Maryland gets off to a great start demolishing Texas 48-7 in Austin. The Longhorns were in control early with a 7-3 win at the end of the 1st quarter. QB Jalen Overstreet and HB Jarrett Smith were nearly impossible to stop on the ground. But then a big time hit stick from freshman FS Marquis Bennett laid out Overstreet while the Longhorns were driving. He would not return to the game. That brought in backup QB Connor Brewer along with a philosophy change for the Longhorns. They abandoned their wildly successful ground game in favor of throwing almost every down the rest of the game. In the process, Brewer went 9-29 for 75 yards and 2 INTs, including only completing 1 of his first 11 pass attempts. The inept Longhorn offense gave the Terps a ton of time of possession, and they used it to pile on the points the rest of the game. The 2 QB system saw both passers eclipse 100 yards and throw a TD. The running game had 4 players with 10+ carries combining for over 200 yards. The highlight out of the backfield was true freshman Fred Frazier, whole totaled 116 yards on 18 touches for 2 TDs.


My thoughts on the sliders from this one game: It's tough to tell defensively because of the weird playcalling that happened when their backup came in. He's a 95 rated pocket passer. Most of his incompletions were throwaways. The throwaways were when I was at least 2 seconds away from sacking him. He got spooked very easily. When their guys did manage to come down with the ball they were near impossible to tackle. Square tackling almost didn't work at all. I turned to hit sticking at the start of the second quarter and that worked a lot better (even got me that key injury). But hit sticking all tackles leads to a lot of whiffs, which won't create the steady ground game that we need to see out of the CPU. It seems like a big gain or a no gain when they run the ball, worse so than last season. I felt that offense was challenging. I put up a lot of points cause their D got really tired. I could tell. They were really fast and tough in the 1st quarter. Then they were on the field for the rest of the game (23:15 to 8:45 was TOP). My run game was none existent, then it opened up and I was outrunning them to the edge. I would let the sliders ride as is for at least another week. Perhaps a few others can share their feedback so we can get a better gauge overall. But my gut tells me that RB ability is a little too high and that whatever causes the QB to throw away, we need to make it not happen as much.