IRVING, Texas -- Former Texas Longhorns quarterback Colt McCoy left for the NFL as college football's all-time most accurate passer. He topped 70 percent completion rate as a junior and senior, so Texas' insistence on spreading the field and putting the ball in the air was certainly justified.

That will change this season with sophomore quarterback Garrett Gilbert. Longhorns offensive coordinator Greg Davis is committed to reducing the number of shotgun formations while renewing emphasis on a mostly phased-out ground game.

Those changes, however, aren't predicated on the 6-foot-4 Gilbert's abilities. After all, he led a high-powered, shotgun attack at Lake Travis High School. Changes are coming because of an eye-opening internal study and to better prepare the Texas defense for powerful rushing opponents.

Brown and his staff went back and looked at the numbers. In 2004, Texas ranked second in rushing and 106th in passing with Vince Young leading the charge to a dramatic Rose Bowl victory over Michigan. "All we did was run the ball and run play action," Brown said. The next year, Texas was extremely balanced between run and pass and won the national title in Young's final season.

Since, and largely because of McCoy's passing prowess, the Longhorns' rushing numbers have dropped off the map. "We haven't been able to just line up and be physical and run the ball when we want to," Brown said.

The defensive side of the offensive switch was reinforced in the national title game against Alabama when McCoy was injured on the game's fifth snap. Garrett, just a true freshman at the time who had played only sparingly during the regular season, played well after a rough start, but what happened on the other side of the ball overwhelmingly convinced Brown that he needed to bring back the run.

"What I felt and the staff agrees, that our last two BCS games [against Ohio State and Alabama], we didn't play as good on defense as we needed to because we were not seeing runs throughout our year or as much in practice. So, you've got to be prepared to play whoever," Brown said. "It's too hard to get to that game and when you get there you've got to play well whoever it is. And a lot more people are running the ball in the SEC or the Big Ten or across the country than here."

In the 37-21 loss to Alabama in the Rose Bowl, Texas gave up 205 rushing yards and gained just 81, less than 3.0 yards a carry.

"We felt if we could have run the ball better when Garrett went in the game, we had a better chance to hang in the game until he got comfortable, and we didn't," Brown said. "Our arsenal was to spread it out, throw the ball. We tried to run it some, but when you talk about it and don't do it and then try to stick it in there some against a really good defense, it's not going to work. We're not going to be 3-yards-and-a-cloud of dust and we're still going to spread out, but we are going to consciously try to line up and run the ball."