2021 FB Final: Louisiana 18, Texas 38

[CajunsHat]

4 tickets available
Section 123

$75 each

[BeauCajun]

4 tickets available
Section 123

$75 each

Are they together? I have a friend looking for 4.

[IberiaCajun]

Bought my 2.
See you in Austin!

[DieHard 1280]

Let me know if you want the tickets, if not I will sell them to someone else, $156 for 2.

Sent you a PM

[Boomer]

Sent you a PM

….Luke Mandela at the Houston Ragin Cajun says come watch it at his place….should be fun!

[DieHard 1280]

….Luke Mandela at the Houston Ragin Cajun says come watch it at his place….should be fun!

I live in the Austin area, so don't think I'll take that offer, but I'm sure it will be a blast, Boomer. Hopefully celebrating a HUGE victory!

[Turbine]

days till kickoff 2021

https://RaginPagin.com

[RaginDave]

A little early, but I finished it and figured I would post this. The first game is always challenging because their is no idea of exactly what we will see, specifically from a team with a new coach and several new position players. We also don't know much about injuries or fall camp to see who is performing better. Here is a first look at the Longhorns. I will try to update this as more information comes in.

We are about to face the University with the largest athletic budget in the country. The University of Texas Longhorns are moving to the SEC within the next couple of years. This is a team that if you would have said that we were playing them anytime in history, you just chalk it up to a money game. But not this year, this year 2 preseason Top 25 teams are going to face each other on opening weekend. On paper this should be a good one. Texas is loaded with talent, 4- and 5-star players all over the field. While this will be the best Cajun team ever to face a big-time opponent, we will still have to face some superstar athletes. The difference is the fact that the Cajuns are returning nearly everyone from a 10-1 team that defeated Iowa State last year and Texas is replacing several stars from last year’s team as well as replacing their Head Coach with a 1st year coach at Texas. Sark is no stranger to being a head coach, but this will be his first year in Austin.

Texas finished last year with a 7-3 overall record and was 5-3 in conference play last year. They started last year crushing UTEP 59-3 and followed that up with a 63-56-win vs Texas Tech moving them to 2-0, and clearly showing that their offense was not going to be a problem, so they thought. They then lost their next 2 games to TCU and Oklahoma 33-31 and 53-45 respectively to move them to 2-2. They got back on the winning streak by winning 3 in a row vs Baylor 27-16, @ Oklahoma State 41-34 and vs West Virginia 17-13. Their last 2 games of the regular season were a loss to Iowa State 23-20 at home and a win vs Kanas State 69-31 on the road. They finished the season with a 59-23 win at the Alamo Bowl vs Colorado. Texas biggest problem last year and in recent years has been on Defense as they had 2 games that they gave up over 50 points and 5 that they gave up over 30 points, but that is not surprising in the Big 12. But on the other hand, they were a team that could score allot. They scored more than 30 in 7 games and 40 in 6 of those and over 50 in 4 of those and over 60 in 2, but as we will see, they must replace several talented offensive weapons.

QB—This is the biggest offensive replacement they must figure out. Sam Ehlinger was a multiple year starter for Texas and is now playing in the NFL for the Indianapolis Colts. The assumption is that Casey Thompson or Hudson Card will take the reigns this year. (I will update this once I know for sure). Thompson is a sophomore who completed 12 of 17 passes last year with 6 TD’s and 0 INT’s in mostly mop up duty, Thompson did fill in for Ehlinger in the 2nd half of the bowl game when Ehlinger got hurt in which he threw 4 of those TD’s. Card is a 6’2” 195 lb. highly recruited freshman from Austin, TX. Card did throw a few passes last year; he got some playing time vs UTEP in the 1st game of the season as well as in mop up duty in the bowl game vs Colorado. Card was recruited by many SEC, Big 12 and Big 10 schools, but decided to stay at home and play for UT. Both QB’s are dual threat QB’s and very similar in size. My assumption is that unless Card really excels in practice that we will see Thompson open as the starter. But I would also assume that we could and will probably see both QB’s play vs the Cajuns, while they are trying to figure out who the starter will be. Neither of these guys have very much experience and it will be interesting to see who develops into the long-term starter as they are both very young and very inexperienced.

RB—This is a position that they don’t have to worry about as much as they return their 2 top RB’s from last season. So, I would think that Texas will attempt to rely on the run quite a bit as they were very good at it last year. Bijan Robinson and Roschon Johnson combined for most of Texas Running Back carries last year, Ehlinger did run the ball quite a bit at QB. Robinson had 86 carries for 718 yards and 4 TD’s and Johnson had 80 carries for 439 yards and 6 TD’s. Robinson also had 15 catches out of the backfield for 196 yards and 2 TD’s. Johnson is a bigger back at 6’2” 223 lbs. and Robinson is 6’0 215 lbs., so they are both pretty powerful guys. They have several guys behind them that are good, including Keilan Robinson a transfer from Alabama who played quite a bit as a freshman, but my thoughts are that Robinson and Johnson will carry most of the load at RB, with help from whomever is the QB.

WR/TE—They do have some good returners at WR/TE, but they also lost allot there as well, which does not bode well for their young QB competition. They get back their #1 guy in Joshua Moore and he is a good one. Moore had 30 receptions for 472 yards and 9 TD’s last year, but they lose a few guys from last years team. Brennan Eagles who had 28 catches for 469 yards and 5 TD’s is gone as well as Jake Smith who transferred to USC during the off season who had 23 catches for 294 yards and 3 TDs and Tarik Black who had 10 catches for 240 yards (Their deep threat) and 1 TD are all gone. This makes up their #2, 3 and 4 pass catchers from last season in terms of yards. They do return Troy Omeire a highly regarded freshman who was out all of LY with an ACL injury. And while their TE’s did not make a lot of receptions last year they do have some talent there. The presumed starter will be Cade Brewer has 12 starts over the past 3 years and was a HM Big 12 TE last year is back as well as Jared Whiley who has 4 starts from last year. But the guy to watch out for is a 5-star Freshman TE from outside of Dallas, TX (Denton) in Ja’Tavion Sanders. He was the #1 TE in the country his Senior year. He is 6’3 and a half and 235 lbs. and is more like a WR. He was listed as an athlete coming out of HS but listed on the Longhorn roster as a TE. My assumption is he will be like Ladarius Green for us from years ago. He will lineup both as a TE and WR and is a threat from anywhere on the field, CB can’t cover his size and Safeties can’t cover his speed. He will be a tough one to defend. They also add Xavier Worthy and Jaden Alexis as incoming highly regarded Freshman.

OL—Texas will be somewhat veteran group up front on the OL. First off at Center will be a Senior in Derek Kerstetter, Kerstetter is a 5th year Senior with 37 starts under his belt and is a good one. They also have a pretty good one at RG in Junior Angilau, who is only a Junior and started 24 games for them. And Senior Okafor will be at LG, he is a 6th year Senior but only 14 starts to his credit. Finally, they have Christian Jones a Junior at LT who has been with the program for 4 years and 10 starts and then the assumption is Andrej Karic who is a 2nd year player for them and has only 1 start in 3 games played. He is probably the only uncertainty on the OL. They are big and athletic, only one of them is listed under 300 lbs. and that is Karic at 290+. They have a number of starts and games with this group so they will try to run the ball, I am sure vs the Cajuns, specifically with two really good running backs and QB who is likely to try to run as well.

As a team Texas scored a lot of points, averaging 35.23 points per game, but they also gave up allot as they gave up 27.46 points per game. I expect they will be like last year as they were a balanced offense leaning a little more to the passing game. They averaged 176 yards per game on the ground and 289 yards per game through the air. They scored 26 TDs on the ground and 32 through the air. They probably will be a little more run heavy compared to last year because of the uncertainty at QB, but I think they will still be balanced against us. They did not put the ball on the ground much last year as they only lost 4 fumbles, but they did through 10 INTs. Again, with a new Coach and a new QB it is hard to tell exactly what to expect out of the new look Sark offense. But with the talent and experience they have up front and the talent running the ball, I think we will see a big dose of them trying to push us around offensively.


DL—We shall see how the Defense sets up, but chances are they will have a 3-man front with an extra LB. Keondre Coburn at NT is a good one. He has started 22 of the 26 games he has played in. He will be somewhere on the All Big 12 Defensive team, at 6’2” and 346 lbs., he can really cause a log jam in the middle. Jacoby Jones will play on the line as well as a DE, he is a 3rd year player from Butler JUCO, with not a ton of experience as a starter, but was a very highly recruited JUCO player and finally Alfred Collins could be up front as well. Collins only has 1 start to his name but was named a 2nd team All Big 12 player by Athlon Sports. A guy to watch would be Ray Thornton a transfer from LSU. At LSU he played in 41 games with only 4 starts but had some pretty good stats behind some really good players. They lost 2 players off the DL to the draft from last years team, so this could be a question mark for them with some veterans who don’t have a ton of experience.

LB—The biggest loss to the defense is in the LB corps where Texas’ leading tackler Juwan Mitchell decided to finish his college career at the other UT, Tennessee. Mitchell finished last year with 62 tackles and 4.5 TFL. The only returning starter for them will be DeMarvion Overshown Jr. Overshown finished with 60 Tackles 1 sack and 7 TFL last year. Joseph Ossai is also gone, he played as a DE but was their pass rusher expert, he finished last year with 7 sacks. This will be a new look defense, as I will show some more big losses in the back end as well. The expectation is that Ray Thornton will play at one LB, he is a transfer from LSU, he will be an edge rusher/LB to replace Ossai and David Gbenda who is a sophomore who had 1 start in 10 games last year. If Joseph Ossai sounds familiar it should. He is the brother of Cajun’s linebacker KC Ossai.


DB—2 huge losses in the back end for Texas, but a handful of returning players as well. The biggest losses are going to be Caden Sterns and Chris Brown. These guys combined for 107 tackles in 2020. They will come back with a couple of returners from last year’s team in the back end including D’shawn Jamison and Josh Thompson, these will be there primary Cornerbacks. They are both veterans for the Longhorns, so they will be pretty good at the CB spot, the losses for the most part were at Safety. One of those spots will be probably filled by BJ Foster, he was a good one the last few years for Texas, the other spot will be filled by Jerin Thompson who had 2 starts last year for the Longhorns.

Special Teams—Their kicker/punter combo are good ones and veterans on this team. Cameron Dicker will be the placekicker, he was 32 of 43 on FG with a long of 57. He is also 107 of 109 on PATs. And their punter should be Ryan Bujcevski who averaged 43.3 yards per punt last year. He is returning from an ACL tear last year that kept him out for the last 3 games of the year, so it will be interesting to see how he has recovered from that injury. Dicker is their Kickoff guy and had 61 Touchbacks in 73 kickoffs, so we might not get many good returns vs them. If Bujcevski is still recovering from injury, Dicker punted the last 3 games for UT and had a 43.6-yard average, so no big loss if he can’t go. D’Shawn Jamison will be their primary Kick returner and is a good one from last year. As far as PR go, I am not sure who will be their guy at this point.

Obviously, the big change for Texas will be at Head Coach, where Steve Sarkisian takes over from Tom Herman. Sark is a name that many people know as he has been around for quite some time as both a HC and assistant in college and NFL. This will be Sark’s 7th year as a HC, he spent 5 with Washington Huskies and then another 2 at USC before his demons got to him. He was most recently at Alabama as an offensive specialist. This will clearly be a different Texas team that 2020, because of the HC, but I would expect they would be like last year overall. They have talent all over the field, but they are going to try to use their extremely talented running backs to cover up some of their uncertainty at QB. I don’t think that defensively they are going to be where Sark wants them to be in their first year, but they are going to try to stuff the run and force Levi to try to beat them through the air. Their strength on defense is up front, if they can stop us from running the ball, then if Levi can eliminate his mistakes, we have some advantages in the passing game as our WR’s are deep and they have some question marks in the back end, specifically at Safety. I think we will have to show balance both running and passing to beat them. I don’t think we will just shove it down on them running the ball, but we can not give up on the run game even if it is not working. Like Iowa State last year, when we struggled early to run, we did not stop running the ball and by the end of the game the run game started to work. The offensive line must be good in this game, as I have said Texas defense starts up front where they are best. We will have to give Levi some time and open some holes for the running backs. On defense we must force them to beat us through the air. They want to run the ball and we are going to have to try to slow down their 2 headed attack. Again, this will be a similar script to Iowa State, where I don’t think we can completely shut down their running backs, but we need to limit the big plays and force their QB’s to throw the ball, where again I think we have the advantage. So bottom line slow down the run, force Texas to throw on offense. Continue to try to run the ball with Levi and the RB’s to open some ability to throw the ball down field. We also need to try to get some pressure on their QB’s, but we must, must, must contain. They have QB’s who are going to want to put their feet in the ground and run when they can, they are not very experienced and when it comes to 2nd and 3rd options, they are going to prefer to use their athleticism to get out of certain situations.

This is going to be a fun game. Texas will not be an easy one and it might be a long Saturday afternoon, but if we play disciplined football and don’t get overtaken by the moment there is a good chance UL walks away from this one with a win. I think we can keep it under the 9.5 point spread that is on the books right now, but we can not make mistakes, Texas is way to talented for us to win if we turn the ball over or just have mental mistakes vs them.

Geaux Cajuns, who is ready for some football?????????????

[zephyr]

Good read. I agree. We will need to be good in all facets of the game and I think we're going to have to do it similar to the ISU game last year where we really bothered the QB into some poor plays and we made big plays on ST/D. I do not think we will move the ball at will on Texas and Levi will have to come out of the gates faster and stronger this year as we will sneak up on nobody.

[billbeck451]

time to make some hotel reservations

[MelRock]

Sent you a PM

I will text you today.

[HebertTommy]

4 tickets available
Section 123

$75 each

Sent you a PM

[Million$Mullet]

Great stuff Dave!

[moorecajun]

time to make some hotel reservations

Ouch, I hope there are some available at a decent price. We made our arrangements over a month ago. Good luck!

[cajun4life]

We will have to be better offensively against Texas than we were against ISU. If we are then we will have a shot.