Longhorns playing it cool heading into with Oklahoma
If the past four games — all wins that have elevated Texas to 19th in the nation in the latest Associated Press poll — are any indication, things are rolling about as smoothly as possible on the 40 Acres.
That’s been reflected in the mood of Longhorns coach Tom Herman and the energy and confidence from his team that four straight victories can produce.
Herman was asked during his weekly media availability on Monday about the perception of “smoothness” that surrounds the program right now, even as the Longhorns prepare for their biggest game of the season so far — the annual Red River Rivalry against undefeated No. 7 Oklahoma on Saturday in Dallas.
“Our players trust us, and we trust them,” Herman said. “Winning on Saturdays certainly helps. But at times even last year, that didn’t. There’s a belief and a commitment and a buy-in into the way we do things.”
After all the “noise” created around the Texas program that produced three losing seasons under coach Charlie Strong and an unsatisfying 7-6 campaign in 2017 in Herman’s first season, winning, and the way Texas is doing it, is eliminating some of that drama.
“Maybe the leadership is so good, too, that it just doesn’t get to me or to you,” Herman said. “And it gets squashed before it ever gets started, which is by definition drama-free. It’s the players, and it’s the players trusting each other, trusting us and believing and then walking that belief, not just talking about it.”
It also seems that Texas (4-1, 2-0 in Big 12 play) is missing the woods for the trees on big plays over the past three games — and that’s a good thing. Herman said Monday that because his team is so focused on the success of each play they aren’t getting stressed out about the biggest snaps.
“We get so caught up in the singular-ness of purpose on each play that we are losing sight, maybe, of the gravity of that play,” Herman said. “And that’s a good thing. No one play is more important than the other or should it be in our players’ minds.”
Herman said that he was so focused on the play-calling and the task at hand at the end of the Longhorns’ 19-14 win over Kansas State last Saturday that he didn’t at first realize that they had been able to run out the final 6:20 to clinch the victory.