Chase Colston

DALLAS — Colt McCoy did all he could to make Texas look better than it really is.
He completed 73 percent of his passes. He threw for 324 yards and two touchdowns. He made big plays after a concussion a week ago.

He almost beat Oklahoma a second straight time.

McCoy steered the Longhorns in the right direction until the fourth quarter of their 28-21 loss to Oklahoma Saturday. But when it mattered most, his supporting cast fell off the tracks.

For about three quarters, this wasn’t the same Texas team that barely beat Arkansas State and Central Florida and lost by 20 points to Kansas State last week.

Then the mediocre, average, Alamo Bowl at best Texas Longhorns showed up.

Oklahoma stole the show and Boomer Sooner sent Bevo packing, complete with four straight conference losses dating back to last season.
“Everybody gave it their all on the field and they all tried and gave it their best,” said Texas running back Jamaal Charles.

That’s the best Texas is going to get this season, and it lost. McCoy doesn’t have the supporting cast to take this team to a Big 12 Championship and beyond.

He walked into that situation last year. A veteran offensive line and effective running game made the scrawny kid from Tuscola (where?) look like an All-American. McCoy nearly killed himself trying to get Texas to the point it could reach with all the talent it had.

That is all gone this year, and it’s time to realize that the preseason No. 4 ranking was out of respect, the No. 7 ranking because Texas was still unbeaten and that No. 19 was just being nice. The Longhorns have been overrated all year, and the likelihood of being on the outside looking in to the top 25 might just be the place Texas needs to be at this point.

McCoy relied on a running back against Oklahoma who failed him twice. Charles lost a fumble inside the Oklahoma 5 that would have given Texas the lead and let a ball fly through his hands and into the hands of Oklahoma’s Reggie Nelson.

Texas lost the offensive balance late in the game, which might as well have been a billboard to the Oklahoma defense that McCoy was going to pass.

The result? He completed five of 11 passes in the fourth quarter, got sacked on his own 16 and a bounce pass on fourth down that would have only been good on the hardwood shot Texas’ hopes of tying the game dead. One of his rare bad passes of the game came at the worst time.

Everyone who wasn’t missing Selvin Young before Saturday is missing him now. Charles is not the answer at running back.

The offensive line is too young to protect McCoy long enough. The protection was better against OU, Texas coach Mack Brown said, but Oklahoma still sacked McCoy four times and twice in the fourth quarter.

An inexperienced defense showed its ugly face again. Little pressure up front meant one sack of Sooners quarterback Sam Bradford. Lacking deep pass coverage equaled three pass plays over 35 yards, including Malcolm Kelly’s ridiculously wide-open, eventual game-winning 35-yard touchdown in the fourth quarter.

No, McCoy’s not James Street, Vince Young or even Major Applewhite. But even the three most popular Texas quarterbacks had a supporting cast that allowed Texas fans to place their trust in them, a trust never given to Chris Simms.

McCoy deserves that same trust. Whether that’s beneficial depends on the players around him. It depends on Texas’ recruiting, which can rank as high as Rivals.com wants to rank it, but has not produced a gamebreaker since No. 10 came and went.

The recruiting should have exploded after the national title. It hasn’t. That’s not McCoy’s fault. He’s just one of the middle-of-the-road guys who worked his butt off to get to this point.

Everybody else just isn’t there yet, and they may not get there.

Until then, the scoreboard will always read: Oklahoma 28, Texas 21.

Or worse.

Chase Colston
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