The SEC Forum at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

On offense alone, Texas is losing the starting QB, 4 out of 5 starting offensive linemen, and the top 3 receivers including the starting TE.  It's going to be an interesting year.

Trying to estimate how a 16-17 year old male body will react to a collegiate S&C program is the voodoo that drives OL recruiting. It's just a tough ask to evaluate these kids. Add to that the idea that each team in CFB starts 5 OL, needs another 3 at least to be ready to play a game, and then needs to develop depth, and that's a whole lotta evaluations that have to go right.

All that to say that OL and DL players in the portal are valuable. Starters tend to stick with their original teams. OL/DL in the portal are largely (!) pieces that aren't slated for playing time. Occasionally, a key back up might be in the portal. The starter quality talent will be fought over by major player teams.

Texas has a healthy OL depth chart. There's lots of quality in there, and I'm adamant that Kyle Flood is one of the best in the business (I regard him as more critical to the success of the program than Sark). The issue is that an OL isn't just your best 5 big guys. It's the guys that can work together as one unit. Texas is replacing a 5 year Center who made all the line calls and set protections. That's a guy that reads defensive fronts by looking at the face masks in front of him. Two of those four will likely be Day 1 draft picks.

There's every reason to believe Texas can replace the departed, but until an OL is beaten on by an angry defense that doesn't care about injuring scholarship superstars on the other side, you don't really know what you have.

Yeah, I'll say that overall I'm "not worried" about the o-line.  That's not to say I think it'll be easy to replace the starters, but as droog points out, Texas has a lot of talented depth here.  Every single one of the "new guys" played significant snaps in 2024. They just haven't all started, together, for many of those snaps.

Goosby especially did a really nice job as a RS freshman, playing in every game last season, and spending significant time as a starter when both of the starting OTs went down for a game or two, each, during the season.

I think by midseason this is going to be an excellent unit, a true strength of the team.  But opening the season on the road in Columbus, will be no easy task for them.

At RB, provided Baxter comes back from injury okay, Texas will actually be improved compared to 2024. 

WR is an area where I just trust Sark and the staff.  They know how to develop them and they know how to find them in the portal.

And then there's Arch.  His skillset is more dangerous than Quinn's in that he can be a mobile QB and make things happen off-schedule.  But he obviously doesn't have the experience.  It remains to be seen how the QB position in 2025/2026, will compare to 22/23/24.

Agree, Sark always seems overly ready to just abandon the running game, and this year was even worse with the pre-season loss of Baxter.  I'm really hoping he comes back close to 100% because he's a real difference maker. Using him as the feature back with Wisner as the alternate, would be a fantastic combination.  And then there's always Gibson, assuming he can learn to hold onto the ball...

Indeed!
Having Arch "keep" once in a while will at least demand honesty from the LBs and DEs.

Agree, with Ewers there was just almost zero danger of punishing a defense for cheating. 

But what I'm most excited about is how I expect him to be able to use his feet to move out of danger and create off-schedule production out of what previously probably would have been a negative play.

Agree, Sark always seems overly ready to just abandon the running game, and this year was even worse with the pre-season loss of Baxter. 

I know there were USC fans back in the late aughts whose knock on Sark was that he called plays as if he were playing a video game.  I kinda understood that criticism at the time, and while I don't think it's egregious now, I think abandoning the run game too quickly is kind of a leftover vestige of those old tendencies.  

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