The Deep Dig
Season Finale: Offense
presented by Wendy Swantkowski, DDS
Looking for experienced, family and cosmetic dental care in the Houston-Memorial area? Go with the best! OB sponsor Wendy Swantkowski, DDS. Call 281-293-9140 and find out why so many Orangebloods members are her patients!
Optimal Starting OL Depth Chart for Spring 2017
Left Tackle
all photos via UT Football
It isn’t exactly breaking news that Connor Williams made huge strides in the 2016 season. In the absence of D’Onta Foreman, he was the Longhorns MVP — which, as a true sophomore at an offensive line position, is certainly saying something.
Williams played 911 total snaps on offense in 2016 and was a 100-percent snap-participant in the 11 games he started (like many other starters on both sides of the football, Williams did not play versus UTEP in Week 2). On those 911 snaps, Williams only allowed disruption (sacks, QB hits, run-stuffs, TFLs, QB pressures) or committed a penalty on one of every 56.9. This number led the team out of all those with comparable sample-sizes. (OG Alex Anderson’s number is higher at one per 99 snaps on a 99-snap sample).
Williams’ 56.9 in the snaps-per-disruption-allowed or penalty-caused metric showed a great improvement from his dynamic freshman season where he, again, finished first on the team by this measure at once per 34.57 snaps. In short, Williams made mistakes a little less than half as often as a sophomore than he did as a freshman All-American. His development continues on-pace to leave the Longhorns early for the NFL draft in 2018, and — if he were so inclined and if it was allowed for players to leave after two seasons in college — it is a near-certainty that he would even be drafted as-is in 2017.
Williams’ average grade of 79 on the Deep Dig’s scale this season was supported by a 79.01-point median score. A large jump from the 76.53 average and 76.6 median which led the team in 2015. To put those numbers in perspective, we have to think about the consistency. Williams played an entire season like a player who should be taken in the later rounds of the NFL draft. When we look back historically at the Deep Dig’s grades on O-lineman now collecting NFL paychecks (Donald Hawkins and Trey Hopkins), both would only “spike” into that territory at times through their senior seasons.
Furthermore, during the 2014 season we’re talking about, the Deep Dig still separated the run and the pass-portions of the grade and the spikes into the 80’s were certainly never an average of both scores, but rather just a grade in one aspect. Donald Hawkins had an 83-score versus Iowa State his senior season in the run-game but his average of run and pass would have been right around 80.5.
Hawkins was previously the best offensive lineman of the Deep Dig era; and his best games as a senior were Connor Williams’ average ones as a sophomore.
Depth behind Williams for the 2017 season should come in the form of Jean Delance, Garrett Thomas and JP Urquidez with Buck Major likely coming into play as in-the-mix for the two-deep at both tackle positions.
Thomas will be a redshirt sophomore, and has had a lot of time in the program, but it’s been under two OL coaches in two years and he finds himself in a position now with a new coach that could be tumultuous, should Derek Warehime decide a higher-upside prospect such as Delance or Major should be the primary secondary option behind Williams. If that were the case, the options would be running out for Thomas in finding a clear path to the starting lineup given younger players in front of him … that is, unless he knows how to snap a football.
JP Urquidez was always a player we believed would take 2-3 years of seasoning in a college program before being ready to contribute and until we see anything to sway our opinions otherwise, he’ll be relegated to the same area of depth we’ve always envisioned for now.
Left Guard
Jake McMillon was the “good” surprise on an offensive line that was full of surprises of mainly the not-so-good variety in 2016.
You know … Kent Perkins never taking that final step, Zach Shackelford having core strength issues (shouldn’t have been a surprise looking back), Patrick Vahe inexplicably seeming to regress and the right-side edge still looking like a sieve despite what truly appeared to finally be a replenished cupboard of adequate depth, etc.
But the good one was McMillon. Former OC and least-creative playcaller on this planet Sterlin Gilbert called McMillon a “technician,” and we like the description. Like Connor Williams, McMillon is a player very cognizant of proper angles to his assignments and most importantly, a natural understanding of leverage and balance. McMillon is not the strongest player on the OL, but he’s plenty strong. He has underrated strength and underrated feet. In fact, there is very little that is not underrated about the Texas offensive line’s second-best player from the 2016 season.
McMillon played 493 snaps for the Longhorns in 2016, starting games at both the center and guard positions. On the season, he had an average snap-participation percentage of 53.56% and a median of 78.02%. Basically, he played enough of a sample to where we know our takeaways from the data are valid:
Let’s just look at snaps-per-disruption-allowed or penalty caused (let’s just call it SPDA/PC). McMillon’s SPDA/PC number was 41.1 which stood in a tier all its own, just beneath Connor Williams at 56.9. You don’t get to the next cluster of players (Kent Perkins, Patrick Vahe and Brandon Hodges) until you get down into the 29.9 to 31.8-range. In comparing his 2016 SPDA/PC number to all offensive linemen in 2015 (during which time, McMillon was serving as a scout-team defensive tackle), he would have been the best in the bunch. In this key area, Jake McMillon, now a redshirt sophomore, had a better year in 2016 than Connor Williams did in his fantastic 2015 campaign.
On top of all this, McMillon and Williams seemed to have the best chemistry together of any two offensive linemen on the Texas roster when lined up next to one another. Some of the most impressive displays of blocking in the 2016 season were stunts beautifully passed off and picked up on passing downs to the left side and on the play side of power concepts where combo down-blocks with the free-man getting work to the second-level were clean, coordinated and devastating. Williams had nowhere near this same chemistry with Patrick Vahe who would, at times, still struggle mightily in all aspects discussed above in tandem with Williams.
The bottom line is that the optimal starting left side in this group is most certainly Williams and McMillon and Texas fans should be excited to get to see the two in action over the course of an entire season should new OL coach Derek Warehime see things similarly to the Deep Dig (or anyone else with eyes and a little free time on their hands to watch every play of the season).
Behind Jake McMillon, you have a wild card in Tope Imade and a relatively known-commodity in Elijah Rodriguez. Rodriguez has been a player about on par with the Sedrick Flowers’, Marcus Hutchins’ and Taylor Doyles’ of the world in the SPDA/PC-realm, allowing disruption once per every 20 snaps or so.
We know another guy who allows disruption about every 20 snaps or so, and he’s probably going to have to start for Texas (again) next season …
Center
There’s little doubt that Zach Shackelford was the OL’s weakest link in 2016 and it should have been expected. Let’s be honest in saying that he was a bit of a desperation-offer when things looked very thin at center. He was basically anointed as the starter by default as an early enrollee in the spring and was then quickly thrown to the wolves in the fall.
There were good things to take away from Shackelford’s freshman season. He wasn’t horrible which was certainly within the reasonable range of possible outcomes going in. However, he was slightly below-average on the whole. His average Deep Dig grade on the season (623 total snaps on offense) was a 74.5 on the dot which is, by definition, the exact threshold for where … let’s just say ‘grudging acceptability’ … meets unacceptability.
When throwing out the players with small sample sizes (Alex Anderson on 99 snaps and Terrell Cuney on 10 snaps), only Tristan Nickelson (12.7 on 2013 snaps) had a lower SPDA/PC number than Shackelford at 20.1. Shackelford was the team’s clear leader in the run-stuffs-allowed department with 15 on the year, nearly doubling his nearest competition (Patrick Vahe and Kent Perkins; 8 each respectively).
As Texas got further away from the power concept that former OL coach described as “Mama” in 2016 and incorporated more zone-looks, Shackelford was often guilty of blowing up the play by allowing too much upfield penetration through his play-side shoulder while engaged. It was a chronic issue that you could set your clock to, if you somehow still had a clock that needs setting in a manual fashion. With the offense coming in under Herman, it’s clear that the zone-read and other zone-variety run-concepts seem a bit more prevalent than power/man/gap philosophies based on our early, initial review of UH 2016 game tape on offense.
While this development bodes well for the left side of the line, which is projected to feature two textbook zone-scheme guys — body and skill-set wise — it’s concerning for Shackelford. If he can’t put on some good strength through the spring and summer, it may not be out of the question to consider moving McMillon into center, shifting Vahe to left guard and letting Alex Anderson take over at the …
Right Guard
Since we’re pencilling in McMillon on the left side, Vahe seems like a shoe-in to slide back into his old right guard slot which has now been vacated by the departing Kent Perkins.
While Vahe’s season was seen by many as a disappointment (after all, at one point he did get benched), he may not have been quite as big a letdown as perceived. It didn’t help that Connor Williams made such immense strides. Considering that those two are sort of ‘tied at the hip’ in the minds of many Texas fans — both OL studs of the same class who earned freshman AA honors together — it was easy to compare the two players to one another and wonder why one didn’t seem to be on the same track as the other.
However, from a pure comparison standpoint to the 2015 season, Patrick Vahe was a better player in 2016. On 795 total snaps, Vahe had a SPDA/PC number of 31.8, good for third-best on the team of those with adequate samples behind Connor Williams and Jake McMillon. It represented improvement from his 26.98 number in 2015. His average Deep Dig grade from each season was exactly 76.2.
So, while it appeared at the beginning of the season that Vahe had actually regressed as a player, in the mold of others on the team such as John Burt, Davante Davis, Holton Hill, et al. he didn’t actually do so. He just didn’t really get much better. The slight uptick in SPDA/PC shows that outside of the static grades, there was at least some sliver of actual improvement.
Vahe will need to get better to hold off Alex Anderson, who only played 99 snaps in 2016 that were mostly against bad UTEP players, but Anderson showed by the data that he’s serviceable. In fact, the eyeball test said the same when he’d come in for brief appearances to spell a sloppy Kent Perkins. Anderson was a better player than Kent Perkins was in 2016, so Vahe will have to at least be a slight upgrade to Kent Perkins at the right guard to keep his job.
RS FR Patrick Hudson should also come in to play as a highly regarded recruit who is likely best-suited to stay inside. Hudson, with the graduation of Kent Perkins, may now be the strongest person on the team on paper, and should be viewed coming into spring as a player teetering somewhere on the edge between “in the two-deep mix” and developmental depth. His feet need time to develop and he missed most of the 2015 season with injury. That scout-team year could have done him a lot of good.
In all, it’s good news for Texas fans. No matter what, they’ll be getting an upgrade at the position with Perkins now moving on. One position no one’s sure will be receiving an upgrade is …
Right Tackle
How can this position be a five-year bugaboo and sieve for the Texas Longhorns? Seriously. Josh Cochran, Kennedy Estelle, Camhron Hughes, Marcus Hutchins … all turnstiles. Now, the RT group is the only one in the OL unit which doesn’t really include a player we’re comfortable slotting within the “optimal starter” area of the graphic.
Based on 2016 play, no one’s “optimal,” but Brandon Hodges (747 snaps) is probably the leader in the clubhouse as he was better than Tristan Nickelson (203 snaps).
Nickelson was banged-up through the season and was clearly ailing at times on a bum right ankle. He played one game at an above-average level overall versus Iowa State and then unacceptably in gradable performances versus Kansas State (3 QB pressures, 1 sack, 1 TFL allowed), Baylor and WVU. Nickelson was hailed through the offseason as a player who had improved most in the strength and conditioning department and added strength was clear. You also like his length and ability to look like a pterodactyl on the edge of the line of scrimmage. His issues are clearly feet and balance. He needs to work on lowering his power-base at 6-8 to engage defenders without getting overextended and letting the weight of his long trunk out past the balls of his feet while trying to engage shorter defenders. He gets overextended and allows rushers to convert speed-to-power with ease.
Hodges started out the season about the same way he ended it. Slightly above average due to some nice plays intermingled with a real boner here and there. Hodges did have a stretch of three games versus Baylor, Texas Tech and WVU where he was operating at an elevated level and scoring in all contests over 77 on the Deep Dig’s scale which is certainly worth noting. It’s not a season of consistency, but it’s three games of consistency. It’s at least something you can optimistically project forward on.
The most optimism, though, should be for the young players behind these two. Namely, Denzel Okafor who should be a threat to crack the two-deep and possibly even the starting role through spring. The redshirts of Jean Delance (3 snaps on offense) and Okafor (11 snaps on offense) were inexplicably burned by Strong’s lame-duck staff in 2016 and it’s time for both of those players to get going as real factors on the football team and not just depth if a year of eligibility is already in the books.
Okafor's high-school film is nasty and he’s one of the more impressive players on the entire team by the eyeball-test alone when walking into a room. Other than Okafor, Patrick Hudson is also in play as a possible depth-player, but is likely better suited to play inside at right guard.
As we turn our attention to a season of evaluation and spring football, we must admit, our basement has a sense of excitement regarding a new beginning; even as we close this chapter in our history. Onward to 2017.
We thank you, once again, for reading.
. . .
For total snaps and game-by-game snap percentages for all Texas offensive players in 2016, click here.
For more on the Texas offensive line and optimal lineup projections in 2017, plus questions from OB members, listen to episode two of Alex Dunlap’s Deep Dig podcast here.
Season Finale: Offense
presented by Wendy Swantkowski, DDS
Looking for experienced, family and cosmetic dental care in the Houston-Memorial area? Go with the best! OB sponsor Wendy Swantkowski, DDS. Call 281-293-9140 and find out why so many Orangebloods members are her patients!
Optimal Starting OL Depth Chart for Spring 2017
Left Tackle
all photos via UT Football
It isn’t exactly breaking news that Connor Williams made huge strides in the 2016 season. In the absence of D’Onta Foreman, he was the Longhorns MVP — which, as a true sophomore at an offensive line position, is certainly saying something.
Williams played 911 total snaps on offense in 2016 and was a 100-percent snap-participant in the 11 games he started (like many other starters on both sides of the football, Williams did not play versus UTEP in Week 2). On those 911 snaps, Williams only allowed disruption (sacks, QB hits, run-stuffs, TFLs, QB pressures) or committed a penalty on one of every 56.9. This number led the team out of all those with comparable sample-sizes. (OG Alex Anderson’s number is higher at one per 99 snaps on a 99-snap sample).
Williams’ 56.9 in the snaps-per-disruption-allowed or penalty-caused metric showed a great improvement from his dynamic freshman season where he, again, finished first on the team by this measure at once per 34.57 snaps. In short, Williams made mistakes a little less than half as often as a sophomore than he did as a freshman All-American. His development continues on-pace to leave the Longhorns early for the NFL draft in 2018, and — if he were so inclined and if it was allowed for players to leave after two seasons in college — it is a near-certainty that he would even be drafted as-is in 2017.
Williams’ average grade of 79 on the Deep Dig’s scale this season was supported by a 79.01-point median score. A large jump from the 76.53 average and 76.6 median which led the team in 2015. To put those numbers in perspective, we have to think about the consistency. Williams played an entire season like a player who should be taken in the later rounds of the NFL draft. When we look back historically at the Deep Dig’s grades on O-lineman now collecting NFL paychecks (Donald Hawkins and Trey Hopkins), both would only “spike” into that territory at times through their senior seasons.
Furthermore, during the 2014 season we’re talking about, the Deep Dig still separated the run and the pass-portions of the grade and the spikes into the 80’s were certainly never an average of both scores, but rather just a grade in one aspect. Donald Hawkins had an 83-score versus Iowa State his senior season in the run-game but his average of run and pass would have been right around 80.5.
Hawkins was previously the best offensive lineman of the Deep Dig era; and his best games as a senior were Connor Williams’ average ones as a sophomore.
Depth behind Williams for the 2017 season should come in the form of Jean Delance, Garrett Thomas and JP Urquidez with Buck Major likely coming into play as in-the-mix for the two-deep at both tackle positions.
Thomas will be a redshirt sophomore, and has had a lot of time in the program, but it’s been under two OL coaches in two years and he finds himself in a position now with a new coach that could be tumultuous, should Derek Warehime decide a higher-upside prospect such as Delance or Major should be the primary secondary option behind Williams. If that were the case, the options would be running out for Thomas in finding a clear path to the starting lineup given younger players in front of him … that is, unless he knows how to snap a football.
JP Urquidez was always a player we believed would take 2-3 years of seasoning in a college program before being ready to contribute and until we see anything to sway our opinions otherwise, he’ll be relegated to the same area of depth we’ve always envisioned for now.
Left Guard
Jake McMillon was the “good” surprise on an offensive line that was full of surprises of mainly the not-so-good variety in 2016.
You know … Kent Perkins never taking that final step, Zach Shackelford having core strength issues (shouldn’t have been a surprise looking back), Patrick Vahe inexplicably seeming to regress and the right-side edge still looking like a sieve despite what truly appeared to finally be a replenished cupboard of adequate depth, etc.
But the good one was McMillon. Former OC and least-creative playcaller on this planet Sterlin Gilbert called McMillon a “technician,” and we like the description. Like Connor Williams, McMillon is a player very cognizant of proper angles to his assignments and most importantly, a natural understanding of leverage and balance. McMillon is not the strongest player on the OL, but he’s plenty strong. He has underrated strength and underrated feet. In fact, there is very little that is not underrated about the Texas offensive line’s second-best player from the 2016 season.
McMillon played 493 snaps for the Longhorns in 2016, starting games at both the center and guard positions. On the season, he had an average snap-participation percentage of 53.56% and a median of 78.02%. Basically, he played enough of a sample to where we know our takeaways from the data are valid:
Let’s just look at snaps-per-disruption-allowed or penalty caused (let’s just call it SPDA/PC). McMillon’s SPDA/PC number was 41.1 which stood in a tier all its own, just beneath Connor Williams at 56.9. You don’t get to the next cluster of players (Kent Perkins, Patrick Vahe and Brandon Hodges) until you get down into the 29.9 to 31.8-range. In comparing his 2016 SPDA/PC number to all offensive linemen in 2015 (during which time, McMillon was serving as a scout-team defensive tackle), he would have been the best in the bunch. In this key area, Jake McMillon, now a redshirt sophomore, had a better year in 2016 than Connor Williams did in his fantastic 2015 campaign.
On top of all this, McMillon and Williams seemed to have the best chemistry together of any two offensive linemen on the Texas roster when lined up next to one another. Some of the most impressive displays of blocking in the 2016 season were stunts beautifully passed off and picked up on passing downs to the left side and on the play side of power concepts where combo down-blocks with the free-man getting work to the second-level were clean, coordinated and devastating. Williams had nowhere near this same chemistry with Patrick Vahe who would, at times, still struggle mightily in all aspects discussed above in tandem with Williams.
The bottom line is that the optimal starting left side in this group is most certainly Williams and McMillon and Texas fans should be excited to get to see the two in action over the course of an entire season should new OL coach Derek Warehime see things similarly to the Deep Dig (or anyone else with eyes and a little free time on their hands to watch every play of the season).
Behind Jake McMillon, you have a wild card in Tope Imade and a relatively known-commodity in Elijah Rodriguez. Rodriguez has been a player about on par with the Sedrick Flowers’, Marcus Hutchins’ and Taylor Doyles’ of the world in the SPDA/PC-realm, allowing disruption once per every 20 snaps or so.
We know another guy who allows disruption about every 20 snaps or so, and he’s probably going to have to start for Texas (again) next season …
Center
There’s little doubt that Zach Shackelford was the OL’s weakest link in 2016 and it should have been expected. Let’s be honest in saying that he was a bit of a desperation-offer when things looked very thin at center. He was basically anointed as the starter by default as an early enrollee in the spring and was then quickly thrown to the wolves in the fall.
There were good things to take away from Shackelford’s freshman season. He wasn’t horrible which was certainly within the reasonable range of possible outcomes going in. However, he was slightly below-average on the whole. His average Deep Dig grade on the season (623 total snaps on offense) was a 74.5 on the dot which is, by definition, the exact threshold for where … let’s just say ‘grudging acceptability’ … meets unacceptability.
When throwing out the players with small sample sizes (Alex Anderson on 99 snaps and Terrell Cuney on 10 snaps), only Tristan Nickelson (12.7 on 2013 snaps) had a lower SPDA/PC number than Shackelford at 20.1. Shackelford was the team’s clear leader in the run-stuffs-allowed department with 15 on the year, nearly doubling his nearest competition (Patrick Vahe and Kent Perkins; 8 each respectively).
As Texas got further away from the power concept that former OL coach described as “Mama” in 2016 and incorporated more zone-looks, Shackelford was often guilty of blowing up the play by allowing too much upfield penetration through his play-side shoulder while engaged. It was a chronic issue that you could set your clock to, if you somehow still had a clock that needs setting in a manual fashion. With the offense coming in under Herman, it’s clear that the zone-read and other zone-variety run-concepts seem a bit more prevalent than power/man/gap philosophies based on our early, initial review of UH 2016 game tape on offense.
While this development bodes well for the left side of the line, which is projected to feature two textbook zone-scheme guys — body and skill-set wise — it’s concerning for Shackelford. If he can’t put on some good strength through the spring and summer, it may not be out of the question to consider moving McMillon into center, shifting Vahe to left guard and letting Alex Anderson take over at the …
Right Guard
Since we’re pencilling in McMillon on the left side, Vahe seems like a shoe-in to slide back into his old right guard slot which has now been vacated by the departing Kent Perkins.
While Vahe’s season was seen by many as a disappointment (after all, at one point he did get benched), he may not have been quite as big a letdown as perceived. It didn’t help that Connor Williams made such immense strides. Considering that those two are sort of ‘tied at the hip’ in the minds of many Texas fans — both OL studs of the same class who earned freshman AA honors together — it was easy to compare the two players to one another and wonder why one didn’t seem to be on the same track as the other.
However, from a pure comparison standpoint to the 2015 season, Patrick Vahe was a better player in 2016. On 795 total snaps, Vahe had a SPDA/PC number of 31.8, good for third-best on the team of those with adequate samples behind Connor Williams and Jake McMillon. It represented improvement from his 26.98 number in 2015. His average Deep Dig grade from each season was exactly 76.2.
So, while it appeared at the beginning of the season that Vahe had actually regressed as a player, in the mold of others on the team such as John Burt, Davante Davis, Holton Hill, et al. he didn’t actually do so. He just didn’t really get much better. The slight uptick in SPDA/PC shows that outside of the static grades, there was at least some sliver of actual improvement.
Vahe will need to get better to hold off Alex Anderson, who only played 99 snaps in 2016 that were mostly against bad UTEP players, but Anderson showed by the data that he’s serviceable. In fact, the eyeball test said the same when he’d come in for brief appearances to spell a sloppy Kent Perkins. Anderson was a better player than Kent Perkins was in 2016, so Vahe will have to at least be a slight upgrade to Kent Perkins at the right guard to keep his job.
RS FR Patrick Hudson should also come in to play as a highly regarded recruit who is likely best-suited to stay inside. Hudson, with the graduation of Kent Perkins, may now be the strongest person on the team on paper, and should be viewed coming into spring as a player teetering somewhere on the edge between “in the two-deep mix” and developmental depth. His feet need time to develop and he missed most of the 2015 season with injury. That scout-team year could have done him a lot of good.
In all, it’s good news for Texas fans. No matter what, they’ll be getting an upgrade at the position with Perkins now moving on. One position no one’s sure will be receiving an upgrade is …
Right Tackle
How can this position be a five-year bugaboo and sieve for the Texas Longhorns? Seriously. Josh Cochran, Kennedy Estelle, Camhron Hughes, Marcus Hutchins … all turnstiles. Now, the RT group is the only one in the OL unit which doesn’t really include a player we’re comfortable slotting within the “optimal starter” area of the graphic.
Based on 2016 play, no one’s “optimal,” but Brandon Hodges (747 snaps) is probably the leader in the clubhouse as he was better than Tristan Nickelson (203 snaps).
Nickelson was banged-up through the season and was clearly ailing at times on a bum right ankle. He played one game at an above-average level overall versus Iowa State and then unacceptably in gradable performances versus Kansas State (3 QB pressures, 1 sack, 1 TFL allowed), Baylor and WVU. Nickelson was hailed through the offseason as a player who had improved most in the strength and conditioning department and added strength was clear. You also like his length and ability to look like a pterodactyl on the edge of the line of scrimmage. His issues are clearly feet and balance. He needs to work on lowering his power-base at 6-8 to engage defenders without getting overextended and letting the weight of his long trunk out past the balls of his feet while trying to engage shorter defenders. He gets overextended and allows rushers to convert speed-to-power with ease.
Hodges started out the season about the same way he ended it. Slightly above average due to some nice plays intermingled with a real boner here and there. Hodges did have a stretch of three games versus Baylor, Texas Tech and WVU where he was operating at an elevated level and scoring in all contests over 77 on the Deep Dig’s scale which is certainly worth noting. It’s not a season of consistency, but it’s three games of consistency. It’s at least something you can optimistically project forward on.
The most optimism, though, should be for the young players behind these two. Namely, Denzel Okafor who should be a threat to crack the two-deep and possibly even the starting role through spring. The redshirts of Jean Delance (3 snaps on offense) and Okafor (11 snaps on offense) were inexplicably burned by Strong’s lame-duck staff in 2016 and it’s time for both of those players to get going as real factors on the football team and not just depth if a year of eligibility is already in the books.
Okafor's high-school film is nasty and he’s one of the more impressive players on the entire team by the eyeball-test alone when walking into a room. Other than Okafor, Patrick Hudson is also in play as a possible depth-player, but is likely better suited to play inside at right guard.
As we turn our attention to a season of evaluation and spring football, we must admit, our basement has a sense of excitement regarding a new beginning; even as we close this chapter in our history. Onward to 2017.
We thank you, once again, for reading.
. . .
For total snaps and game-by-game snap percentages for all Texas offensive players in 2016, click here.
For more on the Texas offensive line and optimal lineup projections in 2017, plus questions from OB members, listen to episode two of Alex Dunlap’s Deep Dig podcast here.
