If you listened to Sooner Nation Sunday night, one of the things that I said was to expect yet another starter at running back this weekend when the Texas Longhorns travel to play the Texas Tech Red Raiders. Then the very next day, well late last night, it was confirmed that the Longhorns will be starting their third different running back in as many games.
After obviously not being satisfied (or even impressed) with Tre' Newton's 2.9 yards per carry average against Wyoming last Saturday night the Longhorns have now decided to go with Foswhitt Whittaker as the starter for this weekend. While some Texas fans are living in denial and thinking that everything is fine that's just simply not the case. In fact, I'm thinking that the Texas offensive coordinator, Greg Davis, summed it up pretty well.
"Normally I don't have a problem lying to you guys (the media), but, yeah, we'd like to find one guy who we can go to," offensive coordinator Davis said, when asked about the cyclical tailback situation.
You know, I'm just thinking that perhaps that matter should have been resolved before you decided to go to a power run type offense. The good news for Texas is that we're still pretty young into the season and there's still time to get it worked out. The bad news is that they fast their first real road test and conference opener this weekend at Texas Tech.
I give this experiment one more week before its scrapped and replaced with something else. If the Longhorns struggle in their running game against the Red Raiders then we'll see a completely different offense by the time they hit Dallas to take on the Sooners. They won't be able to help it because they'll be out of options for a new starter at tailback.