Can Texas football team fix red-zone issues? Goal-line stand by OU highlights concerns.

Texas tried to spend the bye week getting healthy and getting honest, especially with itself.

Oklahoma exposed some flaws in the 5-1 Longhorns, including red-zone issues that have emerged as a top concern for coach Steve Sarkisian and his staff as the team begins the second half of the season Saturday at Houston.

Texas, which had 527 yards of offense in its 34-30 loss to Oklahoma on Oct. 7 in Dallas, made three red-zone trips in the game and came away with three points. For the season, the Longhorns have scored only 11 touchdowns on 24 trips into the red zone. None of the 132 other teams in the FBS has fewer touchdowns on as many red-zone trips.

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“Quite frankly, (the red zone) is probably the biggest deciding factor in the game,” Sarkisian said. “Our ability to move the ball wasn't a question, but our ability to put the ball in the end zone was, and then, conversely, they have six trips into the red area and they score 34 points. So if you just look at it that way and do the math, that was an issue.”

No red-zone stumble stung more than a failure to punch it in from the 1-yard line early in the fourth quarter. Oklahoma stopped Texas on four consecutive plays to preserve a 27-20 lead. The Longhorns had more chances to win the game later, but the sequence of events in the Texas end of the Cotton Bowl seemed to sum up the team’s travails.

Still frustrated by the goal-line sequence a couple of days after the game, Sarkisian didn’t mince words.

“It sucked,” he said. “I'd love for us to execute it a little bit better than we did, but that's the way it goes sometimes.”

Let’s break down the four plays in the Sooners’ goal-line stand and see what lessons Texas can apply for the rest of the season:

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First down: Mind the A gap

Sarkisian prides himself on recruiting “big humans” up front, and he certainly tried to overwhelm the Sooners with size on first^-and-goal from the 1. Defensive tackles T’Vondre Sweat and Byron Murphy II entered the game in the backfield to give 6-foot, 207-pound running back Jonathon Brooks 670 pounds of lead blocking in the Longhorns’ jumbo package. However, Kip Lewis, a 206-pound redshirt freshman linebacker, helped the Oklahoma defense fill the A gap between right guard D.J. Campbell and backup center Connor Robertson to hold Brooks to no gain.

“Their kid makes a really nice play,” Sarkisian said. “He kind of shoots the gap and gets into Jonathon Brooks' legs.”

Second down: Sooners living on the edge

Sarkisian stayed with the jumbo package, which has worked more often than not this season. Texas has converted 10 of 14 fourth-down plays this year, almost all in fourth-and-short situations. That 71.4% conversion rate ranks 20^th in the country. In this short-yardage situation, Sweat lined up on the right side as a tight end with Murphy again as a lead blocker. Sweat crashed in on the line to try to hold the edge as Brooks ran right behind Murphy. However, 6-5, 220-pound Oklahoma linebacker Dasan McCullough sliced into the backfield and stood up Murphy to hold Brooks to no gain again.

“That was the sequencing of those two calls,” Sarkisian said. “I knew what I was going go with there, and we just don't get enough of the edge.”

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Third down: Jumbo again comes up short

Sweat and Murphy stayed on the field, but they again failed to clear a path into the end zone for Brooks. This time, Brooks tried to run behind left guard Hayden Conner and left tackle Kelvin Banks Jr., with Murphy again serving as an oversized fullback. Murphy crashed in on the defensive tackles and left Oklahoma linebacker Danny Stutzman unblocked to corral Brooks for a half-yard loss.

Brooks, who leads all Power Five conference runners in forced missed tackles with 39, said the jumbo package wasn’t an issue even though it failed to get movement against the Oklahoma front.

"I feel like we just didn't execute it well," Brooks said. "Anytime you get three opportunities, we at least got to get in there one time. I feel like we just need to get better as a team. Personally myself, just getting low and finishing the run."

Sarkisian questioned his sequence of play calls, especially trying to muscle a run across the goal line on three consecutive plays.

“Quite frankly, if I could do it all over again, I would have changed the third-down call,” he said. “I might have run what I ran on fourth down on third down. I don't know if that's creative enough or not, but I probably would have done that on third down and then gone to something a little bit different on fourth down. So call it stubborn or whatever it was, (but) I went back to the first down call on third down, and it was obviously not effective.”

Fourth down: Not a passing grade

What Sarkisian tried to run on fourth down was a quick pass to receiver Xavier Worthy, who started outside on the left but worked inside of fellow wideout Jordan Whittington to grab a quick pass a yard outside of the end zone. However, safety Billy Bowman Jr. and McCullough sniffed out the play and stuffed Worthy for a 1-yard gain that ended inches short of the end zone. McCullough had neither a blocker nor a route runner to contend with, leaving Oklahoma with a man advantage on the play.

"They call the play; we expect to execute it," Worthy said.

So what did Sarkisian and the Longhorns learn from that painful sequence? Texas fans will find out starting this weekend in Houston.

“We're drilling down on it to every level,” Sarkisian said, referring to the red zone. “That's what the bye week is really good for. You have more time to do that type of stuff. And I feel very comfortable in the fact that we'll have a good plan in the second half of the season for the players. We're moving the ball too well offensively right now not to have more points on the board. And so we need to be more effective in the red area, for sure.”

But according to right tackle Christian Jones, success in the red zone and at the goal line sometimes has more to do with the right approach than the right play call.

“We’ve got to be physical, got to play with more grit, got to play with more heart, got to play with more edge,” he said while standing outside an interview room at the Cotton Bowl after the loss to the Sooners. “You to make those plays happen no matter what. It's not pointing fingers at anyone, either; I have to look at myself in the mirror first, and that's what stings.

“You want to run it, you want to punch it in, and we got the opportunity, and we didn't execute on it. So we have a lot to improve on as a unit if we want to be the O-line that we know we can be.”

Saturday's game

No. 8 Texas at Houston, 3 p.m., Fox, 1300

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: As evident against OU, red zone top concern for Texas football team