Joe and Eric deliver the latest practice news from Texas' practice availability. Subscribe to Inside Texas to stay locked in with your favorite team every single day https://www.on3.com/teams/texas-longhorns/join/
Inside Texas Football
Spring Practice Report 3: OL Depth Chart Shakeup, Latest on Secondary, Coaching Changes Impact
and welcome to the Inside Texas Football YouTube channel powered by InsideTexas.com. I'm Joe Cook joined by Eric Melin. I just got done over checking out practice, Wednesday's practice on March 27th over at the Dennius Fields, but we got a lot of different things to talk about real quick. We'll cover practice, but we'll also go over some interesting coaching changes that have gone over that occurred, you know, within the past couple months, but we're starting to see a few of their effects on the field right now. And Eric, that's something that you had written about over on InsideTexas.com a couple days ago, broke the news not only about a new DV analyst, but how Texas new linebacker coach and Johnny Nansen is having a little bit of an impact on what we may see on the field. Yeah, certainly a couple things we're talking about on the defensive side of the ball. You know, Johnny Nansen was a very good defensive coordinator at Arizona. They showed tremendous improvement in his two years there. So you're wondering what fingerprints he's going to have on this defense. They're going to make some changes. It sounds like he's going to actually live up to the co-DC. Oftentimes, the co-DC is just a secondary role and it's really your main DC's peak with Costco. I think that based on Monday practice, Nansen's going to have a little bit of input. And now we told we were told that the offense easily won the day on Monday's practice during the live periods. However, the defense was breaking in some new looks that Nansen provided. We weren't told exactly what those were. We're working on that right now. We're going to try to investigate that further and Ian Boyd is on the case. Ian's very good at using process of elimination. What did Nansen run that Texas didn't run that could possibly be new? Could it be Dime? Could it be Tampa 2 where the Mike linebacker, a guy like Anthony Hill drops to the middle of the field and gets deep in coverage? We'll figure it out. Source did say they're very excited about the new look. However, he didn't tell me what it was. And of course, there were some growing pains. And then another defensive note is the addition of Kenodo Hudson, DB Assistant. You know, I got a look at him at the first open practice and it finally, it took us a while to investigate, finally figured it out. He was Ole Miss's cornerbacks coach last year. Before that, he was Illinois DB coach for Lovey Smith. He has been at Western Kentucky when Kenny Baker, the new defensive tackle coach, was there. And he was also in the administration when Sark was at USC. So there's familiarity there with Sark and of course Lane Kiffin. Haven't heard a whole lot about him. I think he does have quite a good bit of insight in man principles. And we've heard he's quite the character despite his sort of intimidating picture. If you come across a picture of me, it looks pretty serious. We hear he's actually pretty laid back and funny. So a couple of interesting notes there. And then one final note from Monday's practice is Andrew Makuba was showing up quite a bit. I think Sark has even mentioned him in the press conference. We've heard some of that as well. His tackling is showing up. His range is showing up. I wrote this morning that, you know, it's going to be interesting to see how safety plays out between him, Taft and Derek Williams. But really, they can't go wrong. The floor for that room was much better already than it was at the end of last season. That's a lot about Monday's practice. Let's talk a little bit about Wednesday's practice. And obviously the big news, we saw some signs of it on Monday, but it was confirmed again on Wednesday, is that at first team left guard, you've got Neto Umizulu, same five or same four everywhere else. Kelvin Banks, Neto, Jake Majors, DJ Campbell, Cam Williams. But with Neto moving up, a little bit of a shake up moving down. It goes left to right Trevor Goosby. Oh boy. Cole Hudson, Hayden Connor, Connor Stroke, and Andre Kojo. There we go. Ten names right off the bat. So obviously the change at left guard, but also that change made some moves at second team center and second team, right guard, second team in quotes, but some shakeups on the depth chart. But the big one is Neto moving up to be at first five. Let's put a quick disclaimer on that, because this is just the very beginning of practice. We see what they want us to see. We're going to have to get the notes on that and say, hey, when they went live, when they went in their first live period was Neto with the ones, because then that would tell us a lot. If it's Hayden Connor back with the ones, and maybe it's status quo there. We also know while Hayden Connor is working at center today that like Joe witnessed, Cole Hudson would in all likelihood would be the backup center of something happened to Jake Majors, which hopefully doesn't happen. But we need to put a disclaimer on it that this is just the open part of practice, which is designed for the media is supposed to see what we see. We don't know exactly if that's what how it's taking place behind the scenes. And some of the other things I took a big focus on on the defense today. And what you wrote about in your notes about Andrew Makuba kind of came true to life. There's a pecking order. And if you read inside Texas, you'll tell that we've been writing it this way. The top of the depth chart, you can get a good sense of when you're watching these open drills for the media viewing window. Things kind of circulate at the bottom. I think tight ends the best example, because it's gunner helm at the top. And then just, you know, that four or five just kind of rotate. The same also takes place at safety. But the guys on top were Derek Williams, Michael Taff and Andrew Makuba, everything behind them kind of rotates a little bit. But that speaks to, you know, like we mentioned, Andrew Makuba, earning praise from Sark and also earning trust from Pete Quitkowski, Blake Gideon, Steve Starkeesian, even though this is his fourth practice in burnt orange instead of bright orange. Yeah, you know, he's earned a lot of praise for how sharp he is. And there's a lot's pickup in this Texas defense. But there was a lot's pickup in the Clemson defense as well. These aren't super simple defenses because they have so many different coverages that they bounce from. So yeah, he's he's earning praise with his intelligence. And of course, you know, he's got the athleticism, he's got an act to find the ball, especially when he's at safety, like he demonstrated his freshman year. He's back at home, which was, you know, one of the reasons to celebrate today, Baron coming back to Texas was Makuba part by getting to play in his best position. I think he's got there some overlap with his ability with Taft. They're both good tacklers. They're both smart. He's got a little bit more range, maybe a little bit of more ability and man coverage. Those three safeties are pretty exciting. I'm excited to have him. I think Taft is absolutely a good player. It's the best safety on the team last year. Derek Williams has huge ceiling. But, you know, if worst case scenario is Taft and Makuba starting back there, that's that's a pretty good position to be. Got to have your safeties from Austin. One quick note on corner, Malik Muhammad left Monday's practice early. He was dressed up, got a got a couple pictures of him at practice, but he was going through kind of going through the motions, not going through drills. And so corners and stars worked together with Terry Joseph and the top group at at that position. It had Terrence Brooks and then it had Jada Iberin and then Jalen Gilbo was right behind them right ahead of Gavin Holmes. So we've heard some good returns about Jalen Gilbo over the course of the spring and it seems like his position on the depth chart is indication of that. You know, I'm hoping that what what Nancy's instituting is dime and that would make a lot of sense with Gilbo's sort of energy that he's had all throughout the off-season, not just spring ball, but winter off-season. That guy's been motivated like he knows playing time is coming his way. If and would Jada Iberin in front of him, if they instituted a dime package, that would make a lot of sense of how Gilbo would play a lot. Well, we'll see what comes with it, but Gilbo's definitely he's on that path that he showed it when he first arrived on campus. I know he had a couple hiccups, but everybody was really excited about him. I think everybody's excited about him all over again. He's been a player who started games in place of Jada Iberin in front of Jada Iberin over the past couple of seasons on very rare occasions, but shows the trust. I think that he's earned even like you said with some with what's happened off the field. He's on the field, a trustworthy player. Thank you for watching this video. Please like the video, subscribe to the channel. Head to InsideTexas.com. You can get one month of access for just one dollar. We'll have all these insider notes about Texas spring practice, the spring game, recruiting, the portal, all that. You can get one month for one dollar, and this is a good month to sign up for it. So Eric, thank you so much. I'll see you later tonight. We'll see you next time on the Inside Texas football YouTube channel powered by Inside Texas.