Tag: late kick with josh pate

Josh Pate believes ‘There’s no definitive proof that they’ve fallen off’ regarding Clemson

247Sports analyst Josh Pate doesn’t believe there’s definitive proof that Clemson has fallen off.

Dabo Swinney has helped build Clemson into a powerhouse in college football, but many question the program’s leader and believe that the Tigers have “fallen off” during the NIL era of the sport. 

Someone who isn’t buying the falloff is 247Sports analyst Josh Pate. In a recent edition of Late Kick with Josh Pate, the analyst labeled Clemson as a top 10 college football program. Ranking No. 10, Pate still sees the Tigers as one of the top programs in the country, with Swinney leading the program. 

“I think it’s important to use the same scale here. By the Clemson scale, it feels like this program has ‘fallen off’ so to speak a lot more than they actually have,” Pate said. “So by the Clemson scale, you ought to be right in the thick of the national championship conversation every year, and they haven’t necessarily been that the last couple of years. That’s not the worst thing in the world. In the storm-chasing world, sometimes we have a tornadic supercell. It’s already got a history of producing and then it has to cycle…Well, Clemson, maybe they’re just backbuilding. Maybe they’re just cycling. There’s no definitive proof that they’ve fallen off. And by the way, fallen off is a first-world term here.”

“It’s why I’m talking about scale. If you use the same scale for Clemson as you do for everyone else, they’re still winning a lot of games. I’m not putting them in the Top 5, by the way. So don’t argue with me that they’re overrated if you’re going to…I do have them ahead of a Tennessee or a Utah because the results have been comparable, and I still think there’s a lot to say for the stability there. I think there’s a lot to say for the culture there.”

Pate makes some excellent points here regarding the scale in which you assess Clemson as a program. While the Tigers haven’t been in the conversation for a National Championship recently, there is no definitive proof that they have fallen off as a program.

Like other things, football can come in waves. Michigan recently won the National Championship for the first time since 1997. Are they not a top-tier program? Of course, they are. It is important to understand that you will not always be that top dog.

“Now, I think a lot of people have opinions on their talent acquisition strategy and how resistant they’ve been to really embracing the transfer portal,” Pate said. “We’ve talked about that a lot on the show. Difference is Dabo Swinney isn’t a rookie head coach. Might he be stubborn on this front? Might he be really entrenched in his ways? Yeah, but at least there’s a proven philosophy there. And so, if he’s going to fail, it really will just be because they didn’t evolve with the game, but I’m always going to give guys with proven track records benefit of the doubt. It wouldn’t be the first time that the sport has sort of left a philosophy behind or passed a philosophy by. But it’s also well within his right to continue to evolve, too.

“And just because they’ve had a 9-10 win season the last couple years, I don’t start etching dates in their headstone. I’m not quite there yet. I have them well down — imagine a few years ago saying they’re barely in the Top 10 of college football programs. Again, it’s a very first-world slight to throw at someone. They could elevate as well. We’ll see. Hearing some good things about a certain freshman receiver over there, Cade Klubnik offense this year — Garrett Riley second year as the coordinator, we’ll see.”

Pate has a rational thought process here that is tough to argue against. It’s just incredibly easy for people to see a decline and immediately assume the world is ending. Clemson’s world is not ending!

CFB analyst believes there could be way more post-spring portal action

Josh Pate can see more post-spring transfer portal shakeup than we’ve seen in early portal action.

The transfer portal has been active this offseason. It could see even more change once spring football is over according to one college football analyst.

247Sports’ Josh Pate shared the following on his Late Kick podcast of what could happen in the portal over the next couple months.

“The post-spring transfer portal cycle coming up may actually be wilder than the December window. There are no rules.”

Pate continued on what the lack of regulation means for the rest of the offseason.

“The impact is going to be enormous. A lot of you are nervous. Frankly, you should be nervous because there are no players who are safe right now.”

What does it mean for Texas? Like every other college football team, the Longhorns will likely have to continue to recruit their own players. Why? Because college football teams tamper. They do so because they can with little to no repercussions.

The above has become the new normal for Texas, and they’ve done a good job fending off teams trying to lure away their top players. Unfortunately, it could mean the Longhorns lose quality depth this offseason. After all, backups can play more and see better NIL opportunities elsewhere.

Despite the difficulties Texas will face in maintaining its roster, its challenges are shared with every other team in college football. The Longhorns will simply need to be one of the best at retaining their players to enter the season with an advantage.

CFB analyst Josh Pate discusses Texas’ transfer portal haul

“When it comes to talent acquisition, Texas is rolling.”

Texas is reloading. The Longhorns look to be near as talented as they were last season with more experience at key positions. Most notably, starting quarterback Quinn Ewers and several offensive linemen enter their third seasons as starters in Austin.

This year’s transfer portal haul is what impresses one college football analyst. Josh Pate of 247Sports shared the following thoughts on how the Longhorns have filled needs outside of key returning players.

“When it comes to talent acquisition, Texas is rolling. They got six out of eight kids as blue chippers out of the (transfer) portal. They added three wide receivers. This was imperative. AD Mitchell is gone, Xavier Worthy is gone and they went and added three receivers that will be immediate impact guys.”

The receiving corps won’t be the same. You don’t lose unique NFL talents like Worthy and Mitchell and replace them with the same skill sets. Those players are one of a kind. The receiving corps should still be excellent. Pate continued, acknowledging what Texas added at receiver in the portal.

“I’m excited to see what (Alabama transfer wide receiver) Isaiah Bond is in that offense. They also got (Amari) Niblack, the tight end from Alabama. And so, they backfilled their pass catchers fairly effectively. Now, they gotta pan out. And as we have seen, portal acquisitions do not pan out at as high a hit rate as traditional recruiting for obvious reasons. But Texas has been really good at this.”

There are no guarantees when it comes to transfers. A handful of transfers have not panned out at Texas. Nevertheless, the Longhorns have done well in utilizing portal players like Ewers and Mitchell in recent seasons.

Texas appears to be reloading. It will look to put things all together in 2024.

Josh Pate: Washington is ‘not the best matchup in the world for Texas’

Washington’s No. 1 pass offense in the nation will test the Texas secondary.

The Texas pass defense faces perhaps its most difficult test of the season in the Sugar Bowl. It faces the Washington Huskies (13-0) led by Heisman runner up Michael Penix at quarterback.

We mentioned that Penix doesn’t always protect the football, and I’ll stand by that notion. Nevertheless, it hasn’t prevented him from being productive. He leads the No. 1 passing offense in the country with the team averaging 343.8 yards through the air.

The Longhorns have a great run defense, but according to college football analyst Josh Pate that might not make a difference in this game.

“Texas is a Top 5 run defense in the country. Washington doesn’t care. … The reason why I said it’s not the best matchup in the world for Texas is because the purple team here comes in with the No. 1 passing offense in America, and Texas is sitting there with a 96th rated pass defense.”

While Texas has excelled in run defense with the nation’s No. 4 rush defense (80.9 yards per game), its pass defense has left something to be desired. The Longhorns allow 240.8 passing yards per contest ranking No. 96 in the country.

Despite the stats for the year as a whole, the Longhorns have adopted a different defensive approach recently. In its regular season finale, Texas effectively told Texas Tech they could have what they wanted in the running game and took away the pass.

In the above game, Texas Tech running back Tahj Brooks ran for 95 yards on 19 carries while quarterback Behren Morton threw for 88 yards on 36 passing attempts.

We are not suggesting that Texas can do to Washington what it did to Texas Tech. Texas Tech is not comparable to Washington. Albeit, it is likely the Longhorns will aim to flood the secondary with defenders and dare the Huskies to run the football. If in the process they can limit offensive explosion or break up the Washington passing attack, such a game plan could put the game in their favor.

Washington likes to attack downfield. Texas defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski prefers to conservatively protect against the deep ball rather than play aggressively. The matchup might actually be within Kwiatkowski’s comfort zone.

If Penix and company insist on throwing lower percentage downfield throws and miss, the Longhorns could turn over the Huskies offense and take an early advantage. We will see the matchup unfold on Jan. 1 when Texas faces Washington in the Sugar Bowl.

Josh Pate predicts Texas wins, covers against Oklahoma

“The more I look at it, the more I feel the game out, the more I think Texas feels like they’re a year ahead of where Oklahoma is.”

Respected college football voice Josh Pate is buying the Texas Longhorns this week. He is doing so for the short-term and long-term. Continue reading “Josh Pate predicts Texas wins, covers against Oklahoma”

Josh Pate includes Texas in bold conference title predictions

Josh Pate has Texas winning the Big 12 over a surprise team.

It’s still the college football preseason for now. With that, for the most part, there are no bad predictions. College football analyst Josh Pate had a bold one ahead of the upcoming season.

Pate’s Big 12 title pick was unsurprising. Like seemingly everybody else nationally, the college football voice has the Texas Longhorns taking home the Big 12 conference crown. Their conference title opponent is surprising. The college football analyst has the Oklahoma State Cowboys reaching the Big 12 title game.

To be sure, Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy has proven to be one of the best coaches in the conference over a long career. That said, his 2023 squad has plenty of questions after losing several key players.

Pate made a couple of other surprising picks. He had Iowa facing the Ohio State Buckeyes in the Big Ten title, with Alabama as the SEC championship game winner over Georgia. In addition, he sees the Oregon Ducks taking home the presumed final Pac-12 title over the UCLA Bruins.

If the college football podcast host is correct, he deserves plenty of credit. Texas will look to live up to their end of the prediction this season.

Steve Sarkisian shares more thoughts on Texas’ receiver room

“When we’ve had our best offenses we’ve been able to deploy people across the field that make it difficult for you to (lock anybody down).”

Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian continued to discuss his admiration for his receiver room on Tuesday night. He did so in a matter-of-fact manner.

The humble Longhorns head coach said the following of his receivers on the Late Kick with Josh Pate:

“When we’ve had our best offenses we’ve been able to deploy people across the field that make it difficult for you to kind of pin down and hone in on. And in turn, the ball can get spread out when the quarterback knows (where) to go with the ball. Guys can make plays in space because they’re getting those one-on-one matchups.”

The Texas set of receivers is reminiscent of some of his Alabama receiver rooms, though perhaps to a lesser degree. The Longhorns don’t have Alabama’s 2018 fantastic four, but they have as good a tight end and receiver combination, Ja’Tavion Sanders, Xavier Worthy and AD Mitchell, as Sarkisian has had at Texas.

Outside of those three, Isaiah Neyor and Jordan Whittington have proven capable of picking on defenses, while Johntay Cook, DeAndre Moore and Ryan Niblett are turning heads during the offseason.

Sarkisian looks to deploy his best receivers all the way to a Big 12 title game in Arlington in 2023.

Texas HC Steve Sarkisian discusses the turning point for the program

“At that point, you could feel a shift. Like no longer was it just me trying to say what we needed to be. The players started to speak it.”

Early in Steve Sarkisian’s time in Austin, Texas flipped a switch. The Longhorns head coach delved into the program’s turning point on the Late Kick with Josh Pate.

Sarkisian discussed the toll the 2021 season took on his team. At one point, former Texas running back Roschon Johnson had enough of losing. According to his coach, an impassioned speech turned the tide and bled into an improved football team the following season. He discussed what Johnson’s speech did for his confidence in the program.

“At that point, you could feel a shift. Like no longer was it just me trying to say what we needed to be. The players started to speak it.”

The Texas head coach claims his team has several leaders, perhaps as an outgrowth of Johnson’s emergence in 2021. Now, Longhorns players hold each other to the standard.

Last season, the team made a three-win improvement. The precedent is there for year-to-year growth. Texas looks to take the next step to a 10-win season.

College football analyst Josh Pate: Texas now has depth of talent in 2023

Pate makes the case that Texas has talent without the holes it used to have.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Texas football is loaded with talent. To those outside the program, the perception is the team always has talent but doesn’t produce. That’s not the full picture for the program.

Texas has always had talent. Albeit, the roster has always had gaps, particularly on the offensive line and at various other positions. One college football analyst argues the team doesn’t have those glaring weaknesses anymore.

College football analyst Josh Pate discussed Texas as a more complete team for the 2023 season.

I think (Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian) has a very talented roster. And not the same kind of shallow talent that Texas had before he got there. They’ve built from the inside out. They have also hit the portal really well.

By building from the inside out, Pate means Texas has addressed talent in the trenches that has been absent from the last two coaching regimes.

Five starting offensive linemen return of the 10 returning offensive starters. Paired with the elite talent on the outside, the Longhorns should put it all together offensively in Sarkisian’s third season in Austin.

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‘Don’t you have to expect Oklahoma to make a jump?’: 247Sports’ Josh Pate a believer in the Sooners

Josh Pate believes that the Oklahoma Sooners are poised to take a jump in the 2023 season.

A lot of folks are high on the Oklahoma Sooners heading into winter workouts. Recently, Josh Pate discussed a few teams that are poised to make a jump during the 2023 season, and the Sooners were among them.

Outfitted in his classic plain white t-shirt, Pate noted how poorly the 2022 season went for the Sooners while also giving the team props for their efforts in the Cheez-it Bowl loss to Florida State.

Pate also talked about how the Sooners replenished their roster via the transfer portal and their top-five recruiting class.

It obviously went really bad in year one for Brent Venables at Oklahoma. They were sub-.500 for the first time this millenium… They’re well on the way to replenishing their roster. They’ve done a really good job of balancing traditional recrutiing and the transfer portal… I’m interested in the fact that they have a top five recruiting class and a top ten portal class. – Pate, Late Kick With Josh Pate

Sooners fans have been hounding Pate for weeks to talk about OU more, and he delivered. The Sooners have done a nice job in the portal to address needs and weaknesses through the portal. The pass rush and run defense were two of the bigger issues in 2022, and Oklahoma added guys like Dasan McCullough, Rondell Bothroyd, Trace Ford, Jacob Lacey, and Davon Sears to help bolster their defensive front.

Venables needed his guys in Oklahoma. He’s getting them. While there are issues that he and his staff had during games that will need to be addressed, the talent is on the way.

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