2005 Rose Bowl

Clean said:
Even the announcers were saying stuff like; "if you're Texas you don't wanna score too fast here".

Still, as others have noted, there were lots of other factors that led to that loss. I remember leaping out of my chair when I thought Gideon made the interception.

Then to make things worse, Tech goes up to Norman and absolutely gets annihilated the next week. If they'd have at least given them a game...who knows. Cost us a shot at Tebow's Gators and the MNC.
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Then Tech barely survives against Baylor. If Baylor had won, Texas had the tiebreaker over OU.
 
Statalyzer said:
Sure but why challenge yourself more than you have to? We could have easily made the test more like "hold the lead for 29 seconds" than "hold the lead for 89 seconds" with a little more intelligence.
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Because when you need a TD, you don't plan to run out clock. It would have been fine if we needed a FG and just wear down the time a little bit and take our chances on a short 3rd down FG attempt from inside the 10. But I'm with Mack/Greg in that situation. If you need a TD, you score a TD. We only had 1 third down on that drive, and watching the tape, it looks like we had an "appropriate" amount of time between snaps. Didn't let it get down to 2 seconds, but we sure didn't seem to be pushing tempo either. I think once we got inside the 10 and the clock was running less than 2 minutes, it was fine to get a TD. If McGee had taken a knee at the 1 with 1:29 remaining, who says we get in on the next play? Or even the 4th down play after that? Just watch the first half of the game to confirm that we weren't guaranteed anything.

On Tech's 2 prior drives, they spent 9:27 of clock time and had a blocked FG and a barely-made FG. There wasn't a lot of evidence to suggest they would get great field position and be able to move the ball quickly if/when they got the ball back. We gave them a huge momentum boost with a short kickoff and horrible kick coverage.
 
Just watched the final drive again. I don't understand for the life of me how someone could look a ball in like that and still drop it.
 
And whatever the hell Earl Thomas was doing on the final throw shows why he "had" to redshirt the year before. Something missing between the ears.
 
If McGee had taken a knee at the 1 with 1:29 remaining, who says we get in on the next play?
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I don't think anyone is suggesting that we purposefully not score. But the entire drive we were needlessly snapping the ball with 10-15 seconds left on the play clock.

I don't understand for the life of me how someone could look a ball in like that and still drop it.
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Hadn't watched it since. Finally have it in me to watch the slow-mo replay. Looks like either misjudged how fast it was falling to earth after it was tipped (he reached out more than he had to and dove forward when he didn't need to, and the ball went between his biceps instead of his hands or forearms), or he just misjudged the tumble as it spun to point up-and-down rather than front-to-back and thus missed the pocket he was trying to create with his arms. Or maybe just freshman overthinking a big moment.

And the other big drop I had forgotten about: on our second drive of the game (the first was a one-play drive for a Tech safety), we had a 3rd and 15 and Jordan Shipley was behind the entire defense on a post and was a sure bet to score a 60 yard TD - Colt put it perfectly on the money despite pressure and Shipley let it go right though his hands and off his stomach. Dude literally probably didn't drop 10 passes during his 4 years at Texas but that had to be one of them.
 
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I'll disagree about "needlessly" snapping the ball there. We "needed" a TD. We had momentum. Taking more time off for the sake of hoping Tech doesn't get the ball back could ruin the flow we had and potentially lead to a missed opportunity.
 
I've never seen any evidence that this sort of thing takes "momentum" (a nebulous concept that can only be applied retroactively anyway) away from an offense, or hurts an offense in any way unless they are getting an advantage by running a hurry-up for other reasons, which we weren't.
 
Horns11 said:
And whatever the hell Earl Thomas was doing on the final throw shows why he "had" to redshirt the year before. Something missing between the ears.
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Mack talked about this on the special - he said he asked Earl about it after the play and he said that he thought he heard a whistle, and held up to avoid getting a late hit that would have kept the game alive.
 
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