Hey all. Hook Em! and greetings. I’m JY. Along with Super K I’ve been with TFB from the start. I’ve been doing this feature over on the Oklahoma site for what is now four years. Trench Warfare is something near and dear to my heart and I hope to bring it to you all every week this season and hopefully for many seasons to come.

Like most of you I had Longhorn gameday on Saturday morning and I couldn’t be more excited about Texas getting back to being a dominant program. After watching D’Onta Foreman run all over the country last year and then get drafted, I was hoping to see some of the same from Chris Warren against Maryland.

As for Maryland, D.J. Durkin is no joke. A good friend of mine is in strength and conditioning for Michigan and worked with him when he was the Wolverines defensive coordinator. I knew they’d be attacking in this game, but they came out with their hair on fire. Trench Warfare is mostly o line and blocking schemes although from time to time I’ll sprinkle in some defensive plays. You’ll hear me say it a lot, but being successful in the run game is about Attitude much more than Aptitude, and you have to outnumber the defense at the point of attack.

After the Tom Herman era began with the quick pick six, watching the game from my home in Kansas City, I could feel the excitement and energy coming through the screen. It was almost like the Horn faithful was screaming finally, and then…

Maryland responded in a big way. Here you see the two longhorn defenders out of position, and it’s a sweep to the right with lead blockers…

After the inside defender gets out of the trash, the red dots represent where he should be at this point. You gotta do a better job fighting off the cut block here too. You can see the defender feeling it coming and even puts his hands down to fight it off, but to no avail. He has to stay on his feet and give his teammate time to make up that ground and shut this play down.

Holton Hill has to be more aggressive here. He has to knock his guy back into the path of the runner. You’ll see this be a recurring theme as we go through these shots, but Maryland was just more aggressive Saturday. Hill has to squeeze this play to redirect the runner while leaving his outside shoulder free to be able to disengage and keep outside contain.

The guys on Longhorn Gameday were talking about how Coach Herman said this was, outside of the championship team Ohio State had a few years ago, the best O line he had ever been around. I was really hoping to Texas just come out and mash the Terps. But here again, the Terps have the line of scrimmage pushed back two yards. All American Connor Williams is among those getting pushed back as well. Going back to my attitude vs. aptitude argument, Coach Warehime has to get these guys going and in a hurry. Texas was just out-physicaled and wasn’t assignment sound either.

This is just a four man rush, nothing exotic, and the pocket gets pushed back 5 yards with a defender running free. Shane Buchele is a good player, but you can’t have him getting hit. The WR corps is one of the best units the Horns have, but they had no chance to show their downfield speed because Shane didn’t have time.

Here’s another 4 man rush, and we’re still in the first quarter. You have four O linemen blocking two guys up about the 49 yardline and the defender leaks through to sack Buchele.

This is a 5 man rush, but the Horns kept 6 guys in to block, so the OL is at a plus one numbers advantage. If you look by the bottom of my 3, and the 5, two Horns are on the ground and it isn’t the look you want to have as an O Line. Simply put I’m glad I’m not going to practice this week.

Sometimes it’s a chicken or egg argument when teams abandon the run game. Still Texas threw the ball 53 times and ran it 31. Of those 31 Buchele had 15 of em and 5 of them were sacks. So all scrambles aside, there were only 6 carries for Warren, and he averaged 5.2 yards a pop. So why not keep giving him the ball. At some point you have to dictate tempo to a defense, and in my mind establishing the run is that. Even though you’re down 7 here and the line of scrimmage is pushed back yet again, at some point you gotta get em together, and run some power based stuff straight at em.

The aggressiveness by the Terps can’t be understated. They were attacking at every position. Three guys flying to the ball and the corner blew this play up before it had a chance to get started. I’m not sure why the Longhorns were playing so timidly on Saturday, but this is not the team I think you’ll see around the 40 acres for the rest of the year.

Here this is only a 3 man rush and Maryland still got home on the rush. Tristan Nickelson really struggled in pass protection on Saturday. You’d hope that your OL could hold up against a vanilla 3 man rush, but going back and watching the tape on this one, I was surprised err I say shocked by what I saw upon further review.

Here’s the blocked field goal that ended up being a Maryland score. You can see the Terps just completely caving in that middle of the line, and even Monster OL Patrick Vahe is getting pushed back.

So if the shot before is the before, this is the after. The tip of the spear is evident and outlined below. I don’t really know what to say other than when coaches say that things can be corrected, normally that’s getting back to basics and being more physical. The stuff that the Longhorns struggled with was just basic light a fire knock em back 101 football.

I’m Just as baffled as you are Tom…

Here is an off tackle play to Chris Warren. Other than Cade Brewer getting pushed back, it was blocked pretty well. Warren went through a pretty nice lane and ended up getting about 5 or 6 yards. For the life of me I can’t understand why he didn’t get the ball 30 times saturday. When you can fire out and hit people, it’s like body blows in a boxing match. You have to stay with it and soften them up. A wise man once told me that even when you block a punch you’re still getting hit, but you gotta throw some punches. Hopefully we’ll see a bigger commitment to the run game next week.

Presnap body language is key, and something you have to read as an offensive lineman and as a QB calling audibles. And another basic thing you have to do is count people. This is the play immediately following the off tackle before, and the LB’s and safety were stemming and showing they were going to crash the right side of the o line. For me, checking to a play left, where there are only three people to left of center vs. 5 to the right, but for some reason Buchele audibled to a run to the right.

There’s a lot of green grass out to the left down the numbers and a whole lot of white jerseys to the right. Even still if you outnumber em, I’d like to see the line of scrimmage pushed back towards the 30 instead of going the other way.

Here you have an open set with 5 ol and a 3 man front. One of the LB’s is coming, so Vahe and McMillon have to be ready to either help with the nose, pick up a slant from either DE, or be heads up to pick up the blitzing LB. This is a basic thing that you work a lot. Given the 3-4 they face in practice every day you’d think this would be a familiar look.

And sure as shootin’, here comes the LB in the B gap off of McMillon’s right hip. McMillon has to feel that the nose went to Shackelford’s left and SEE that linebacker coming in between him and Okafor.

But he doesn’t, and leaves the Maryland LB with a free run at Buchele. How something this basic could be missed is baffling to me, but you see it at every level.

Things I know: Coach Warehime and Coach Herman are great coaches. They have been for a while. If I’m Warehime, Okafor is the starter at right tackle, but I don’t know his work ethic. They’ve gotta have some success against San Jose State, and just be two things. Assignment sound and PHYSICAL. They go to the Coliseum in two weeks and need to get it together quickly. The stuff that was missed was basic stuff, but it’s stuff you don’t expect to see a Tom Herman coached team do. I don’t expect it from the Longhorns either. Before we all take to the streets with torches and pitchforks lets see how they respond this week. If a couple of guys don’t get kicked out from being too physical it’ll be a long year.