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As always, we'll give some quick analysis along with the tiered rankings from the Spring Game that are derived via a proprietary scoring formula, and based on the following advanced charting statistics (please note the distinctions in how tackles, etc. are counted and why these stats will always differ from the official university stats):
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DEEP DIG DEFENSIVE LEGEND
***Also, Please note: -1 point has been added for any defensive penalty outside of defensive pass interference which is always considered a coverage burn and is not double-counted. Also, please note that missed tackles that result in blown contains are counted as blown contains (-1) and are not double-counted as both a blown contain and a missed tackle.
Also, please note that exact snap-count numbers may differ from other sources at times, as the Deep Dig does not count plays as defensive player snaps that are blown dead due to penalty, punts, opponent victory formations, opponent kneel downs, opponent spiked balls, extra points or other plays where the player is not technically playing on defense***
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Quick Hits and Thoughts
- When Alfred Collins scores a pick-six on one of his 4 defensive snaps in the ball game, of course he's likely to be the team leader in production and his snaps-per-production caused is going to be absolutely wild, being such a small sample, there's not much we can take from it except that Collins was Johnny on the Spot and capitalized on a monster play during his limited playing time.
- The opposite side of variance can be applied to Barryn Sorrell, who also didn't play much in the game, but in so doing, had a missed tackle to pair with one assist which left him in the negative-production tier. Sorrell is one of the best players on the Texas defense, of course, so his bad score here in the system should be taken with a grain of salt. Anthony Hill didn't play much, either nor David Gbenda. Through the course of a real game, we know that Hill, and to a lesser degree, Gbenda, will be more productive and efficient than what we saw in the scrimmage.
- The real story of the spring game was the edge-rush play across both squads, even in the absence of stud transfer Trey Moore, who did not play. Collin Simmons (who was technically on the white team at the BUCK end, but played virtually all his snaps with the ones) and Colton Vasek (who played the JACK DE role for the white team more than any other player) were major standouts both volume and efficiency wise. Simmons was slightly better efficiency-wise and proved to be a guy who looks like he'll simply have to play this year, and possibly a lot. Simmons had a sack on Cam Williams with a speed rush as well as two separate QB "hits" that could have fairly easily been called as sacks as well as an additional QB pressure to tack on to one run-stuff, one solo tackle and two assists. He was everywhere, and it wasn't always against backup OLs. Vasek had his own coming out party with two sacks (he was only credited with one by the staff, but definitely did touch the QB before the ball left his hands on another play), 2 TFLs and one additional solo tackle.
- On top of this, Tausili Akana is a name we don't mention much, but he showed some real zip off the edge getting one sack on his own and getting in on another played blown dead with Wardell Mack in the backfield. Zina Omeozulu (who played at both the JACK and the BUCK through the scrimmage) had a TFL, a run-stuff, a PBU and an assisted tackle on just 28 snaps and would have been more in the total production tier of Akana had he not committed two penalties (one illegal hands to the face against Trevor Goosby on the Thatcher Milton TD and one facemask deep in the second half).
- Jelani McDonald had one horrible open-field whiff on Ky Woods that you may remember, but was largely solid and downright impressive at times other than that. He tattooed Amari Niblack on one play and had three solo tackles in total as well as the game-ending INT which, admittedly, did juice his score a good bit.
- Michael Taaffe, Xavier Filsaime, Wardell Mack, Gavin Holmes and Terrence Brooks all had coverage burns. Anyone who watched the spring game was thrilled with the QB play of Arch Manning and Trey Owens, but it came with some trouble on the back end. But it wasn't all miscommunications and screw-ups like we saw with Brooks early on in the Manning bomb to Deandre Moore or the Wardell Mack botched assignment with Jordon Johnson-Rubell on the red-zone TD to Ryan Wingo out of the slot (BTW-WINGO IN THE SLOT, GUYS?!) Sometimes guys just got run by and burned the old-fashioned way.
- Kobe Black was a definite bright spot. He was targeted in coverage 4 times and only allowed one completion while also getting a nice pick. We should be on the lookout for Black to get on a Manny Muhammad-like path to heavy run during his freshman season. Terrence Brooks was not horrible in the spring game, but the same issues we saw in 2023 continue: he's good until he's not. In this game, he was bad at first and then pretty good the rest of the way. He, as usual, had one of the more impressive completion percentages allowed when clearly targeted in the spring game (25% - tied for best among outside CBs with Black) just like he did in the 2023 regular season (41% - team-best among outside CBs). But it's the coverage burns that got him last year and he needs to be more consistent in 2024 about giving up these huge chunk plays. He was burned once every 81 snaps in the 2023 season which was second-worst only behind Ryan Watts (74) among outside CBs, whereas Manny Muhammad (362) and Gavin Holmes (281) were much less prone to the big blowups.
- With the addition of Trey Moore and the emergence of pass-rushers of all stripes and positions on the depth chart (along with a full summer and fall camp to get things cleaned up on the back end - including time to develop for guys like Black), one lesson the spring game may have taught us on defense is that we may actually see pressure on the opposing QB that acts as a crutch in helping out the secondary in its coverage schemes. It's been a while since we could say something like that about the edge-rush at Texas.
Onward to the offense.
