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One of the biggest questions floating around the Longhorns universe as we head into the dog days of summer is about the wide receivers. It's hard to believe that we were once in a situation where the Longhorns were looking like they were in real trouble at the position following the 2023 season. All three starters (Xavier Worthy, Adonai Mitchell and Jordan Whittington) were moving on to the NFL, while others transferred out like Isaiah Neyer (Nebraska) and Casey Cain (UNLV).
As you will recall, this left only 7 scholarship players on the roster at wideout, and none of them had any real experience: Johntay Cook (an uber-talented sophomore-to-be, but who only played 98 total offensive snaps -- 11.88% of total snaps played -- as a freshman) was an elder statesman at the time. Fellow rising sophomore Deandre Moore was the second-most utilized in 2023 (47 total snaps -- 5.7%), then rising redshirt freshman Ryan Niblett (4 total snaps) was the only other scholarship player on the team whose cleats had ever touched a college blade of glass (or field turf, I suppose). Behind them, there were four freshmen set to hit campus: Ryan Wingo, Parker Livingstone, Freddie Dubose Jr. and Aaron Butler.
You all know what happened next. Texas went on a shopping spree to bring in some studs at the position, taking advantage of Nick Saban's departure to land Isaiah Bond and also going after a player that they viewed as a real problem to face when he was at UH in Matthew Golden. By the time they added Silas Bolden from Oregon State, he almost felt like a little bit of a luxury, but he'll now be in the mix as well as a summer enrollee. The question stayed the exact same as far as words go. It went from "what are they going to do?" about a pretty serious lack of depth to "what are they going to do?" about what now seemed like a bit of a surplus.
After a spring period where individual receivers were praised by Sark on a regular basis, but the group as a whole was sort of painted as up-and-down, inconsistent, and still getting on the same page as Quinn Ewers, we saw a spring game explosion with particularly big outings from Ryan Wingo, Isaiah Bond and others playing with mostly backup QBs. It gave us proof-of-concept in regard to the explosive vision for the offense in Quinn Ewers' final season and visual evidence that the firepower needed was indeed there.
The question then became, as you well know: who's gonna start? What is the starting three wide receiver set?
Johntay Cook looks like a total alpha, Ryan Wingo absolutely looks ready and may have some of the freakiest stuff on the whole team -- not only looking explosive but putting insane tracking and adjustment ability on display. Isaiah Bond was probably seen as one of the biggest offseason additions to any team in college football offensively. Deandre Moore was spring camp's silent star who lived in the starting slot role, while Matthew Golden is seen by Chris Jackson as a leader-figure and experienced player that helps bring maturity to the group. A guy Dana Holgerson described as a prototypical stretch-flanker at the Z. Speaking of stretch-flanker-types, Silas Bolden now enters the picture with a different body type than Golden, but one that would likely occupy a similar role on the football field. Bolden didn't play hardly at all in the slot at Oregon State in 2023 (only 18.8% of snaps) and profiles more like the new Hollywood Brown, T.Y. Hilton, Tank Dell type of undersized but speedy outside weapon.
Isaiah Bond, Johntay Cook, Ryan Wingo, Matthew Golden, Deandre Moore and Silas Bolden are the main horses here. With much respect to the underclassmen (guys like Livingstone and Butler, etc will be good one day), those are the six that everyone is dying to understand utilization rates regarding in 2024.
And the easy thing to say here is that Sark will just run more 4-wide sets! Of course! Problem solved. The problem with that, though, is that Sark has never once run a true 4-wide set in any game since he came to Texas. He's certainly had tight ends and running backs line up as fourth and even fifth receivers, but never once has it been four dudes who had a "WR" designation on the roster. Hard to believe, but true nonetheless. That could change, but we have literally zero evidence to back that idea.
2021
| PERSONNEL | total | % |
| 11 (1 RB, 1 TE) | 409 | 51.71% |
| 12 (1 RB, 2 TE) | 302 | 38.18% |
| 20 (2 RB, 0 TE) | 37 | 4.68% |
| 21 (2 RB, 1 TE) | 22 | 2.78% |
| 23 (2 RB, 3 TE) | 10 | 1.26% |
| 22 (2 RB, 2 TE) | 8 | 1.01% |
| 13 (1 RB, 3 TE) | 3 | 0.38% |
| 10 (1 RB, 0 TE) | 0 | 0.00% |
2022
| PERSONNEL | total | % |
| 12 (1 RB, 2 TE) | 349 | 43.90% |
| 11 (1 RB, 1 TE) | 300 | 37.74% |
| 21 (2 RB, 1 TE) | 110 | 13.84% |
| 20 (2 RB, 0 TE) | 14 | 1.76% |
| 31 (3 RB, 1 TE) | 10 | 1.26% |
| 23 (2 RB, 3 TE) | 9 | 1.13% |
| 13 (1 RB, 3 TE) | 3 | 0.38% |
2023
| PERSONNEL | total | % |
| 11 (1 RB, 1 TE) | 413 | 50.06% |
| 12 (1 RB, 2 TE) | 335 | 40.61% |
| 21 (2 RB, 1 TE) | 53 | 6.42% |
| 23 (2 RB, 3 TE) | 20 | 2.42% |
| 31 (3 RB, 1 TE) | 3 | 0.36% |
| 13 (1 RB, 3 TE) | 1 | 0.12% |
| 20 (2 RB, 0 TE) | 0 | 0.00% |
Or you could say that he'll just have a less-top-heavy rotation now that his three big dogs have moved on in Worthy, Mitchell and Whittington, and that the snap participation will be watered down and include more players. The problem with that is that Sark has shown that he kinda sticks with 3-4 dudes as the main snap-earners even when he didn't have the same sort of talent on campus at the top of the totem pole as he did in 2023. Have a look at the season snap percentages over the last three years among WRs:
2021
| WR Xavier Worthy | 674 | 85.21% |
| WR Joshua Moore | 432 | 54.61% |
| WR Marcus Washington | 408 | 51.58% |
| WR Jordan Whittington | 273 | 34.51% |
| WR Kelvontay Dixon | 132 | 16.69% |
| WR Al'Vonte Woodard | 31 | 3.92% |
| WR Kai Money | 15 | 1.90% |
| WR Montrell Estell | 12 | 1.52% |
| WR Travis West | 12 | 1.52% |
| WR Kartik Akkihal | 4 | 0.51% |
| WR Parker Alford | 3 | 0.38% |
| WR Paxton Anderson | 2 | 0.25% |
2022
| WR Jordan Whittington | 698 | 88.92% |
| WR Xavier Worthy | 644 | 82.04% |
| WR Casey Cain | 214 | 27.26% |
| WR Tarique Milton | 137 | 17.45% |
| WR Savion Red | 62 | 7.90% |
| WR Brenen Thompson | 44 | 5.61% |
| WR Gabe Sulser | 28 | 3.57% |
| WR Troy Omeire | 22 | 2.80% |
| WR Agiye Hall | 10 | 1.27% |
| WR Paxton Anderson | 3 | 0.38% |
| WR Jaden Alexis | 3 | 0.38% |
2023
| WR AD Mitchell | 710 | 86.06% |
| WR Xavier Worthy | 677 | 82.06% |
| WR Jordan Whittington | 431 | 52.24% |
| WR Johntay Cook | 98 | 11.88% |
| WR Deandre Moore | 47 | 5.70% |
| WR Casey Cain | 44 | 5.33% |
| WR Isaiah Neyor | 6 | 0.73% |
| WR Ryan Niblett | 4 | 0.48% |
In his least-concentrated year of WR snap-allocation (2021) Sark's fifth receiver by snap-rate (Kelvontay Dixon) played under 17% of snaps and even that number was surely elevated due to his WR4 (Jordan Whittington)'s season ending in the seventh game of the year due to injury. Even if Texas does manage to bring its frontline guys (and three are going to have to be chosen as those frontline guys) down as far as snap percentage to 70% or so for the top two outside guys and around the usual 50-55% for the slot, that still really only frees up an extra total of around 25-30% of the pie to get divvied up among the three guys who are on the bubble.
In that case, we're looking at an average snap percentage for WR4 + WR5 being at around 30% of total snaps across three seasons. Remember, that's before we even get into WR6. But for these purposes, let's just talk about the first 2 into the game after the starting three: If we give each one of these two in 2024 a 15% snap rate to start, then tack on that extra 25-30% total we're talking about from decreasing frontline starter snaps fairly significantly (not a guarantee by any means), we'd be looking at these two second-line contributors probably playing at 27-30% of snaps, assuming those vacated snaps as being split perfectly evenly, (which is also not a guarantee). WR4 and WR5 will be in a dogfight to find out who is going to be -- at most -- a semi-significant contributor. And, again, we haven't even started trying to figure out how to find snaps for the sixth man.
The bottom line is that, barring injury, one of these very good players is going to get squeezed.
