"Just a Bit Outside" is brought to you by:
YOU!
Now is your chance to sponsor the column. Our previous sponsor paid for more than three months of sponsorship fees in the first two weeks of signing up. That can be you! Contact Orangebloods' new sales lead, Cody Clearman ( codyclearman@orangebloods.com ) if you want that kind of successful promotion for your business. Don't miss out on this amazing opportunity!
===========================================================================
This week is probably the marquee event of the year for Indianapolis. NFL scouts, GM’s, coaches, players, agents, media and hangers-on are marching around downtown Indianapolis going from hotel bar to hotel bar with stops at Lucas Oil Stadium in between.
But this year, there will be a side of burnt orange served alongside the shrimp cocktail at St. Elmo’s Steak House.
A school record 11 Texas Longhorn players will be taking part in the combine.
DT – T’Vondre Sweat (on-field workouts on Thursday, Feb. 29th @ 2:00 pm CST)
DT – Byron Murphy (on-field workouts on Thursday, Feb. 29th @ 2:00 pm CST)
LB – Jaylan Ford (on-field workouts on Thursday, Feb. 29th @ 2:00 pm CST)
DB – Ryan Watts (on-field workouts on Friday, March 1st @ 2:00 pm CST)
WR – Adonai Mitchell (on-field workouts on Saturday, March 2nd @ 12:00 pm CST)
WR – Xavier Worthy (on-field workouts on Saturday, March 2nd @ 12:00 pm CST)
WR – Jordan Whittington (on-field workouts on Saturday, March 2nd @ 12:00 pm CST)
TE – Ja’Tavion Sanders (on-field workouts on Saturday, March 2nd @ 12:00 pm CST)
RB – Jonathon Brooks (on-field workouts on Saturday, March 2nd @ 12:00 pm CST)
RB – Keilan Robinson (on-field workouts on Saturday, March 2nd @ 12:00 pm CST)
OL – Christian Jones (on-field workouts on Sunday, March 3rd @ 12:00 pm CST)
It’s appropriate that Murphy and Sweat will be the first Longhorns to take the field. After all, Murphy is looking like a lock now to be the first Longhorn drafted and to go somewhere in the middle of round one.
The two defensive tackles formed an unbreakable wall at the front of the defense this past season. The Texas defense gave up only 82.36 yards per game on the ground in 2023, good for third best in the country (behind Penn State and UCLA).
“We were pretty dominant up front,” linebacker Jaylan Ford told reporters at the NFL Combine Wednesday. “We were able to achieve things that we hadn’t achieved at Texas in a while.”
Replacing those two monsters won’t be easy (and spoiler alert – Texas doesn’t have another T’Vondre Sweat and Byron Murphy waiting in the wings).
Don’t get me wrong, players and coaches are excited about Vernon Broughton, Jaray Bledsoe and Alfred Collins.
“Alfred Collins can do everything,” T’Vondre Sweat said Wednesday during his NFL Combine interviews. “I feel like a lot of people sleep on Alfred Collins. Bull crap. He’s a great guy and he’s going to do awesome things this year and I can’t wait to watch him.”
But Collins has been around a while and he’s flashed a lot of potential, but he hasn’t shown he can consistently put it all together.
That’s ok. The 2024 Texas Longhorns defense doesn’t have to try to do it the same way the 2023 team did to be just as good, if not better.
“The 2024 version of Texas Longhorns football is going to look a little different than the 2023 version,” Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian said during the national signing day press conference earlier this month. “My job is to identify the strengths of this team and then play to the strengths.”
The strength of next season’s defense will likely shift along the defensive line from the inside to the outside.
Texas finished last season tied for 39th in the country with 32 sacks on the season and five of those came from Byron Murphy. Ethan Burke led the team with 5.5.
Texas can do better in 2024.
“I’m hopeful the edge guys can contribute in a way where we can have a lot more impact with our pass rush off the edge,” said Sarkisian.
In comes Trey Moore, the nation’s leading sack artist last season with 14 sacks at UTSA.
If Broughton, Bledsoe and Alfred Collins really can play like everyone hopes they can play, then it is going to free up Moore to make a lot of sacks this year.
Texas has not had a double-digit sack guy since Jackson Jeffcoat got 13 sacks in 2013 (Cedric Reed added 10 sacks of his own that year). Moore has a chance to break that dry spell. Moore is fast and physical and he understands how to get to the quarterback.
Moore is already generating the kind of buzz in winter workouts that you would expect from an elite player.
Check out this nugget from @Anwar Richardson in the War Room a couple of weeks ago.
“I was told former UTSA EDGE Trey Moore looks good, from a physical standpoint,” Anwar reported. “One person told me Moore is in tremendous shape and physically looks like a guy who belongs at Texas.”
@Alex Dunlap followed up with his own Moore nugget in the same War Room report.
“I asked how the new edge guys, Colin Simmons and Trey Moore, looked. ‘Trey is crazy, man. And you know I don't just say that about guys. He's crazy.’ Apparently Moore has been making a solid impression to start out in Austin after transferring in from UTSA.”
Of course Trey Moore isn’t alone. I mentioned Ethan Burke led the team in sacks last season with 5.5. The year before him, Barryn Sorrell led the team in sacks with 5.5. Both players are back, a year older and ready to improve.
Sorrell isn’t just a producer on the field, he is a leader off it. Sorrell has been leading the defense during the winter workout drills.
And of course, we can’t forget young Colin Simmons (as if any of you could possibly forget about Simmons).
I expect Simmons to follow the same path that Anthony Hill paved last year. Simmons will likely start at the bottom of the depth chart during spring practices. There will be buzz about his performance and we may even see a flash or two during the spring game. That buzz will begin to pick up in earnest during the Summer workouts. When fall camp arrives, Simmons will have worked his way into the two-deep. By the time the season kicks off, he’ll get some spot duty here and there. He will continue to impress and gain more and more snaps as the season progresses. By this time next year, we’ll all be talking about Simmons as an impact player.
Texas’ run defense was legendary in 2023. I expect their sack defense to be legendary in 2024.
WHAT WILL HELP GET MORE SACKS?
While looking up Texas’ sack totals, I couldn’t help but notice that the 2013 Longhorns (which produced two players with double-digit sacks) were also blessed with an incredibly good secondary, especially at the safety position.
Adrian Phillips and Quandre Diggs are both still earning paychecks in the NFL all these years later. Their lockdown play for the Longhorns in the back end gave just that extra amount of time for the guys up front to get to the quarterback.
The Texas pass defense ended the season ranked 116th in the country giving up more than 250 yards per game. The Sugar Bowl alone saw Michael Pennix shred the Horns 430 yards.
Of course, this is not a new problem in these parts.
“We’ve been talking for a couple of years about wanting to be tighter in coverage and playing a style of defense where, when you’re tight and confident in coverage, you can be aggressive at the line of scrimmage to get to the quarterback,” Sarkisian said.
Texas needs safeties, Derek Williams, Andrew Mukuba and Jahdae Barron at Nickel to step up this year. Being sound up the middle is the best way to force offenses off their games.
Mukuba has played a lot of football at a very high level for Clemson. That experience should pay off for the Horns next year.
“We’re getting a player who has, for three years, been a frontline starter at Clemson and has been playing football at a high level for a very good program, one that I have a ton of respect for Coach Swinney and the job they do at Clemson,” said Sarkisian. “He has been in big-time games, big-time moments.”
Steve Sarkisian praised Derek Williams’ football IQ during the Big 12 Media Days last summer. That showed itself to be true on the field during the season. Williams came on when Jalen Catalon got injured and never gave up the starter’s job. Williams will have another year of experience and can hopefully learn a lot from Mukuba.
Jahdae Barron announced he is using his COVID year and coming back for another season. He is also switching his number from 23 to 7 in honor of Michael Huff. Texas fans better hope he can play like Huff too.
Barron had a dip in production last season compared to the year before (59 tackles in 2023 versus 74 tackles in 2022). But he has shown he can be a playmaker.
“I do not think he (Barron) gets enough credit for the player that he is. He’s extremely impactful and has one of the highest football IQs on our team,” said Sarkisian in November.
If all three players can live up to their pedigree and experience, then Texas can vastly improve their pass defense and that could make all of the difference in the Horns' ability to produce their first double-digit sack artist in more than a decade.
TWEETS OF INTEREST:
Ok, so the St. John Red Storm didn’t provide much of a speed bump for the Texas Longhorns baseball team, but did you really expect them to?
But the big takeaway here is that the Horns did what they needed to do in the month of February. Texas went 7-1 during the start of the season (all home games) and that included a weekend sweep of Cal Poly where Texas didn’t give up a single run in the three-game series.
"I've been doing this a long time and that's the first time ever that we've gone three straight at home in a series, same team, and put up 27 innings of shutout baseball,” said Texas head coach David Pierce.
I’ve written over and over again about how winning 40 games in a season almost guarantees a berth in the College World Series (45 makes it a lock). Well, Texas got almost a fifth of the way there during the early season stretch. But the games get a lot harder from this point on.
Texas now heads to Houston where they will take on LSU, Texas State and Vanderbilt this weekend. (How is that for a primer for next season’s SEC schedule?)
After that, it’s back home for a Tuesday nighter against Texas A&M before heading to Lubbock for the Big 12 opener against Texas Tech.
Yes, it’s fair to say the baseball season kicks into high gear now.
#################################
I can’t imagine there is a single Texas baseball fan out there who doesn’t love Tanner Witt. It was nice to see him close out the game Tuesday night with a clean ninth inning.
#################################
Is anyone going to miss seeing Texas go to Lubbock?
#################################
Not a bad idea.
#################################
T’Vondre Sweat’s weigh-in tomorrow must be one of the most anticipated weigh-ins in a long while (outside of any type of boxing or UFC weigh-in).
#################################
It looks like Bijan Robinson is about to get a new quarterback.
Atlanta was the obvious landing spot for Fields. It also makes sense for the Bears.
#################################
Some of you purists will hate this, but count me in for an even bigger, expansion of the college football playoffs.
#################################
Congratulations to Hayden Connor!
Of course, it didn’t take long for Twitter to point out that his new fiancé is an Aggy.
But speaking as someone who married a Sooner, I can’t say enough just how true this statement is.
My only advice to Hayden would be … let the Aggy plan the wedding while you continue to focus on football.
YOU!
Now is your chance to sponsor the column. Our previous sponsor paid for more than three months of sponsorship fees in the first two weeks of signing up. That can be you! Contact Orangebloods' new sales lead, Cody Clearman ( codyclearman@orangebloods.com ) if you want that kind of successful promotion for your business. Don't miss out on this amazing opportunity!
===========================================================================
This week is probably the marquee event of the year for Indianapolis. NFL scouts, GM’s, coaches, players, agents, media and hangers-on are marching around downtown Indianapolis going from hotel bar to hotel bar with stops at Lucas Oil Stadium in between.
But this year, there will be a side of burnt orange served alongside the shrimp cocktail at St. Elmo’s Steak House.
A school record 11 Texas Longhorn players will be taking part in the combine.
DT – T’Vondre Sweat (on-field workouts on Thursday, Feb. 29th @ 2:00 pm CST)
DT – Byron Murphy (on-field workouts on Thursday, Feb. 29th @ 2:00 pm CST)
LB – Jaylan Ford (on-field workouts on Thursday, Feb. 29th @ 2:00 pm CST)
DB – Ryan Watts (on-field workouts on Friday, March 1st @ 2:00 pm CST)
WR – Adonai Mitchell (on-field workouts on Saturday, March 2nd @ 12:00 pm CST)
WR – Xavier Worthy (on-field workouts on Saturday, March 2nd @ 12:00 pm CST)
WR – Jordan Whittington (on-field workouts on Saturday, March 2nd @ 12:00 pm CST)
TE – Ja’Tavion Sanders (on-field workouts on Saturday, March 2nd @ 12:00 pm CST)
RB – Jonathon Brooks (on-field workouts on Saturday, March 2nd @ 12:00 pm CST)
RB – Keilan Robinson (on-field workouts on Saturday, March 2nd @ 12:00 pm CST)
OL – Christian Jones (on-field workouts on Sunday, March 3rd @ 12:00 pm CST)
It’s appropriate that Murphy and Sweat will be the first Longhorns to take the field. After all, Murphy is looking like a lock now to be the first Longhorn drafted and to go somewhere in the middle of round one.
The two defensive tackles formed an unbreakable wall at the front of the defense this past season. The Texas defense gave up only 82.36 yards per game on the ground in 2023, good for third best in the country (behind Penn State and UCLA).
“We were pretty dominant up front,” linebacker Jaylan Ford told reporters at the NFL Combine Wednesday. “We were able to achieve things that we hadn’t achieved at Texas in a while.”
Replacing those two monsters won’t be easy (and spoiler alert – Texas doesn’t have another T’Vondre Sweat and Byron Murphy waiting in the wings).
Don’t get me wrong, players and coaches are excited about Vernon Broughton, Jaray Bledsoe and Alfred Collins.
“Alfred Collins can do everything,” T’Vondre Sweat said Wednesday during his NFL Combine interviews. “I feel like a lot of people sleep on Alfred Collins. Bull crap. He’s a great guy and he’s going to do awesome things this year and I can’t wait to watch him.”
But Collins has been around a while and he’s flashed a lot of potential, but he hasn’t shown he can consistently put it all together.
That’s ok. The 2024 Texas Longhorns defense doesn’t have to try to do it the same way the 2023 team did to be just as good, if not better.
“The 2024 version of Texas Longhorns football is going to look a little different than the 2023 version,” Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian said during the national signing day press conference earlier this month. “My job is to identify the strengths of this team and then play to the strengths.”
The strength of next season’s defense will likely shift along the defensive line from the inside to the outside.
Texas finished last season tied for 39th in the country with 32 sacks on the season and five of those came from Byron Murphy. Ethan Burke led the team with 5.5.
Texas can do better in 2024.
“I’m hopeful the edge guys can contribute in a way where we can have a lot more impact with our pass rush off the edge,” said Sarkisian.
In comes Trey Moore, the nation’s leading sack artist last season with 14 sacks at UTSA.
If Broughton, Bledsoe and Alfred Collins really can play like everyone hopes they can play, then it is going to free up Moore to make a lot of sacks this year.
Texas has not had a double-digit sack guy since Jackson Jeffcoat got 13 sacks in 2013 (Cedric Reed added 10 sacks of his own that year). Moore has a chance to break that dry spell. Moore is fast and physical and he understands how to get to the quarterback.
Moore is already generating the kind of buzz in winter workouts that you would expect from an elite player.
Check out this nugget from @Anwar Richardson in the War Room a couple of weeks ago.
“I was told former UTSA EDGE Trey Moore looks good, from a physical standpoint,” Anwar reported. “One person told me Moore is in tremendous shape and physically looks like a guy who belongs at Texas.”
@Alex Dunlap followed up with his own Moore nugget in the same War Room report.
“I asked how the new edge guys, Colin Simmons and Trey Moore, looked. ‘Trey is crazy, man. And you know I don't just say that about guys. He's crazy.’ Apparently Moore has been making a solid impression to start out in Austin after transferring in from UTSA.”
Of course Trey Moore isn’t alone. I mentioned Ethan Burke led the team in sacks last season with 5.5. The year before him, Barryn Sorrell led the team in sacks with 5.5. Both players are back, a year older and ready to improve.
Sorrell isn’t just a producer on the field, he is a leader off it. Sorrell has been leading the defense during the winter workout drills.
And of course, we can’t forget young Colin Simmons (as if any of you could possibly forget about Simmons).
I expect Simmons to follow the same path that Anthony Hill paved last year. Simmons will likely start at the bottom of the depth chart during spring practices. There will be buzz about his performance and we may even see a flash or two during the spring game. That buzz will begin to pick up in earnest during the Summer workouts. When fall camp arrives, Simmons will have worked his way into the two-deep. By the time the season kicks off, he’ll get some spot duty here and there. He will continue to impress and gain more and more snaps as the season progresses. By this time next year, we’ll all be talking about Simmons as an impact player.
Texas’ run defense was legendary in 2023. I expect their sack defense to be legendary in 2024.
WHAT WILL HELP GET MORE SACKS?
While looking up Texas’ sack totals, I couldn’t help but notice that the 2013 Longhorns (which produced two players with double-digit sacks) were also blessed with an incredibly good secondary, especially at the safety position.
Adrian Phillips and Quandre Diggs are both still earning paychecks in the NFL all these years later. Their lockdown play for the Longhorns in the back end gave just that extra amount of time for the guys up front to get to the quarterback.
The Texas pass defense ended the season ranked 116th in the country giving up more than 250 yards per game. The Sugar Bowl alone saw Michael Pennix shred the Horns 430 yards.
Of course, this is not a new problem in these parts.
“We’ve been talking for a couple of years about wanting to be tighter in coverage and playing a style of defense where, when you’re tight and confident in coverage, you can be aggressive at the line of scrimmage to get to the quarterback,” Sarkisian said.
Texas needs safeties, Derek Williams, Andrew Mukuba and Jahdae Barron at Nickel to step up this year. Being sound up the middle is the best way to force offenses off their games.
Mukuba has played a lot of football at a very high level for Clemson. That experience should pay off for the Horns next year.
“We’re getting a player who has, for three years, been a frontline starter at Clemson and has been playing football at a high level for a very good program, one that I have a ton of respect for Coach Swinney and the job they do at Clemson,” said Sarkisian. “He has been in big-time games, big-time moments.”
Steve Sarkisian praised Derek Williams’ football IQ during the Big 12 Media Days last summer. That showed itself to be true on the field during the season. Williams came on when Jalen Catalon got injured and never gave up the starter’s job. Williams will have another year of experience and can hopefully learn a lot from Mukuba.
Jahdae Barron announced he is using his COVID year and coming back for another season. He is also switching his number from 23 to 7 in honor of Michael Huff. Texas fans better hope he can play like Huff too.
Barron had a dip in production last season compared to the year before (59 tackles in 2023 versus 74 tackles in 2022). But he has shown he can be a playmaker.
“I do not think he (Barron) gets enough credit for the player that he is. He’s extremely impactful and has one of the highest football IQs on our team,” said Sarkisian in November.
If all three players can live up to their pedigree and experience, then Texas can vastly improve their pass defense and that could make all of the difference in the Horns' ability to produce their first double-digit sack artist in more than a decade.
TWEETS OF INTEREST:
Ok, so the St. John Red Storm didn’t provide much of a speed bump for the Texas Longhorns baseball team, but did you really expect them to?
But the big takeaway here is that the Horns did what they needed to do in the month of February. Texas went 7-1 during the start of the season (all home games) and that included a weekend sweep of Cal Poly where Texas didn’t give up a single run in the three-game series.
"I've been doing this a long time and that's the first time ever that we've gone three straight at home in a series, same team, and put up 27 innings of shutout baseball,” said Texas head coach David Pierce.
I’ve written over and over again about how winning 40 games in a season almost guarantees a berth in the College World Series (45 makes it a lock). Well, Texas got almost a fifth of the way there during the early season stretch. But the games get a lot harder from this point on.
Texas now heads to Houston where they will take on LSU, Texas State and Vanderbilt this weekend. (How is that for a primer for next season’s SEC schedule?)
After that, it’s back home for a Tuesday nighter against Texas A&M before heading to Lubbock for the Big 12 opener against Texas Tech.
Yes, it’s fair to say the baseball season kicks into high gear now.
#################################
I can’t imagine there is a single Texas baseball fan out there who doesn’t love Tanner Witt. It was nice to see him close out the game Tuesday night with a clean ninth inning.
#################################
Is anyone going to miss seeing Texas go to Lubbock?
#################################
Not a bad idea.
#################################
T’Vondre Sweat’s weigh-in tomorrow must be one of the most anticipated weigh-ins in a long while (outside of any type of boxing or UFC weigh-in).
#################################
It looks like Bijan Robinson is about to get a new quarterback.
Atlanta was the obvious landing spot for Fields. It also makes sense for the Bears.
#################################
Some of you purists will hate this, but count me in for an even bigger, expansion of the college football playoffs.
#################################
Congratulations to Hayden Connor!
Of course, it didn’t take long for Twitter to point out that his new fiancé is an Aggy.
But speaking as someone who married a Sooner, I can’t say enough just how true this statement is.
My only advice to Hayden would be … let the Aggy plan the wedding while you continue to focus on football.
Last edited by a moderator:
