I wonder if Mack Brown is right now fishing through his cell phone contacts for Garrett Gilbert’s number… or maybe Connor Wood. He must be considering holding open auditions next week. Can you throw the ball more than 20 yards downfield and get within 5 yards of a target? You could be the next Texas Longhorn quarterback.

That’s too harsh of course. The travails of this team—fresh off another offensive embarrassment in a 17-13 loss to the K-State Wildcats—should not fall upon the shoulders of a true freshman (David Ash) or a second year freshman (Case McCoy) quarterback. That would be unfair and it would ignore the real culprit here—Head Coach Mack Brown.

Now I’m not ready to start calling for the coach’s head on a pike, but it’s time to begin a review of this team whose offense started with so much youthful promise and now couldn’t find the end zone even with Bevo playing center.

Note I said offense. The scoring woes are the problem here, not defense. Once again the Longhorns nasty, mean spirited, aggressive defense—led by a motivational genius in defensive coordinator Manny Diaz—played well enough to win the game and Mack Brown showered the praise:

Sure a couple more traditional turnovers, like an occasional interception or forced fumble would be nice, but holding an opposing offense to less to 121 total yards—you read that right, K-State gained 121 total yards the whole game—should be more than enough win every game; this defense can win championships. So no, defense is not the problem.

Offense is.

The Texas Longhorns began the season with four quarterbacks, a new offensive coordinator in Bryan Harsin, and the elevation of Major Applewhite to co-offensive coordinator. Major is great, but it’s Harsin running the show.

The former Boise State offensive savant walked into a Shakespearean farce—a mess at quarterback, no true running game and an offensive line that couldn’t get out of its own way let alone block an opposing defensive tackle.

10 games into the season, the running game seems solid behind an offensive line that shows some competence. But the quarterback position? Well, that loose thread is unraveling this team.

When asked about the QB position, Brown did a great job after the game of stating the history and not discussing the future. “I think you start with four. Two of them are gone. Your older guys are gone. You have younger guys who are continuing to work to develop.”

Well, that was insightful.

Brown’s right, the younger quarterbacks are “working to develop”. My question is, who’s developing them? I see David Ash throwing footballs around the field but clearly not seeing to whom he’s throwing them. (To be fair, one interception was tipped.) McCoy, while providing a spark, still suggests more comparisons to Gilbert than to his genetic inspiration.

And maybe the poor quarterback play led us to the uninspired play-calling. Texas has three plays they run when the QB is in the game: Hand-off to the tailback up the middle, hand-off to the H-back running to the edge, or throw the ball downfield and hope one of your guys finds it before the other guys do.

If your QB is not a playmaker, shouldn’t you try to use some trickery and deception to win? Where are the double-reverses, halfback passes and statue of liberty plays we saw in the first four games?

Yes, Harsin promised to get the running game back on track. He succeeded. But without any semblance of a forward passing game, you can’t win with 3 yards and a cloud of dust anymore. Those trick plays are Harsin’s stock-in-trade aren’t they? Are Ash and McCoy not capable of running that kind offense? So many questions.

Which leads me back to Brown. The poor recruiting at the quarterback position; the abrupt change to an ultra-conservative offense; the lack of improvement game to game—those issues fall on his shoulders.

Two years after playing in the National Championship game, the Texas Longhorns are sinking into irrelevance on the national football scene. It shouldn’t be this way and there is no one to blame except Brown.

Texas finishes on the road with two difficult, maybe impossible, games against teams ready to crush them. In four days they travel to the most inhospitable of confines—Kyle Field—to meet an aggressive, foaming-at-the-mouth Aggie team whose only goal is to annihilate them.

Then, after enjoying that, the Horns travel to Waco to play a Baylor team peaking at just the right time. The Bears beat Oklahoma for the first time on Saturday. The. First. Time. Ever. Robert Griffin III is ready to take on the world.

A 6-6 Longhorn season is unacceptable, especially backing up to a 5-7 season. Mack Brown has some explaining to do.