LANDOVER, Md. — Texas started badly against Maryland, finished badly against Maryland, and was equal parts impressive and inactive in between — a maddening pattern for Longhorns fans.
Tom Herman has been head coach in Austin for just 14 games, but the developing pattern can be applied in just too many ways.
The overall picture of Herman's brief time at Texas was not his immediate concern late Saturday afternoon, but it’s not something he or anyone else can ignore right now. The Longhorns got the benefit of the doubt in the preseason, coming in ranked No. 23 in the AP poll. They went to Maryland at an off-campus stadium to play a team wracked with emotion because of Jordan McNair’s death and, for the second straight season opener, lost to the Terps, this time 34-29.
MORE: Maryland players' grief not mitigated by win
So much more was expected. Herman said as much after the game, and mainly from himself. He didn't get it.
“I'm not angry at our players. I thought they played really hard," he said. "We have to find a way as coaches to make sure they play smarter."
And, he added, more relaxed. He pointed to his team being too "tight" as the reason his team was down 24-7 less than halfway through the second quarter. When asked what could be done to correct that, he said, “If I knew that, I would have done it."
One game into Season 2 of his tenure seems early to be asking why, but for the Longhorn faithful who have agonized through the first half and then the fourth quarter of this game, it’s getting late. Herman is now 7-7. The scowls at his predecessor, Charlie Strong, had started by the same point in his tenure, when he started 6-8.
Herman has suffered the aforementioned losses to Maryland twice now — a program that had gone 3-8 since that 2017 opener and is now in the middle of enormous upheaval. He has to answer questions about his quarterback, sophomore Sam Ehlinger, who, like the rest of the team, was brilliant at times but far less so at the wrong times.
Texas committed three turnovers in their last three possessions, all with the Longhorns down 34-29 — and all after the defense’s goal-line stand had forced a field goal after Maryland had first-and-goal at the 2. Two of the turnovers were Ehlinger interceptions. “It’s awful,’’ he said — then added, "But before that, we never should have been in that situation. We should have taken better care of the game from the beginning."
MORE: Herman unconcerned with 'Texas is back' concerns
Yet that can be laid at the feet of that same defense that held the Terps in check at the goal line; it allowed a true freshman wideout, Jeshaun Jones, to torch it with receiving, rushing and passing touchdowns in that quarter-and-a-half burst, fueling that 24-7 lead. The last freshman to accomplish that in one game was current NFL starting quarterback Marcus Mariota, at Oregon in 2012.
The 22-0 sprint Ehlinger engineered to help Texas take the lead back was rendered moot. It left Herman somewhat defensive about where the program is going from here ("Again, the people whose opinions matter the most to me are my bosses"), but realistic about an opportunity lost.
"We have to learn how to finish better," he said. "That was a big mantra of ours, and we lost the fourth quarter."
The last time that happened, in a similar situation against the same team in his first year in charge, Texas didn’t get back to where it thought it should be. It's not the pattern it wants to establish again.
