How exactly did we get here?
For the better part of Saturday night and Sunday morning, I spent a lot of time giving that question serious thought.
I mean ... in the aftermath of Tom Herman's insane-in-retrospect hyperbole, this team actually being ranked coming off of a 5-7 season, non-stop 9-3 or better predictions and discussions on the Fox pre-game show about Texas being in the playoff within three seasons ...
How did we get here? Exactly.
I have a multi-part theory on how it all happened.
Part I: The overrating of the Texas talent.
All of this is connected to a slippery slope of connected parts, but let's start with this ... the Texas running backs, tight ends and offensive line are below average parts in reality, even more below average than Tom Herman could have imagined.
The trickle down was that when Herman saw a guy like Poona Ford make a play, there was a lot of fool's gold to be found in overvaluing what making that play really meant. At every layer of the defense, it was controlling its competing counterparts consistently and a couple of options for what it meant appeared.
a. The defense is really damn good.
b. The offense is so poor that it is making the defense appear to be much better than it really is.
Herman chose to believe the first option, in part because admitting that the second option was true was essentially an admission of multiple failures on the coaching staff in its quest to develop players over the course of the last eight months.
The coaches looked at all of those pretty players in pretty uniforms and underestimated how far the disease in the Texas program has spread in the last decade. Never in a million years did they think the players would blink like they did on Saturday in an actual game. It has rendered everything the coaches thought they knew about the team moot going into week two of the season.
Part II: The Media Got Drunk
Oh yeah, we played a role.
After seven straight seasons of failed benefits of the doubt, the media went all-in in giving Herman the benefit of the doubt before he had earned it in his new job.
Myself included (see my 9-3 season prediction, despite all of my admitted reasons for pause).
Herman hit the right note so many times on so many things during the off-season that we all just assumed anyone with his profile would lift this program above what it was a season ago.
The biggest thing it did to the media is that it created a force of push-back to reporting anything that wasn't pretty. In order to believe the team was going to go 9-3 or better, there needed to be enough pieces fitting together to justify that opinion. Throughout the last two weeks of camp, I've tried to be very slick in reporting that the offense had a very poor camp by dropping little snippets without giving the appearance that I was pissing on everyone's good-feel excitement.
Instead of trying to be slick, I needed to be screaming from the mountaintops, "This offense has looked like a hot mess!" I should have been more direct, but perhaps I let the potential push-back that I knew would come from reporting the struggles of the offense/quarterback (because it was significant throughout the off-season) impact the way I tried to be unassuming when dropping some of these hints (see my column from two weeks ago). I don't know what the exact answer is, but in retrospect I should have taken the heat at the expense of loud and clear disclosure.
Every media member let his or her confirmation bias kick in. We WANT to cover a good football team. It's great for business when the team is good.
Herman can sell a ketchup Popsicle to a room full of people wearing white coats and the media wasn't nearly as jaded with the handling of his first team as it has been for much of the last five years.
Point blank.
Part III: Herman drank the Kool-Aid
There's no reason to trace back over all of his commentary from the last month because I think most can remember at least one occasion when Herman said something about this team that expressed extreme confidence.
With practices closed and Herman providing near-daily updates, everyone trusted him when he spoke about the team because we all believe that he's a straight shooter when it comes to talking about his team. He had been so low on them in the spring, so when he started creating some hyperbole, it seemed to underscore his true thoughts on the team, even if a literal interpretation of what he was saying could be taken.
I think Herman significantly believed in this team going into Saturday. Because he seemed to believe so strongly, it made believing in his believing very easy to do.
Conclusion: When you add those three things together to create a super chaos baby, that's how the events of Saturday unfolded the way they unfolded from a perception standpoint from within.
That's my theory.
Let me know if you want me to post "the fix".
For the better part of Saturday night and Sunday morning, I spent a lot of time giving that question serious thought.
I mean ... in the aftermath of Tom Herman's insane-in-retrospect hyperbole, this team actually being ranked coming off of a 5-7 season, non-stop 9-3 or better predictions and discussions on the Fox pre-game show about Texas being in the playoff within three seasons ...
How did we get here? Exactly.
I have a multi-part theory on how it all happened.
Part I: The overrating of the Texas talent.
All of this is connected to a slippery slope of connected parts, but let's start with this ... the Texas running backs, tight ends and offensive line are below average parts in reality, even more below average than Tom Herman could have imagined.
The trickle down was that when Herman saw a guy like Poona Ford make a play, there was a lot of fool's gold to be found in overvaluing what making that play really meant. At every layer of the defense, it was controlling its competing counterparts consistently and a couple of options for what it meant appeared.
a. The defense is really damn good.
b. The offense is so poor that it is making the defense appear to be much better than it really is.
Herman chose to believe the first option, in part because admitting that the second option was true was essentially an admission of multiple failures on the coaching staff in its quest to develop players over the course of the last eight months.
The coaches looked at all of those pretty players in pretty uniforms and underestimated how far the disease in the Texas program has spread in the last decade. Never in a million years did they think the players would blink like they did on Saturday in an actual game. It has rendered everything the coaches thought they knew about the team moot going into week two of the season.
Part II: The Media Got Drunk
Oh yeah, we played a role.
After seven straight seasons of failed benefits of the doubt, the media went all-in in giving Herman the benefit of the doubt before he had earned it in his new job.
Myself included (see my 9-3 season prediction, despite all of my admitted reasons for pause).
Herman hit the right note so many times on so many things during the off-season that we all just assumed anyone with his profile would lift this program above what it was a season ago.
The biggest thing it did to the media is that it created a force of push-back to reporting anything that wasn't pretty. In order to believe the team was going to go 9-3 or better, there needed to be enough pieces fitting together to justify that opinion. Throughout the last two weeks of camp, I've tried to be very slick in reporting that the offense had a very poor camp by dropping little snippets without giving the appearance that I was pissing on everyone's good-feel excitement.
Instead of trying to be slick, I needed to be screaming from the mountaintops, "This offense has looked like a hot mess!" I should have been more direct, but perhaps I let the potential push-back that I knew would come from reporting the struggles of the offense/quarterback (because it was significant throughout the off-season) impact the way I tried to be unassuming when dropping some of these hints (see my column from two weeks ago). I don't know what the exact answer is, but in retrospect I should have taken the heat at the expense of loud and clear disclosure.
Every media member let his or her confirmation bias kick in. We WANT to cover a good football team. It's great for business when the team is good.
Herman can sell a ketchup Popsicle to a room full of people wearing white coats and the media wasn't nearly as jaded with the handling of his first team as it has been for much of the last five years.
Point blank.
Part III: Herman drank the Kool-Aid
There's no reason to trace back over all of his commentary from the last month because I think most can remember at least one occasion when Herman said something about this team that expressed extreme confidence.
With practices closed and Herman providing near-daily updates, everyone trusted him when he spoke about the team because we all believe that he's a straight shooter when it comes to talking about his team. He had been so low on them in the spring, so when he started creating some hyperbole, it seemed to underscore his true thoughts on the team, even if a literal interpretation of what he was saying could be taken.
I think Herman significantly believed in this team going into Saturday. Because he seemed to believe so strongly, it made believing in his believing very easy to do.
Conclusion: When you add those three things together to create a super chaos baby, that's how the events of Saturday unfolded the way they unfolded from a perception standpoint from within.
That's my theory.
Let me know if you want me to post "the fix".
r