Joe and Eric give us the latest team notes coming out of Saturday and today's practice. Subscribe to Inside Texas to stay locked in with your favorite team every single day https://www.on3.com/teams/texas-longhorns/join/
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Spring Practice Report 2: Latest WR Rotation, OL Run Blocking, Improved Speed off the Edge
Welcome to the Inside Texas football YouTube channel powered by InsideTexas.com. I'm Joe Cook. I'm joined by Eric Naleen. I just got done watching Texas fourth spring practice, but we got some notes on Texas. Third spring practice that took place on Saturday. Eric, you caught up with a lot of different sources. You were able to hear kind of what went down during the Longhorn spring practice and you heard it was pretty energetic considering there were a lot of high school coaches there for Texas coaching clinic. Yeah, we're going to rip through this pretty quick because Joe has to get up upstairs to watch the head man give his press conference after the meet with the media. Yeah, it was intense. We knew it was going to be intense. They had a lot of coaches on campus. They had some recruits on campus and that's when Sarc likes to dial it up. So they went from no pads at all to the previous practice to full pads and three full periods of contact drills, full contact to the ground tackling. I think that caught a lot of players by surprise, but by now they should be used to that. They should have been expecting that O-line and D-line both had their moments. The D-line pretty much dominated during the run team run drills where it's just running plays and play action, which you kind of expect them to have a good handle on that. The O-line blocked pretty well though overall. They actually did a really good job in space. There were some screens that got loose on them. Trey Weisner actually had a couple of big gains that we heard about. He looked good. Isaiah Bond continues to gather recognition. He's the real deal putting that in quotation marks from a source. He's just everything that they hoped for. He's got the speed. He's got the softer water sever skills. He runs good routes. He's showing quality hands. John Tate Cook had a good practice. He's clearly motivated. He understands the level of competition that Texas brought in. He's playing as well as he's ever played. He's living up to the hype for sure. Ryan Wingo got some looks with the ones. Behind the scenes, Sarc is a very graceful word. I don't know. He keeps a lot of praise on Worthy. Behind the scenes, whether that's to anybody that listened. He was telling the NFL coaches that pro day that Ryan Wingo is going to be the next big thing. Then probably one thing that everybody wants to hear is the improved speed off the edge. Colin Simmons adds that element. Trey Moore adds that element. Colton Vosick, who missed a lot of time last year, brings some of that element. Maybe not pure twitch off the edge, but length. Length gets you to the quarterback quick, and that's all that really matters. Ethan Burke has that same length that gets to the quarterback quick. Then David Benda was mentioned even before Anthony Hill is having a quality practice. During live periods, you want to hear that from your linebacker. If Benda's taking the next step, which it sounds like, that's pretty positive. We were able to see a little bit of practice today. I'm curious with the way that you talked a little bit about how Sarkeesian's been keeping praise and something I've noticed in the handful of spring practices we've been able to see is he seems really encouraged. There have been times when in the past, he's been the yellow. He's been the guy who's been, I guess, not to say the bad cop, but the authoritarian. It kind of sounds like he's been extremely encouraged about everything, not just from what I saw on Monday, but what things you heard about Saturday as well. Yeah, he can be whatever he needs to be. He'll let the sounds like he's letting the position coaches do more of the hard coaching right now, and he's playing more of the good cop, but he's a real football coach. We've seen that other side of him, that harder edge side to him, that I think a lot of people don't really think he has just because he's so calm and measured and pretty much in games you never see him lose his cool. Press conferences, he always keeps his cool, he's calm and measured, but he's a true football coach, but right now you can just tell he really likes his team, and he likes each team more and more than the previous one. Remember last year, one of the big story lines, I think it was on Ryan Clark's podcast or something like that, he's like, "This looks like my team." And now it's more and more like that. Any other big notes from from Saturday, you want to move right into what we were able to take in at DKR on Monday? No, I'm cute. You know what, I already know all this stuff, and everybody can read it on Inside Texas. We posted it last night, but now I read what you just wrote. You got those notes up quick. I'm curious what your takeaways were from this morning? First takeaway is they have added the 2023 championship to the list of conference championships. I was wondering how soon that was going to get up, but that kind of shows where A, how fast buildings can and how fast buildings can get modified, but B, that's the standard. That's what Texas is gunning for this year. They're going to have to contend with different teams like Georgia Ole Miss and Alabama and LSU, but that they want to add another one that wants to say '09, 2023, and then 2024. It was in DKR on Monday, so that means the media is situated on the North End Zone. Offense typically operates on the North side and the defense on the South side, but I was able to get one look at the pursuit drills through the binoculars. Pretty status quo on a lot of the first team defense. Collins and Broughton at tackle. Sorel and Ethan Burkett, Edge. Hill and Bendett, linebacker. Derek Williams and Michael Taffle. Safety Jedi Baronet star, but one guy who was, and I didn't get to see the full second team, but one guy who was not with the first team was Manning, Muhammad. It was Terrence Brooks and Gavin Holmes, and I saw a few instances of Gavin Holmes during a quick contact period, ball security period. He knocked the ball out a couple times, so we'll check out more to see what the deal is with with Manning. Obviously, it's spring, it's early, and that might have been during a non-contact. Not to say it's like a me or anything, but there wasn't much something going on at that point, so we'll check in on that. But then I took in a lot of the wide receivers, and at this point with all the skill position, it seems like there's a tear at the top, and it's guys like at running back, Baxter and Blue, wide receiver, Cook, Wingo, Golden and Bond. At slot, it's more in Niblet, at tight end, it's Helm, and then everything else kind of mixes up further down the depth chart. Sometimes a Maureen Nye Black is, you know, second, sometimes it's fifth, sometimes, you know, even Trey Weister is third, sometimes he's fourth, and I think that's just an overall attempt to get as many guys, as many reps as possible. It's spring, you know, this is a time view where they're really not really focused. They layer in some prep for opponents, but the players don't always realize it. It's always about development and things like that, and there are a lot of guys, you know, with 20-something guys who showed up at mid-semester, whether it be transfers, whether that be freshmen, and just lack of, you know, overall attrition from the portal, not losing a ton of guys. This is a pretty stocked roster, not only talent-wise, but numbers-wise, trying to think of some of the other things I saw. You know, we only get to see a lot of routes on air and things like that, but John Tate Cook, even Matthew Golden, Isaiah Bond, you hear the coaches and specifically Chris Jackson offer those guys a lot of praise during their work. Those guys are, speaks to what you mentioned about Cook being motivated with those guys on the roster, speaks to, you know, just the quality of wide receiver at this juncture. And speaking of Chris Jackson and even to Shard Choice, we've always noticed that those are two of the louder guys. You can hear those guys across the field, specifically with Choice. I think Chris Jackson's in that category now. So he tracks me out. You can hear, you can hear Chris Jackson from all the way across the field, and that's always a big, I think that that's part of what we were talking about earlier, how Sark is letting the assistants kind of take on that part of the, you know, development teaching process. I don't know how loud AJ Millie is, but I know I see him talking. I see him encouraging quarterbacks a lot. Kyle Flood, you can hear, offering basically praise on every rep. So maybe that speaks a little bit to, you know, what Sark is how he's involved as the head coach here at Texas and his third stint as a head coach. Any other questions you got from my eyes? No, I don't. It's an, you're down there in the bowels of DKR, I can tell. No, we'll, so obviously we're only allowed to see the first 20 minutes or so. We'll, on insidetext.com, I hope to have a more full practice report from when, you know, the media was kicked out. Maybe we can glean some more things about, I'm always curious about the team portions, you know, who's running with the ones, who's making plays when it's good on good, those sorts of things tend to translate when the lights come on. One quick recruiting note, couple quick ones. KJ Lacey was there after earning an Elite 11 invite yesterday at Westlake High School. Andrew Marsh, one of the top wide receivers in the country, was there. A few others we're going to catch up with, but those are the main headliners who were spotted on the sidelines and we even got some pictures up on inside Texas Twitter account for to showcase that they were on Campbell Williams Field. So that'll be it. Obviously, we will have a Monday Night Live stream later tonight. Talking these notes, as Eric mentioned, head to insidetextis.com. Please like the video, subscribe to the channel, head to insidetextis. You can get one month of access for just one dollar. That'll get you all the way through the spring game. That'll get you basically up until some peak portal recruiting time. So, for Eric Nelline, I'm Joe Cook. We'll see you next time on the Inside Texas Football YouTube channel, powered by insidetextis.com.