Three Texas football players opposing defenses will worry about

Choosing only three Texas Longhorn defenders that offenses will be concerned with handling this coming year was difficult , but choosing only three offensive players is much harder.

Last year Steve Sarkisian sent his right tackle, tight end, running back, and all three starting wide receivers to the NFL Draft. Then he reloaded the Longhorn roster with additional receivers from the transfer portal and young skill talents such as CJ Baxter and Jaydon Blue . The Texas offense is loaded with weapons and has a very sturdy infrastructure in place owing to returning four starters on the O-line, the quarterback, and versatile tight end Gunnar Helm .

You could name nearly anyone on the offense and explain why they’ll present challenges to opponents, but we’ll try to zero in on the three most dangerous. These are the guys most likely to draw unique gameplans designed to give defenses a chance to neutralize the threat they pose.

Quarterback Quinn Ewers

This is going to be the first time Sark has a veteran quarterback at the helm who can command the full playbook during his tenure at Texas. If you can recall back to the earlier days of Sark at Texas, the phenomenon of him trying to win with young signal-callers was actually pretty novel.

The nature of Sark’s offense is to have a large volume of plays which create easy reads for the quarterback if he understands how they all work. Quinn Ewers had a much better command of Sark’s plays in 2023 than 2022 and quarterback isn’t the sort of position to find diminishing returns from another year’s worth of study and reps. He could easily make another sizable leap, giving Sark and the offense a lot of options for how to attack different types of defenses.

The amount of offense opposing teams will need to prepare to defend combined with Ewers’ command of the playbook and adjustments is going to create major headaches for opposing coaches. Especially now that Sark can talk to Ewers in between snaps via the helmet communications .

Running back Jaydon Blue

I could have picked any of Texas’ wide receivers and made a case. It’s also not unlikely that Baxter will end up carrying the major load for the Longhorn run game, so why Blue?

Because what Blue does well is going to be exceptionally difficult to prepare for.

The Texas screen game is very dangerous, as Jonathon Brooks made plain last year, and things went up a notch when Blue was included in the designs a year ago. He has outstanding hands out of the backfield on the simple swing passes and checkdowns all running backs run as well as the rail routes or angle routes down the field Sark mixes in when he can…

Blue is probably going to “only” touch the ball 100-150 times next season and each and every one of those touches will present the threat of an explosive play or touchdown. That’s a real challenge for defensive coaches and the fact much of it will come ancillary to the main actions of the offense, as a change of pace back or secondary passing target, makes it all the more difficult to contain.

Pencil Blue in for at least 1,000 yards of total offense next season and potentially something like 1,500 yards with the numbers split between runs and catches.

Offensive tackle Kelvin Banks

Kelvin Banks is a good catch-all for many of the broader threats Texas is going to pose on a down-to-down basis. The ability to threaten the perimeter on outside zone plays? Those are boosted by Banks’ athleticism and observed ability to hook defensive ends. The ability to stretch the field throwing to Isaiah Bond or Silas Bolden ? Enabled by Banks’ ability to hold up on islands in pass protection, making it easy for Sark to protect Ewers when he’s taking shots down the field to the top receivers.

Banks is the best overall player on the team and while he’s the opposite of Blue, a sharp-edged weapon who can directly deal damage to defenses, his overall ability sets the table for the Blues, Bonds, Baxters, and other skill weapons on the Longhorn roster. It won’t be enough to turn an Edge loose on Ewers, teams will have to take more care in gameplanning how to attack the Texas pass protections if they want to get around the big left tackle.

Texas has no shortage of weapons in 2024, but these three are going to cause particular headaches for defensive coaches trying to work out how to stop the basic “run the ball and throw on play-action” formulas Sark uses in weaving his play-calling craft.

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