THREE THINGS WE LEARNED
1. Anthony Cook will visit Texas next weekend, and it feels like the Horns have ground to make up
Houston Lamar five-star cornerback Anthony Cook will take an official visit to UT next weekend (September 29), and Cook confirmed to OB again late last week that he’ll be announcing his decision on October 30. Texas, Ohio State and LSU are the three schools he’s still considering.
Cook said prior to the Longhorns’ game against Southern Cal that he need to see major improvements from Texas for the Longhorns to even have a chance. It makes sense since he was in the stands for the Maryland game.
Texas held up its end of the bargain on Saturday night, particularly on defense, outperforming an extremely talented USC offense and nearly stealing a win on the road. Was that performance enough to give Texas a fighting chance, and can the Longhorns win Cook over during his upcoming official visit?
The 6-1, 170-pound Cook keeps a pretty tight lid on what he’s thinking so it is tough to pin down which way he might be leaning, but there are a few things I feel pretty confident about after having covered him for a while. Cook wants to play for a program that he knows will be competing for championships and he wants to play for a staff that will give him the best shot to make it to the NFL. Ohio State, more than Texas or LSU, offers those elements in spades and it’s the biggest reason I’ve had the Buckeyes as the team to beat going back to this summer. Not to mention, when I’ve talked to Cook at various recruiting events this year, he just seems to have a different personality when discussing what Ohio State brings to the table compared to most other programs.
Texas is still in the mix here and can sell him on the virtues of staying close to home, helping turn the program around and early playing time. One would think that having Al’Vonte Woodard on UT’s commitment list, and D’Shawn Jamison strongly considering Texas, would weigh heavily in the Longhorns’ favor, but Cook is not necessarily a player who is going to let the decisions of his high school teammates impact his choice. In fact, according to some I’ve talked to who know him much better than me, he’s as likely to go his own direction and blaze his own path as he is to play with his Houston-area friends.
Cook really does like the UT staff and one would have to think LSU’s chances took a bit of a hit after the Tigers laid an egg last week at Mississippi State, but it still does feel like the Longhorns will have to hit it out of the park on his official visit this weekend if Texas is going to win out. Bringing in a recruit on a weekend when there’s no actual game isn’t exactly ideal, but the remaining weekends before he announces are running out and the bright side of Texas being off next weekend is that Cook will have the staff’s undivided attention. Let’s see if it’s enough to elevate UT’s standing with one of the country’s top overall prospects.
2. It has a chance to be a fairly active recruiting week
With Texas being off next weekend, the coaching staff should be on the road to see several of its top targets play and it won’t be a surprise to see a few new names surface.
Texas offered JUCO offensive lineman Badara Traore on Friday, and with UT’s need for both offensive linemen and defensive linemen in this year’s recruiting class, I’d think there will be a good chance the UT coaches will make several stops to key players’ games next weekend.
I’d expect Texas will make guys like Bobby Brown, Joseph Ossai and Ronnie Perkins priorities, and a trip to Utah to see Junior Angilau would seem to be a good investment of Derek Warehime’s time. Texas will be in attendance for the Clear Springs-Houston Westfield game to check on Keondre Coburn, and that game could be interesting because it will also feature offensive lineman Garrett Nickelson (younger brother of Tristan Nickelson), who has been on the fringe of UT’s radar and could catch the coaches’ eyes with a dominating performance. Along with Coburn, it would be beneficial to see most of the commitments, including both out-of-state quarterbacks, but there’s only so much time available so it’ll be interesting to see how the coaches map things out.
This won’t be the type of weekend that will be a tipping point for any one player, but Texas making some key appearances at games can only help build a foundation that could pay off down the road.
3. The quarterback situation seems as confusing as ever
There was some hope that Texas’ quarterback questions may have been answered heading into the off week, but the situation remains extremely cloudy.
Best case scenario … had Sam Ehlinger gone out against USC and played at a high level over the course of the game, that would have made for an easy decision moving forward.
Silver lining scenario … had Ehlinger played poorly in his first real test, it would have made for a long Saturday night in The Coliseum, but it would have made the coaches’ decision on the quarterback a much easier one to tackle.
Instead, it was a mixed bag from Ehlinger, who played at well below a winning level in the first half, but did finish strongly enough that he undoubtedly regained a lot of the staff’s confidence once the game was over.
Tom Herman did say after the game that once Shane Buechele was back to 100 percent strength, he would be re-inserted with the starters at practice but as Herman has mentioned before, that can change from day to day and it feels like Buechele’s status atop the pecking order is dubious at best.
As I’ve said for the past couple weeks, I’m not sure what the right answer is for the long-term. I do feel Buechele is the safer bet after seeing the offense’s struggles for most of the USC game, but Ehlinger did flash enough that it makes you wonder what he might be able to accomplish if the job was his over the rest of the season. The one thing I feel should be obvious to everyone is that Ehlinger is a much better player – both as a passer and a runner – when he’s allowed to be aggressive and the coaches open up the playbook. I get that he’s a true freshman so there’s a natural tendency to be conservative (most offensive coaches are usually conservative by nature anyway), but Ehlinger showed late in the game that he could handle pressure situations and he can make good decisions with the ball when he’s given a healthy dose of passing plays. Whether it’s Ehlinger or Buechele in the game, I’d love to see the coaches be much more aggressive early on and have confidence in their quarterbacks handling the workload rather than playing in a way that feels like they’re trying not to lose instead of trying to go for the opponents’ throat.
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TWO QUESTIONS
1. Can the Texas offensive line hold up with Connor Williams expected to miss extended action?
In case you were living under a rock the past couple days, Texas announced on Sunday that tackle Connor Williams sustained sprained ligaments in his left knee as well as a meniscus tear. He’ll undergo arthroscopic surgery and miss an undisclosed amount of time.
Where do things now stand, and are there any strings that can be pulled to shore up a unit that is dangerously thin?
Unbelievably, Texas has now lost both projected starting tackles, which saw Denzel Okafor forced into extended action at right tackle against USC and Tristan Nickelson forced to play out of his element at left tackle. As one might expect, both players had some issues against a good USC defense, but it wasn’t just on the exterior of the line where Texas was having trouble - the issues are more visible when the tackles struggle, but the interior linemen weren’t much better.
Unfortunately for Texas, there is no quick fix available, and the Longhorns are going to have to make do with what they have by finding a way to get the most out of their healthy players and scheme around the offensive line’s weaknesses.
As it stands this week, the Longhorns have all of five linemen they can really count on, and Tom Herman said on Monday he doesn’t expect any significant changes in personnel.
“We can’t go on the waiver wire and go get a free agent. The five guys that finished the game will be the five guys that start (against Iowa State),” Herman said.
Texas could get Terrell Cuney back before Iowa State, which would help along the interior. At tackle, redshirt freshman J.P. Urquidez and true freshman Derek Kerstetter will be given crash courses to get them as ready as possible, but Herman admitted that if either freshman is required to play in place of Okafor or Nickelson, it’s a bad sign for Texas.
“We have plenty (linemen) on scholarship. Do we feel good about putting them in a game … right now the number is five,” Herman said.
Quietly, Kerstetter did earn some praise during fall camp and may have come in better than advertised, but he is still a true freshman who is, ideally, a year or two away from being ready to be a starter for a program like Texas. He and Urquidez are listed at 285 and 280 pounds, respectively, and while they both move pretty well, neither is quite ready for the type of players they’ll see on a weekly basis in Big 12 play.
Curiously absent from the offensive line discussion is Alex Anderson, who did play some against San Jose State in week two.
Bottom line … Texas is suddenly paper-thin along the offensive line, and another injury, particularly at tackle, would be catastrophic for the offense.
2. Will Rondale Moore stick with his UT commitment?
The talk of Texas commitment Rondale Moore not being solid with his commitment has really escalated over the past couple weeks, after Moore took an unofficial visit to Ohio State to watch the Buckeyes take on Oklahoma.
Purdue seems to be the team being discussed the most, with Moore strongly considering the idea of staying closer to his Louisville home.
Here’s what I know …
When I last talked to Moore about one month ago, he mentioned Purdue, Georgia, Ohio State and Missouri as schools who were still recruiting him. But he mentioned only one, Purdue, as a school he would “definitely” visit. So his interest in the Boilermakers, despite his UT commitment, has been on the table for a while.
How strong is his interest? I haven’t connected with Moore, but reading between the lines, it sure feels like something is up. The speedster receiver has always been easily accessible for me via a quick phone call or text, but he has gone completely silent on me the past few weeks. Maybe he’s just busy … maybe he lost his phone. It could be nothing, but in my experience in covering recruiting for a couple decades, when there’s talk of a recruit wavering on his commitment and that recruit suddenly goes silent, it usually indicates that there’s some legitimate smoke to the story.
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ONE PREDICTION – Texas gets the win against Iowa State, but it won’t be a thing of beauty
My predictions on the scores of the UT games and my match-ups haven’t exactly been stellar through three weeks, but my gut instinct on how each game would play out (in the most general of terms) has been fairly solid.
We’re still nine days out from the Iowa State game so I may change my mind, but my gut is telling me the Longhorns are going to be in for a bit of a dogfight in that contest. As a rule of thumb, I always like Thursday night home underdogs because of the energy with which they usually play. Check for Iowa State. And Texas, despite losing last week, is in a bit of a “trap game” situation, with three very tough opponents on the schedule following ISU. Combine those factors and I think it could be a game that is tight for four quarters, but I do think the Longhorns play well enough to come out with the win.
