The Lovable Loser – cont’d

As I’ve mentioned previously, it’s that time of year for the Mack Brown-UT spin machine to be operating at dizzying speeds:

The goals for the Texas Longhorns have remained unchanged for years. Win every game. Play for the national championship. Inside the locker room, no discussion is even required anymore.

This year, however, comes with a change. Not in the goals, of course. Simply the approach.

It started during summer 7-on-7 drills when UT’s defensive players huddled. They started talking about everything they wanted to accomplish — including becoming national champs. But instead of ending the discussion there, they continued to talk about “how” they would do it. It was the first time the veterans had ever spoken about the big picture together.

The more the players talked, the more excited they became. The intensity immediately rose in practice and has only continued to grow, said junior defensive tackle Rodrique Wright. With the season opening Saturday against North Texas, the Longhorns say they are more prepared than ever to accomplish their goals.

“The last three or four years, we’ve been the team with the potential to do bigger things than we’ve been doing,” Wright said. “And losing that (Holiday Bowl) game (28-20 to Washington State) really made us look at ourselves as players.”

They knew their past mindsets weren’t working. For one, they never thought about adversity until they faced it in a game.

Sometimes they overcame it, such as a home win over Kansas State last season. After leading 17-3 at halftime, the Longhorns fell behind 20-17 early in the fourth quarter. But with 5:19 left, quarterback Vince Young capped an 88-yard drive with a one-yard touchdown run, and the defense preserved the 24-20 victory.

Other times, the Longhorns caved. After being on the verge of tying their game with Oklahoma, they couldn’t overcome Young’s fumble on the three-yard line and wound up 65-13 losers. The Longhorns also couldn’t overcome a botched read on defense that allowed Arkansas to convert a third-and-30 in the Razorbacks’ 38-28 win at Austin.

Such situations are worked on daily in practice now. They are also talked about constantly.

“Last year, we probably just expected for things not to happen,” Wright said. “We just went in there and didn’t think about adversity, because we didn’t want to think negative. But that’s not thinking negative. That’s just being smart.”

Coach Mack Brown is devoting more practice time than ever this year to working with the players on a slew of different situations that have the potential to change a game’s momentum. The Longhorns have spent time discussing ball protection, ball stripping and every type of illegal block. They have also devoted hours to fumble recoveries.

“It’s one or two plays in a key game for us that usually make a difference between winning and losing,” Brown said. “And over the last few years, we’ve had some tight games we’ve won, and we’ve had some tight games we’ve lost, and then we’ve blown the rest of them out. We’ve tried to put the pressure on our guys to be in tight situations more in practice than we have in the past.”

Such situations? Like being behind 65-13?

What a bunch of gasbags. Every year about this time, these Shorthorns just say the funniest things.

The columnist who wrote this latest laugher has this conclusion:

Of course, Brown has no idea how that will translate on the field.

That’s sort of Mack’s problem in big games, eh? That’s about the only sentence in the whole piece that isn’t BS. But most college football fans already knew that about Mack.