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Everybody will be watching what Strong will do with the offense
When the dust settled on Texas' latest loss, a 48-45 home defeat to Texas Tech on Thanksgiving, Longhorns fans were left scratching their heads. Not at the loss. Quite frankly, those have become anticipated.
The confusion here centered around where in the world has running back Chris Warren been all year? The true freshman has been buried behind senior Johnathan Gray and emerging sophomore D'Onta Foreman. But on a team that has struggled offensively for much of the season, certainly there had to have been more than 18 carries for the son of NFL running back Chris Warren, entering Thursday's game.
Warren finished with 276 yards on 25 carries, surpassing his previous total carries for the season. He set a Texas freshman rushing record, but mostly added more urgency to the question of what coach Charlie Strong plans to do with the offense heading into 2016.
The talk after last season suggested a move was coming to something more of a spread attack that the majority of Big 12 teams run, and that Oklahoma has successfully switched to this season.
That never materialized for the Longhorns and the offense has gone the opposite way, trying to pound it out on the ground with only mediocre results.
After Strong demoted former play-caller Shawn Watson after the Week 1 stomping by Notre Dame, and now that Jay Norvell hasn't exatly lit things up as the next man up, prevailing wisdom is that Strong, who will certainly be coaching for his job assuming he's back at Texas next season, will look to overhaul the attack with new coaching blood.
For now, Strong says he hasn't thought that far ahead.
"I'll just wait until the end of the season, and we'll look at that," Strong said after his second consecutive Thanksgiving loss. "I haven't even thought about the staff or anything, I just look at what I have, just player-wise."
The Longhorns (4-7, 3-5 Big 12) will take the Big 12's ninth-ranked offense to Baylor next week for the season finale, hoping to get to at least five wins and a possibility of sneaking into the backdoor of a bowl game since it appears there will not be enough six-win teams to fill out all the bowls.
(h/t Dallas Morning News)
