to be one side of the defense where there are more players than the other. In this case, to the left of the blue line there are 5 defenders with a safety high. To the right of the blue line there are 3 players counting the safety. There’s a clear numbers advantage to the right, and in qb run game, the rb becomes another blocker. Your rg and rt become 1 and 2, while the rb is blocker 3 if you go right, and there’s no unaccounted player to make the tackle. If you come back left you’ll have to bring some people from the right to make up for the -1 advantage the defense has here.

And that’s exactly what Texas does. Connor Williams gets a great block on 9, and McMillon’s coming around to lead up in the hole on 5. The TE is coming down on 31 after he gives a chip on 9 to McMillon, and the back is leading out on the defender to the boundary.

The safety is the only one who can make the play here because everyone else is blocked, and he’s no Michael Huff. Heard does a great job making 23 think that he’s going outside here because of how his shoulders are pointed. At the last second he gets up in there in the B gap for 6.

Here too we see the motion coming across. That forces the Spartan defender whose feet are on the goal line below the H to pay attention to him. In the mean time it’s another variation of the same scheme above, but this time big ol’ Patrick Vahe is coming around to lead up in there.

And this time Kyle Porter is the beneficiary of being one on one with the safety. At 5’10” 220, while not as big as Chris Warren, he’s still a pretty good size back. Watching this game, a guy in my opinion who played pretty well was Kendall Moore #88. His downblock here caves the right side down and allows Porter to get up in there and score.

All bs aside, this is what Chris Warren does for you. There are clearly, clearly more defenders to the bottom of the screen or the offenses left. Warren is the type of player who is going to out power schematic advantages for the other team. Everything in my mind is screaming audible back to the right as I watch this play due to numbers.

But there’s Kendall Moore again doing a great job caving it down, and unless you have a full head of steam and about three guys, Warren isn’t going down in traffic like this. This is really well blocked by the entire o line, and look at the alley back to the right for him to bounce off and get through.

Then, on the same play Patrick Hudson did one of the favorite things I saw this weekend. While everybody else is readin the paper, he’s up there grindin’ and helping Warren carry the defender into the endzone.

This was that same power look but this time it was the man coming across in motion, Armanti Foreman, who got the ball. Patrick Vahe is pulling around to lead up in the hole again, but if you look closely at him this is a really heads up play on his part…

The defender shot the gap on ’em and Vahe was able to get enough on him to get him on the ground. Foreman is able to get in there untouched. Brewer’s doing a nice job kicking the edge player out to give Armanti a lane to get through.

From left to right, Urquidez, Anderson, Graf, Allsup & Okafor did a really good job getting movement here late in the game. You can see the nice alley for Carter to get through.

And again putting your back one on one with the Safety at the goal line is normally a win for the offense. I for one was really happy to see the Longhorns get back to basics, be simple and focus on being the more physical team on Saturday. 406 yards on the ground and almost 7 yards a carry isn’t bad at all. They’re gonna need that kind of production on Saturday in the Coliseum.