Texas football: Stellar Special Teams Save Longhorns' Season, For This Week Anyway
Never has it been harder to tell the difference between 97,137 people cheering or breathing a loud sigh of relief.
Perhaps it was a little of both when Cameron Dicker blasted another clutch kick in his young-but-already-eventful Texas career to give Texas a 50-48 win over Kansas at Darrell K. Royal Memorial Stadium.
I was just ready to go out there and do what we do every Tuesday (in practice)," Dicker said. "When I walk out there, it's just me, (holder) Ryan (Bujcevski) and (longsnapper) Justin (Mader) on the field."
The Longhorns marched 60 yards in 10 plays to the Kansas 15 yard line to set Dicker up for the second game-winning kick of his career.
It was a day when Texas leaned heavily on its special teams with a blocked field goal before halftime and a blocked extra point returned for a safety being a key difference between an uncomfortable win and what was nearly a monumental loss.
The blocked extra point came from Malcolm Roach and was picked up by teammate D'Shawn Jamison and run back for two points -a three-point swing total after it looked like Kansas was about to tie the game at 31-31 late in the third quarter.
Optimists will want to bring up Dicker's kick, the blocked PAT, Sam Ehlinger's 491 yards of total offense and four touchdowns, Keaontay Ingram's 105 rushing yards, Devin Duvernay's 110 receiving yards and two touchdowns or Collin Johnson's eight catches for 96 yards.
The optimists, however, are outnumbered in this one. The overwhelming majority of Texas fans are more eager to talk about the other side of this game. They want to talk about how Texas blew a 10-point fourth-quarter lead, missed two critical fourth-down attempts, turned the ball over twice in the second half and allowed 48-points and 569 yards of total offense to a Kansas offense that had been virtually dormant in its previous two outings.
They will want to talk about how the Longhorns almost lost to the same team that got Charlie Strong fired just three short years ago - only this time in their own house. Or how the Texas defense is now near the rock bottom in most important NCAA defensive rankings. Maybe they'll bring up the fact that Herman came into this game 'feeling great' about his team's week of practice, saying he thought 'they got back to who they were'.
Perhaps they will want to talk about the tough schedule that is still coming up - a schedule that could produce multiple losses starting next week at TCU if Texas can't improve quickly and drastically on the defensive side of the ball.
Tom Herman always likes to say "winning is hard" when asked about negatives after a victory (he didn't drop that sound bite after this win).
He's right, and it's just going to get harder from here on out.
