The Football Brainiacs

Image from Newsok.com (Photographer: Chris Landsberger)

First and foremost, you don’t replace a guy like that.  As Coach Stoops put it “He’s the best in the country at doing what he does.”  There’s no way you can tap into any depth and replace what he brought to the table.   Earlier this week Super K and I were talking about how sometimes you just stumble onto something. For example, by most accounts it was the debacle in last years Cotton Bowl that led to some of the much needed coaching changes. Our inability to throw the ball this year has finally led to a greater emphasis on running the ball. Pardon the melodrama but, sometimes tragedy opens our eyes to other opportunities for growth and success.

Last year Brannon scored a critical TD against UTEP and got wide open against K. State for an automatic TD had Landry put the ball on him. This year when we’ve needed a tough yard or two on fourth down the coaches have been willing to bring Brannon Green in to block, but they’ve, for the most part, refused to play him otherwise. That strikes us strange, especially because you don’t have to pull Millard off the field to get Brannon Green on.  Well now all that is irrelevant because we have no choice.

The question for me is not can Brannon Green do a good enough job for us to keep winning games this year, but rather why hasn’t he been in the game already?   As K can attest I’ve been chirping for a jumbo set with Rip and Green at the tight end spots with Millard at FB, Ford at TB and Saunders out wide. Now with Trey’s misfortune, we won’t ever get to see that set.  While I’m very optimistic about what Brannon is going to be able to do, Trey is a special player.  He’s a guy that you can line up in a lot of different spots.  He’s a mismatch at FB, mismatch at TE, a mismatch at H-Back, and he’s special with the ball in his hands.  What will be curious to see though is with the bye week coming up, do we see Ripkowski at that traditional FB spot, or does he stay at TE?  Or do you stick Brannon in there doing what he did in this game.  It will be interesting to see how we adjust with an extra few days to prepare.  Still, I can’t get away from that question of why we never put those three guys on the field together.

After Trey went down Brannon got in there and took over the spot that Trey normally plays, and didn’t do bad at all.  This was another game this season where we’ve been able to take a knee to end a game. The other team needed the ball back desperately, but they couldn’t take it from us.  With the score 35-30 and 7:13 to go in the game, we went on a 12 play, 53 yard scoring drive that ate up all but a minute and seventeen seconds.  Think about that for a minute.  Out of those 12 plays, 10 of them were runs.  1 was a pass, and one was a field goal.  Brannon Green was in on all of those plays!