Texas Football: Brandon Jones Gets Redemption After Early Mistake
You could almost hear an audible groan from the Texas crowd when Kansas State's Malik Knowles caught a third-down pass and juked past Longhorn safety Brandon Jones on his way to a 70-yard touchdown on the first drive of the game Saturday.
Later in the quarter, the Wildcats' Wykeen Gill beat Jones for a 19-yard touchdown to make it 14-0.
It was a microcosm of every message-board and call-in radio show complaint over the past few weeks for Texas fans. Struggles for third-down defense, a missed open-field tackle and a big play for an opposing offense.
But if those plays were an example of the defense's struggles, Jones' bounce back through the final three-quarters of the game exemplified the entire group's resolve.
"I can't say enough for him to not lose any confidence," Texas head coach Tom Herman said. "He played fast. He played fearless tonight."
Jones rallied to finish with six tackles, four solo, one for loss. He forced a critical fumble that swung the momentum in the Longhorns' favor and really signaled the end of Kansas State's ability to move the ball.
"I'm an older dude, so I know that adversity is going to hit," Jones said. "(I) don't linger on it too much."
After the fumble, there was a noticeable change in the Texas defense. Players were rallying to the ball. The same Kansas running game that put up over 300 yards on the ground a week ago was held to just 51 yards. The Wildcats gained just 151 total yards from that point on.
"(There was) no panic at all," Jones said. "And I think that's a while we got the results that we did. Because we didn't splinter. I think that after we went down 14-0 we really just came together closer as a team and were able to put stuff together."
After the Wildcats converted 5-of-6 third downs to start the game, they failed on every attempt from then on.
"I'd like to say it was some magic defense that we called," Herman said. "It wasn't. We played better on 1st and 2nd down to make those 3rd downs a lot longer. We executed at a much higher level. We did our jobs."
In addition to all of that, his 53-yard punt return in the fourth quarter set the Texas offense up inside the K-State 25-yard line and eventually led to a touchdown that made the score 24-14 at the time.
"I didn't know what I wanted to do, to be honest," Jones said of the punt return. They came down there pretty quick, but a lot of trust in the guys in front of me and I think they're the biggest reason why I made the play."
Texas will face tougher challenges in the final three weeks of the season with no room for error if it wants to get back to AT&T Stadium and play for the Big 12 title, but after playing three-quarters of near-elite defense the team has a point of reference when it comes to improvement.
"I think at the end of the day we want to be able to play in December," Jones said. "And like Malcolm (Roach) preached all day today that you should be able to good teams play their best football November, December."
