Year four of the Dave Christensen era at Wyoming opens with a road game versus #15 Texas in Austin. The Cowboys and Longhorns have played each other twice\u00a0in the past\u00a03 seasons and the Pokes held the lead late in the second quarter when hosting the Big 12 power but did lose both games. How will the third game of this series\u00a0shake out? Read on to find out!<\/p>\n
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When the Cowboys Run:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <\/strong>With the loss of Alvester\u00a0Alexander the Cowboys only have two running backs with meaningful game experience junior Brandon Miller and sophomore Kody Sutton. Sutton is not on the two deep depth chart for this first game after leaving the team a few days for family reasons\u00a0before deciding to rejoin the team. Miller can handle the load and\u00a0his backup\u00a0Shaun Wick\u00a0who impressed during fall camp should get a few carries as well. Brett Smith has also been given more freedom to run as well so that should help keep the offense balanced. Texas is very good versus the run only allowing 96 yards per game last season (7th in the country) and I\u00a0do not expect Wyoming to have much success on the ground.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n EDGE: Longhorns<\/span><\/strong> Brett Smith was solid last year and was fairly consistent\u00a0with right around 200 yards passing per game. He did tail off to 150 yards per game as the schedule became tougher but that was also due in part to the thumb injury he suffered that was corrected with surgery in the offseason. Texas was a middle of the road team versus the pass last year so Wyoming could do some damage through the air if Smith is kept upright by the offensive line. It will be important for the Cowboys to spread the ball around to different receivers<\/span><\/p>\n EDGE: EVEN<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Hit the link below to read the rest including a score prediction!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/strong>Stopping the run has been a weakness of the Wyoming defense for the last\u00a0three years where Wyoming has ranked 115th,\u00a0106th and\u00a090th in the country when defending\u00a0the run. The inability to stop the run is the main reason Chris Tormey\u00a0has been brought in as defensive coordinator. The Cowboys have improved size on the defensive line and the scheme has been tweaked to better defend the run. I fully\u00a0expect the Pokes\u00a0to be better at defending the run over the season\u00a0but the Cowboys will have a hard time slowing down a Texas\u00a0ground game that returns their two leading rushers from last year\u00a0Malcom Brown (742 yards)\u00a0and Joe Bergeron (463 yards).<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n EDGE: LONGHORNS<\/span><\/strong> Texas doesn’t put much emphasis on the passing game as they look to establish the run first. They plan to play two quarterbacks in McCoy and Ash and both put up similar numbers last season. Wyoming has a solid secondary with Luke Ruff and Blair Burns but so much effort has to be made in stopping the run that the secondary will often be in one on one situations. Look for Texas to make plays when they have to through the air.<\/span><\/p>\n EDGE: LONGHORNS<\/span><\/strong> <\/strong>Both schools have had a great deal of turnover in the special teams department since last season in terms of personnel. Texas lost\u00a0Justin Tucker\u00a0who handled\u00a0their\u00a0kicking and punting duties whereas the Cowboys lost Austin McCoy to graduation and kicker Daniel Sullivan to illness (and will be redshirting\u00a0this year). With four new kickers in the fray it is hard to say who will have the upper hand in the kicking department. The special teams battle will come down to the return teams and it is safe to say Texas has the better athletes in this category, ranking in the top twenty last year in both kick and punt returns. It will be interesting to see how the new touchback\u00a0rule impacts the game with kicks going into the end zone\u00a0now being spotted\u00a0at the 25 yard line and not the 20.<\/p>\n EDGE: LONGHORNS<\/span><\/strong> <\/strong>Mack Brown is one of the most overrated coaches in all of college football. He has one of the easiest jobs in the country where he rarely has to leave the state of Texas to play an out of conference game or to recruit. His\u00a0team\u00a0is usually so talented he can get away with being an average at best\u00a0game day coach. With that said he still holds a considerable edge on Dave Christensen who has a 0-9 record against ranked teams losing by the average score of\u00a034 to 9.\u00a0In the past he has played these games not to lose instead of playing to win and the Pokes have been blown out. Will that change Saturday night in Austin?<\/span><\/p>\n EDGE:\u00a0\u00a0LONGHORNS<\/span><\/strong> This isn’t a dominant Texas team and they are perhaps vulnerable to an upset but I feel the Longhorns will still be too much for the Cowboys. Wyoming has more depth and skill than they ever had under Christensen but are still a fairly young team with 21 freshman or sophomores on the two deep depth chart. Texas will grind away on the ground and their size and athleticism will be too much for the Pokes to stand up to.<\/p>\n Texas\u00a037 <\/span>–<\/span> Wyoming 13<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Year four of the Dave Christensen era at Wyoming opens with a road game versus #15 Texas in Austin. The Cowboys and Longhorns have played each other twice\u00a0in the past\u00a03 seasons and the Pokes held the lead late in the second quarter when hosting the Big 12 power but did lose both games. How will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[97,164,84,299,342,251,343,340,344,345,25],"class_list":["post-2254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wyoblog","tag-brett-smith","tag-chris-tormey","tag-dave-christensen","tag-football","tag-mack-brown","tag-preview","tag-sept-1-2012","tag-texas","tag-texas-vs-wyoming-preview","tag-wyo-vs-texas-preview","tag-wyoming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nWhen the Cowboys Pass:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n
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\nWhen the Longhorns Run:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n
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\nWhen the Longhorns Pass:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n
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\nSpecial Teams:<\/strong><\/p>\n
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\nCoaching:<\/strong><\/p>\n
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\nPrediction:<\/strong><\/p>\n