Texas Football: Todd Orlando: 'You Can't Push the Panic Button'

Like most Longhorn fans, Texas defensive coordinator Todd Orlando is clearly not happy with the way his defense has played.

The former Broyles Award finalist has watched his team slip in the defensive rankings to No. 118 overall, No. 97 in scoring and No. 127 against the run. While Orlando knows business as usual isn't the answer, he's also not giving in to the urge to make radical and fundamental changes to his scheme in the middle of the season either.

"You can't do that you can't push the panic button," Orlando said during a Wednesday meeting with the press. "Because to me that that, you know, lack of faith, whatever you want to call it. That's not the message you want to send anybody."

While reporters asked questions about potentially moving away from the Longhorns' three-man front, Orlando showed little interest in any major scheme change, especially with the Longhorns' young defense still trying to learn the current system.

"You can't sit there and try to make corrections," Orlando said. "Okay, these are the answers to the questions you got wrong. But guess what, I'm gonna change the questions this week, right? It's like, you know, I can't do that with younger guys. So you got to try to get better at the stuff that you're doing and try to alleviate some of the things that are hurting us."

Orlando cited fundamentals and a lack of confidence as the main issues with his group right now, something he believes no scheme change is going to fix.

"We got to get better at executing, got to get better at tackling got to get better at all the fundamental stuff," Orlando said.

The Texas defensive coordinator believes his group will get a boost from returning players like Caden Sterns, B.J. Foster, DeMarvion Overshown and Jeffrey McCullogh. As for the younger guys still learning, Orlando is confident the light bulb moment isn't far down the road.

Eventually what's going to end up happening is these kids are going to show up and play huge," Orlando said. "They're going to make plays, and then they're going to get some more confidence going into it."

With little to no room for error in the race for a spot in the Big 12 title game, Texas fans are hoping that bulb illuminates sooner rather than later.