Mack Brown, Major Applewhite and Bryan Harsin - Texas' new offensive brain trust (new receivers coach Darrell Wyatt also will figure in) held their presser to introduce Harsin as a Longhorn today. This is no doubt a bit of a dream come true for a lot of Longhorn alums, with Applewhite sticking around and a guy regarded as one of the better offensive minds in the nation replacing oft criticized Greg Davis. Texas introduced new defensive coordinator Manny Diaz Friday.
The best news might be the confirmation from Malcolm Brown that he remains solidly committed to Texas, despite their poor season and staff changes.
You can read the entire press conference transcript here, but Harsin and Applewhite in particular had a few interesting things to say.
Applewhite:
[Boise] lined up 26 formations against Wyoming. We lined up in six.
I'm going to be here. This is my university and I want to help get this fixed.
The guys have been extremely excited. I've received text messages from offensive players and defensive players that are just excited about everything, from coordinators to position coaches to strength coaches and just excited about what they're coming back into. There is so much to be said for that when you're talking about 18 to 22-year-old guys. They're so excited about what we're going to do in the new direction.
Harsin:
Ideally, we're trying to be 50-50. I think we were 54 percent pass and 46 percent run last year. We had a quarterback that was outstanding and we had a couple of receivers that were terrific, but I think our nature, and you go back to 2006, we always felt like, "Hey, if we can run the football, that's our comfort level at Boise and in this offense." We want to be able to get that established. We want to run the football, and if we know we can do that then we can open up the rest of it from there.
One of the things, we've been very multiple from that standpoint and we've had to. We've had to try to create matchups in our favor, and I think that was one of the things at Boise that pushed into going into this type of system. From that it just evolved into kind of a scheme that we felt became ours. We had a formula of how to do it that we felt worked very well. I think it's fun. I think it involves a lot of kids. The one thing, when you watch a Boise State game and you see offensive personnel on the sideline walking down there, you see every guy on offense walking down there waiting for his name to be called.
The guys have been extremely excited. I've received text messages from offensive players and defensive players that are just excited about everything, from coordinators to position coaches to strength coaches and just excited about what they're coming back into. There is so much to be said for that when you're talking about 18 to 22-year-old guys. They're so excited about what we're going to do in the new direction.