40 Acres Sports

Lake Travis' Garrett Gilbert will continue the spread quarterback lineage at Texas.

ESPN has several excellent articles this week on the spread offense in college football and some on it’s origins as well. Their articles feature Longhorn QB’s all over, from several generations. They think the perfect spread quarterback starts with Colt McCoy’s accurate arm and their history article gives a lot of love to future Horn [tag]Garrett Gilbert[/tag] and former Horn and current UNT coach [tag]Todd Dodge[/tag].

ESPN Spread Offense Articles

• Spread concepts around for decades
• Spread traces its roots to Depression-era Texas high school football
• Who runs the spread offense?
• Defending the spread offense
• Andre Ware: ABC’s of the spread
• Crosshairs: Building a spread quarterback
• The 10 most dangerous spread offense QBs (*)
• Is 7-On craze helping?

Quarterback/athlete recruit [tag]Riley Dodge[/tag] has decommited from Texas and will follow his dad to Denton to play for the North Texas Mean Green. Riley, who is rated as a 3-star athlete, committed to the Longhorns back in February but this week reconsidered his decision.

This doesn’t come as a huge surprise, the chance to continue together at the next level has to be exciting for both Dodges. Also, despite an impressive career at Southlake Carrol, there was a good chance Riley would never get a chance to be a QB for the Longhorns. At [tag]North Texas[/tag] he’ll be able to come in and compete early on. Depending on how Riley progresses and how long Todd sticks around as coach, UNT could be set to dominate the Sun Belt Conference again.

He doesn’t have as much talent as some higher rated guys, but Dodge was still one of my favorite recruits in this class. I think he has the smarts, guts, and other intangibles to become a very good college quarterback. He should do very well for North Texas.

His change of heart puts Texas back down to 19 commits for the 2008 class, leaving open the possibility of taking three or four more to finish off the class. The Horns are still trying to land a stud linebacker (Lynn Katoa) and defensive end (Chancey Aghayere) plus a couple of wildcards. The recruiting season may be starting earlier and earlier, but it still finds a way to stay interesting all year long.

First off, it was one of the hottest games that I have ever been to. The temperature was around 100 degrees and there was basically no breeze what-so-ever. As far as the game went, Texas obviously dominated a weaker [tag]North Texas[/tag] team, but I came away a little under-impressed with Texas’ performance. The offensive unit didn’t seem to have much of a spark, and there were really no plays that had any sort of wow factor. With that said, here is how I graded the performances:

Quarterback – Overall Grade: A-

[tag]Colt McCoy[/tag] started the game off quickly with a 60 yard touchdown pass to Limas Sweed on the third play of the game. Colt threw for two more touchdowns, added one on the ground, and threw for 178 yards. Overall I was impressed with Colt’s calmness on the field. He didn’t seem nervous at all and most of his throws were on the money (although a few of passes seemed to float on him a little). [tag] Jevan Snead[/tag] didn’t seem to be as relaxed as McCoy, but he still made some decent throws. And a few of his incompletions were definitely the receivers’ fault.

Running Backs – Overall Grade: A

There really should be an asterisk next to this grade, as the defense for North Texas was so weak it was hard to get a good feel for just how good the Texas’ backs were running. But with that said, the running backs looked good. [tag]Selvin Young[/tag] looks like a new man out there, showing off his regained speed. Young scored one touchdown on the ground and added another one receiving (did he embarrass that defender or what?). [tag]Jamaal Charles[/tag] ran for 77 yards and a score, but for some reason I was expecting a little more flash from him. I kept waiting for him to break one for a 50 yard gain. Colt actually had the longest running play of the day with a 27 yard scamper he almost broke for a touchdown.

Receivers – Overall Grade: C

I was pretty disappointed with the performance of the receivers, aside from [tag]Limas Sweed[/tag] that is. Sweed definitely did his part, going for a career best 111 yards and added 2 scores. Other than Sweed however, there were way too many dropped passes. Hardy dropped a couple I can remember and even Pittman dropped a pretty easy pass. Snead’s interception was also the result of a pass that was tipped off of Jordan Shipley’s hands. I expect this was all just nerves, but I hope they all get over it because this can’t happen against Ohio State.

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