‘Phenomenal’: LSU’s Jayden Daniels plays the game with reckless abandon
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Alex Scarborough, ESPN Staff Writer
BATON ROUGE, La. — In a scene that’s become all too familiar this season, LSU quarterback Jayden Daniels deftly escaped the pocket only to take off and run with reckless abandon, absorbing the type of body blows that make coaches and fans alike wince.
No, this wasn’t that cringeworthy hit against Florida State or that breathtaking hit against Ole Miss or that freight train of a hit against Mississippi State. This was the shot Daniels took on the road at Missouri, the one that finally knocked him out of the game. After corralling an errant snap, splitting two defenders and cutting upfield, he crossed the goal line for an apparent touchdown. But just as he relaxed and dropped his shoulders into a defenseless posture, linebacker Chuck Hicks came out of nowhere and drilled him squarely in the back and tackled him to the ground.
As tight end Mason Taylor pleaded with officials for a personal foul, Daniels popped up quickly and tried to play it off. But he felt a sharp pain in his ribs growing more acute by the second. Unsteady on his feet, he tapped his helmet to signal he needed a substitution. He fell to a knee about 10 yards short of the sideline, where a pair of trainers huddled around him.
“It’s a TV timeout,” the trainers advised him. “You’ve got time.”
“Nah,” Daniels said. “I’ve got to get off this field.”
If he was going to get looked at, it wasn’t going to be in full view of everyone in the opposing stadium. Best not to let them see him vulnerable.
As he was helped to the privacy of the medical tent, coach Brian Kelly checked on his star QB.
“You good?” Kelly asked. “Can you finish the game?”
“Give me a minute,” Daniels said. “I just need a minute.”
Inside the tent, while his ribs were being examined, Daniels noticed his left hand was swollen. That was new, he thought. “I think it got hit by a helmet,” he said, unsure of when the injury occurred. The trainers asked if he was OK, and he didn’t hesitate. “Yeah,” he told them, “I need to go back out there.”
Backup quarterback Garrett Nussmeier had finished out the series, which continued because of a false start penalty that negated Daniels’ touchdown and ended with a missed field goal. After Missouri went three-and-out, Daniels went back in the game. Four plays later, he threw a strike to Malik Nabers for a 35-yard reception. Every little movement stung, though he tried not to let it show. Throwing the football, he said, “hurt a lot.”
But on third-and-3, Daniels took one step backward, planted his back leg on the Missouri 40-yard line and took off. Bruised ribs and aching hand be damned, he knifed through the front seven, past a hapless linebacker, past a sprinting safety and ran untouched until he was tackled while falling into the end zone to give LSU its first lead of the game.
“I could feel the pain in the moment,” Daniels recalled, “but I had to help my team win.”
LSU did win as Daniels completed 15 of 21 passes for 259 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions. He also ran for 130 yards and a score. Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz found Daniels on the field after the game, gave him a hug and tapped his helmet in a sign of respect. When he met with reporters later, Drinkwitz said Daniels is “as good as any quarterback I’ve ever gone against.”
Kelly handed Daniels the game ball in the locker room and called him a “warrior” a year after wondering if Daniels, at a slender 190 pounds, could handle the job.
The challenge ahead is twofold, beginning with a trip to Alabama on Saturday (7:45 p.m. ET, CBS). The outcome will likely determine LSU’s future as a playoff contender and Daniels’ status as a Heisman Trophy front-runner.
To reach those tandem goals, Daniels will have to keep posting show-stopping numbers and keep getting up after show-stopping hits.
“They’re the No. 1 offensive team in the country and it starts with the quarterback, Jayden Daniels,” Alabama coach Nick Saban said Monday. “I mean, this guy is a phenomenal player.”
KELLY INITIALLY HAD his doubts about Daniels, whether it was his durability or his decision-making. Kelly said they brought Daniels in from Arizona State and weren’t exactly sold that “he’s our guy.”
They weren’t sure he’d beat out Nussmeier for the starting job. When Daniels injured his foot shortly after arriving on campus, Kelly groaned, “Oh, he’s from the West Coast. He’s not very tough.”
Kelly smiled thinking back on that moment. He has never been so happy to be proved wrong.
Kelly said last year’s game between LSU and Alabama provided a sample of what Daniels was capable of.
Daniels remembers standing on the sideline inside Tiger Stadium and watching what seemed impossible as Alabama quarterback Bryce Young followed the five D’s of dodgeball: dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge. The reigning Heisman Trophy winner at the time looked like Houdini as he escaped the LSU pass rush and found a wide-open Ja’Corey Brooks for the go-ahead score with less than five minutes left in the fourth quarter.
Then, Daniels said, Young turned toward the LSU sideline and smirked.
A year later, Daniels remembers it clear as day. The defining moment of the game and that season wasn’t the touchdown and 2-point conversion later in overtime, he said, it was the drive LSU put together in response to Young’s heroics: a methodical seven-play, 75-yard march in less than three minutes, featuring a 31-yard run by Daniels to extend the drive on third down and a 7-yard touchdown pass to retake the lead.
Daniels relished the chance to be a part of what he’d only dreamed of as a kid — Alabama-LSU, at night, in prime time. “Those are the big moments,” he said.
After the game, Daniels and Young spoke. The Southern California natives have known one another since they were in elementary school, competing in youth games and camps. “You know,” Daniels said of last spring’s No. 1 overall pick in the NFL draft, “he’s never beaten me.”
LSU’s 1-point victory over Alabama catapulted the Tigers to the SEC championship game. No one — especially not Kelly — is saying that Daniels was anything other than good during his first season at LSU. He threw for just shy of 3,000 yards, 17 touchdowns and only 3 interceptions. And he ran for a team-high 885 yards. He threw the most catchable ball in the country (83% catchable pass rate).
But he rarely took shots downfield, ranking 103rd in rate of pass attempts 20-plus yards downfield (10.6%).
The lack of explosive plays was a drag on the offense.
During a practice before this season, Kelly said, he pulled Daniels aside.
“This drill,” he told his quarterback, “is set up for you to be aggressive and to make those tough throws. Don’t be afraid to put it into tight coverage. Don’t be afraid to make that throw that is being contested.”
Kelly wanted Daniels to trust his eyes, his arm and his receivers.
“For some reason, everything had to be wide open or it wasn’t open at all,” Kelly said.
Nabers admitted he got frustrated with Daniels’ careful nature as well. The team’s No. 1 receiver recalled another practice this summer when he couldn’t get Daniels to look his way.
“Bro,” Nabers told Daniels, “just throw it up.”
Daniels told Nabers he wasn’t open, and he wasn’t technically wrong. Nabers was garnering a lot of double coverage.
“I don’t care. Just throw it up,” Nabers told him. “They look like they’re beside me, but I’m getting past them.”
Nabers said they watched film together that evening and Nabers pointed out how he was, in fact, pulling away from the defensive backs as the play developed. Nabers said Daniels relented, “All right, I’m going to give you some chances.”
The defense still double-covered Nabers during the next day’s practice, but this time Daniels gave him a chance.
“And he was launching them and I was jumping over people and just making plays,” Nabers recalled, smiling. “I was like, ‘Bro, I told you.'”
Nabers sat in the corner of LSU’s indoor facility last week, looked out on the practice field and reminisced. Because Daniels joined the team so late last year — the day before spring practice — and he wasn’t named the starting quarterback until September, Nabers said they didn’t have the time they needed to get on the same page. But this offseason was different.
They spent so many early mornings out here, Nabers said, running through the entire route tree. Countless reps. Countless conversations. Daniels and his receivers learned about one another over the course of months — on the field and off it. And the result was a combination of chemistry and trust that’s paying off today.
But there was another piece that went into Daniels’ transformation this season. Rarely does a quarterback go from being timid to decisive.
Preparation, Daniels said, has been the key.
IT COULDN’T HAVE been later than 6 a.m., Kelly recalled, noting that the sun hadn’t risen by the time he pulled up to the football facility the morning after the Week 6 Missouri game. As he parked his matte black Tesla, Kelly looked around the mostly empty lot and noticed Daniels’ car.
Checking to make sure Daniels hadn’t left it there the night before, Kelly walked to the quarterback room, where he found Daniels in his own world, watching film.
Daniels not only skipped sleeping off his injuries, he beat almost the entire coaching staff to the office.
“OK,” Kelly said he thought, “this is a little different.”
Kelly said it’s the first time he has ever been surprised like that. And, he added, it’s a credit to the habits Daniels developed this season. It’s like clockwork. Daniels comes in early every morning, watches film on his own and then spends a few hours in the training room before most of his teammates have even started their day. From there, it’s on to practice and then back home.
“He is a pro,” Kelly said. “Everything he does, a pro would do it the same way.”
True to his routine, Daniels was back in the quarterback room on a Wednesday morning during the bye week. A graphic of a pointing Joe Burrow looming large over his right shoulder, Daniels sat down, shut the lights off and began scribbling notes as a recording of the Alabama-Tennessee game played on the projector. It took half the season to fill up his notebook, he said, so he switched to an iPad for more storage.
He put his pen down and gripped a football with both hands as he spoke to a reporter. The light from the projector illuminated the embossed words on the worn leather: “National Football League.”
Yes, Daniels said, he thought long and hard about turning pro after last season. He spent about a week and a half deliberating the pros and cons. Five years of college had seemed like more than enough. But he knew the quarterback class was going to be crowded. Young and Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud would be the first two quarterbacks off the board — “and rightfully so,” he said. While he believed he was just as talented as them, Daniels acknowledged that not everyone felt the same way.
“It wasn’t my time yet,” he said. “It was best for me to come back as one of the few returning starters in the SEC. So it was like, ‘OK, I’m going to come back and not live with any regrets.'”
Kelly didn’t take the decision for granted.
“I thought we had to show him the plan,” he said. “I thought if we didn’t recruit him, if we didn’t show him why we felt it was important for him to be here, if we didn’t open up avenues for NIL, if we didn’t do those things, I think it could have made it easier for him to go.”
Kelly paused for a moment when asked whether Daniels is making more money now than he would have as a rookie in the NFL.
“Yes,” he said.
Daniels acknowledged that NIL made his choice to come back easier, but that it wasn’t the end-all, be-all. He knew he had room to improve if he was going to leave no doubt that he was worthy of a high draft pick. “I wanted to take my game to the next level,” he said.
So he changed his practice habits, getting in early each day. He also incorporated virtual reality training, donning a headset three times a week to get a better feel for the defenses that he’ll face and the look and feel of opposing stadiums.
He did some serious self-scouting as well, he said. And what he found was that while he could recognize the coverage and spot the open receiver, he was too hesitant.
“It’s a mental battle,” he said. “My preparation, that’s what made me confident. Last year, I was thinking a lot while I was playing. This year, I just wanted to go out there, play football, just play fast and have fun.”
Daniels has made a Burrow-esque Year 2 leap. He’s tied for the FBS lead in touchdown passes (25) — despite throwing only three interceptions — and ranks second in Total QBR (91.8). His rate of passes thrown 20 or more yards downfield per game has gone up from 10.6 to 14.9; no one has more completions of 20-plus yards this season (49).
If he’d turned pro and spent the year as a backup, he might never have gotten the reps needed to develop a more well-rounded game. In conversations with scouts, Kelly said he has told them, “You won’t have to worry about who’s first in, who’s last to leave, the tone in your locker room. You already have a pro.”
DANIELS BROKE INTO the open field against Auburn and decided, now’s the time.
He was going to show Nussmeier and the rest of the quarterbacks they were wrong about his inability to slide. But to quote the immortal Woody in “Toy Story,” what happened next wasn’t exactly a textbook slide. It was more like Daniels was “falling with style.”
“I turn to the sideline and everybody’s cheering,” Daniels recalled.
But they were laughing, too.
“It was awful,” Kelly said.
He asked Daniels whether he’d played baseball before. Daniels shook his head no.
“It looks like it,” Kelly told him.
So maybe he slides differently than most people, Daniels said, “but it’s effective.”
“It still worked out the same way,” he added. “I still pop right back up.”
True. But Kelly and the rest of the coaches are glad he’s at least making an effort to get down and protect himself from those big hits. They marvel how, given his slight frame, he keeps popping back up. A staff member compared him to Gumby — you can’t break bones that aren’t there.
Strength and conditioning staffers have told Kelly that although Daniels — standing 6-foot-4 — weighs only about 190 pounds, his body density is close to 170.
“He just needs to take what’s available and then be smart,” Kelly said. “I think he’s more aware of it now, and hopefully he’ll continue to make a better choice than getting cut in half.”
Daniels knows it’s a long season and he needs to protect himself.
“If we want to accomplish what we need to accomplish,” he said, “I need to be healthy.”
But just as he has to be unafraid in the passing game, he can’t be timid tucking the ball and running. He can’t help that he’s hardwired to fight for extra yards. It’s a product, he said, of playing defense growing up.
“I’ve always been a fearless runner,” he said. “Even though I’m a quarterback now, I was never afraid of contact.”
As a kid, he played in the streets of San Bernardino, California, where he said the rule was if it’s not broken, “shake it off.” After you get over the initial shock of a big hit, he added, the pain is usually manageable.
“He’s a tough kid,” Kelly said. “Tougher than I ever thought he was.”
The team, in turn, feeds off that toughness.
“I don’t know what he’s been throughout his life, but when you come to Louisiana, we’re different,” Nabers said. “When we play football, we don’t care. We don’t care if we got a bump or bruise. We don’t care if we got a hurt ankle, we’re going to get back up and we still keep going. So I think that he found his Louisiana way. That’s him showing that, ‘I’m from Cali, but I’m in The Boot now.'”
No one appreciates it more than Nabers when Daniels hangs in the pocket and throws passes deep downfield. But he’s no different from the rest of us when Daniels flees the pocket. He becomes a fan. He said he’ll catch himself thinking, “Oh, he’s breaking out, he’s juking, he just broke a tackle.”
“He’ll be flying,” Nabers said, forgetting that he needs to transition into a blocker.
And then Daniels runs into traffic, and Nabers is a fan all over again — this time a concerned one. He’ll find himself shouting, “Dude, go down, go down.”
“Damn,” he said, thinking back to one of those midair collisions, “that’s got to hurt.
“He said it doesn’t hurt. But I’m like, ‘Yeah, but one of them will.'”
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Katherine Terrell, ESPN Staff Writer
The Kentucky Derby has been held annually at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky, since 1875 and is the oldest continually run sporting event in the United States.
It is traditionally held on the first Saturday in May and is the beginning leg of a three-race series called the Triple Crown. The series also consists of the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes, which is run over a duration of five weeks between May and June. The three races are exclusively for fillies and colts in their 3-year-old seasons. Horses gain entry to the 20-horse Kentucky Derby field via a point system determined by their finish in select races in their 2- and 3-year-old seasons.
The Kentucky Derby purse is $5 million this year, which is distributed to the top-five finishers. First place will receive $3.1 million, the runner-up will get $1 million and the third-place finisher will receive $500,000.
What happened at last year’s Kentucky Derby?
Mage won last year’s running at 15-1 odds over Two Phil’s and favored Angel of Empire. National Empire won the Preakness (Mage finished third) and Arcangelo won the Belmont Stakes.
Mage has since been retired, as has Forte, who was the morning line favorite for the 2023 Kentucky Derby before he was scratched by the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission on the morning of the race because of a bruised foot.
What is new for this year?
The Belmont Stakes, the final jewel of the Triple Crown and typically the longest race of the trio at 1½ miles, will be run at Saratoga Race Course in Saratoga Springs, New York, this year due to renovations at Belmont Park in Elmont, New York.
The race will be run on June 8 and shortened to 1¼ miles, the first time outside of the COVID-shortened running in 2020 that it will not be run at the traditional distance since 1925. Churchill Downs also opened a new, $200 million paddock ahead of the Kentucky Derby after two years of construction.
Who’s in and who’s out this year?
Trainer Bob Baffert, who won the Derby six times between 1997 and 2021, remains banned from running horses at tracks owned by Churchill Downs Inc., after the company extended Baffert’s ban through 2024.
Baffert was initially suspended in 2021 after Medina Spirit failed a postrace drug test and was later disqualified. Mandaloun was placed first after Medina Spirit’s DQ.
Medina Spirit died of a heart attack while training on Dec. 6, 2021. Baffert currently trains Arkansas Derby winner Muth, who ran second in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile in the fall. A Kentucky appeals court judge recently denied a request by Muth’s owner, Zendan Racing Stables (who also owned Medina Spirit), to overturn the ban.
Baffert won the Kentucky Derby with Silver Charm (1997), Real Quiet (1998), War Emblem (2002), American Pharoah (2015), Justify (2018) and Authentic (2020).
Justify and American Pharoah, who are now retired to Ashford Stud in Kentucky, were the 12th and 13th Triple Crown winners. However, Justify was retroactively disqualified from the 2018 Santa Anita Derby in March because of a failed drug test that year.
Although Justify’s status as a Triple Crown winner is unchanged, his disqualification means that he would not have had the points to qualify for the Kentucky Derby that year.
The 30-year-old Silver Charm is now the oldest living Derby winner and resides at Old Friends Farm in Kentucky.
How did the horses get here?
Sierra Leone enters the Kentucky Derby as the points leader with 155 points due to his wins in the Risen Star Stakes and Blue Grass Stakes.
Fierceness, the winner of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, was second in points with a win in the Florida Derby and a third-place finish in the Holy Bull Stakes. Catching Freedom was third in the points rankings after winning the Smarty Jones Stakes, placing third in the Risen Star and winning the Louisiana Derby.
T.O. Password enters the race via the Japan Road to the Kentucky Derby, a series of races held in Japan that allows one horse entry into the race. Undefeated Forever Young, also a Japanese-bred horse, gained entry via a win in the UAE Derby. The UAE Derby has not yet produced a Kentucky Derby winner.
What is the story with this year’s race?
While the 2023 Kentucky Derby had an unprecedented five scratches, it’s been a quiet lead-up to the 2024 running, with one scratch as of Thursday morning.
Encino, a 20-1 long shot trained by Brad Cox, was scratched Tuesday, allowing Epic Ride to draw into the field coming off a third-place finish in the Toyota Blue Grass Stakes. Encino was supposed to start from post No. 9, but now all the horses outside of Encino’s old post will move one slot toward the inner rail. Epic Ride will take over the No. 20 post.
That could be good for Fierceness, who originally was supposed to break from post No. 17, which has never produced a winner from 44 starters. Forty Niner came in second from that spot in 1988. Fierceness will now break from post No. 16, which has produced four winners.
“I’m fine with the post,” Fierceness’ trainer Todd Pletcher said after the draw. “There’s a long enough run into the first turn to hopefully establish position.”
Sierra Leone (3-1), the second choice on the morning line, will still start from the No. 2 spot. The last horse to win from the No. 2 position was Triple Crown winner Affirmed in 1978 with only 11 horses in the field.
“Sierra Leone, he’s in just a touch farther in than I wanted but he didn’t get the one hole so I’m OK with that,” trainer Chad Brown said after the draw on Saturday. “With this particular horse, what I didn’t want was the 19 or 20. In fact, it would have been hard for him to drop over without losing ground, significant ground around the first turn.”
Ferdinand won from the No. 1 post in 1986 with only 16 horses in the field. Dornach (20-1) will break from that spot this year.
Post positions matter in a 20-horse field such as the Derby, as no other race in the United States has that many horses running at one time.
The inside posts such as No. 1 and No. 2 are difficult to win from because horses that break from that position often run into traffic jams from other horses trying to get onto the rail, the shortest distance around the track.
Churchill Downs had to use an auxiliary starting gate until 2019 to account for the extra horses, which caused a gap between the No. 14 and No. 15 spots. They have used a 20-horse starting gate since 2020 for this race.
The far outside posts pose their own challenges too, as the horse on the outside will have to use a lot of speed early to cut across the track and ahead of the pack or go far back to stay behind the traffic.
Epic Ride will be one of three horses in the race who have 50-1 morning line odds, along with Society Man, who will break from post No. 19 and West Saratoga, who will break from the No. 12 spot.
Rich Strike won from post position No. 20 in 2022 at 80-1 odds after drawing into the race late due to scratches.
How often do the favorites win?
The morning line favorite is not necessarily the horse that will be favored by the betting public when the race goes off. Instead, it’s a prediction by the track’s oddsmaker of how the public will bet.
The morning line favorite won five times between 2013 to 2018, almost perfectly lining up with the actual betting favorites with the exception of 2017. Classic Empire was 4-1 on the morning line that year but Always Dreaming was the 4-1 favorite at race time (and winner).
Neither the morning line favorite nor the betting favorite has won since Justify in 2018, although two-morning line favorites were scratched before the race (Forte in 2023 and Omaha Beach in 2019.)
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Heather Dinich, ESPN Senior Writer
AUSTIN, Texas — Texas coach Steve Sarkisian blows his whistle, calling for the Longhorns to begin “two-spotting” — the simultaneous 11-on-11 drills during spring practice. On one side of the field, his first- and second-string players face each other; on the other, his third- and fourth-string. Everyone practices at once, not just the top players on the depth chart as is often the case.
Entering its fourth season under Sarkisian — and the school’s first in the SEC — Texas is deep enough to lose a school-record 11 players in the first six rounds of last month’s NFL draft and still have enough remaining talent to make a second straight run at the College Football Playoff, according to those within the program. They have arguably the best quarterback room in the country, headlined by starter Quinn Ewers and second-year mega recruit Arch Manning. It wasn’t always this way.
“This is what I always hoped it could be like here,” Sarkisian said, “in that you lose an abundance of really good players to the NFL and then we reload it with players that some might be better than those guys that moved on.”
It took three straight top-five recruiting classes to build and patience from one of the most infamously impatient fan bases. Now, even ahead of an arduous SEC schedule after losing multiple first-round NFL draft picks for the first time since 2007, Texas has a legitimate chance to make a run at a national title — four seasons after an abysmal 5-7 record to start the Sarkisian era.
“We’ve recruited in a way that there’s definitely talent, but I would say we never have sacrificed character for talent, and I think that was definitely a little bit of the secret sauce,” Sarkisian said. “There were a lot of great players, but we wanted to make sure the players we brought into our program, their character matched our culture. You never know why you’re hired until you actually look behind the curtain and you’re like, ‘Ok, what are the issues, what are the warts?’ Some of those warts and issues don’t get exposed until adversity strikes. Quite frankly I felt like culturally, we have to get this right. That was such a big investment we were making in Year 1, but we really made that investment in Year 2 and Year 3.
“Now we’ve got the talent and the culture, and I don’t know if I could’ve said either of those two things quite frankly early on, but now we’ve gotten ourselves to that point.”
3:15
Oklahoma, Texas join the celebration of SEC spring games
The Sooners and Longhorns, who will begin play in the SEC this fall, join Mississippi State, South Carolina and Texas A&M in hitting the field for spring football.
It’s been a measurable climb on and off the field. Not only did the Longhorns finish with a 3-6 record in the Big 12 in 2021, they also didn’t have any players drafted — and they finished with a 2.33 team grade point average, according to Sarkisian. In his second season, Texas finished 8-5 with a 2.78 team GPA and five players drafted.
Last year, Texas finished 12-2 with a 2.98 GPA and the aforementioned 11 drafted players. Its resounding 34-24 win at Alabama in Week 2 made an early statement in the CFP race, and ultimately — along with the school’s first Big 12 title since 2009 — that win earned Texas the No. 3 seed and a trip to a CFP semifinal, where it fell six points shy of No. 2 Washington.
Sixth-year linebacker David Gbenda said the win in Tuscaloosa gave the Longhorns the confidence to win at a higher level.
“We managed to go toe-to-toe with a great team,” said Gbenda, who had six tackles (three solo) and a sack for a 10-yard loss at Alabama.
After the season, Sarkisian was rewarded with a four-year contract extension that takes him through 2030 — a rare sign of commitment in Austin. Not since Mack Brown (1998-2013) has a coach lasted more than four seasons at Texas, as Charlie Strong was fired after two and Tom Herman was fired after four.
Gbenda said it wasn’t exactly a “smooth transition,” but now they understand what it takes.
“It was a culture shock when he came in, because he did things a lot differently,” Gbenda said. “‘All gas, no brakes’ is not something he just says — he means that in everything we do. … Year 3 is the year we finally had the right pieces and the right guys.”
If Texas is going to build on last season’s success, beating the likes of Alabama is only the beginning. This year the Longhorns will host Georgia on Oct. 19 in what will be one of the most consequential games of the season. They also have November trips to Arkansas and Texas A&M — plus the annual rivalry against OU — and travel to defending national champion Michigan in Week 2. Texas is the only team in the country that will play the past three national champions this season, as it faces both Georgia (2021, 2022) and Michigan (2023).
The Longhorns return four of five starting offensive linemen, a unit the coaching staff emphasized building since its first recruiting class. Texas has also been meticulous about its use of the transfer portal, luring in speed and experience at wide receiver and depth at defensive tackle, where Texas needed it most. And of course, there’s that quarterback room.
What the Longhorns lost is nothing to scoff at, as they have to replace their top five receivers in both receptions and yards, and the returners accounted for just 16% of the receiving yards last year. That position, though, might be the best example of how Texas has combined its high school recruiting, the transfer portal and player development to establish a room capable of saying farewell to first-round NFL draft pick Xavier Worthy and second-round pick Adonai Mitchell without flinching.
Alabama transfer receiver Isaiah Bond was considered by many the top receiver in the transfer portal, and he joins Oregon State transfer receiver Silas Bolden and Houston transfer Matthew Golden as members of 2024 Texas. Last season, Bond and Bolden led their respective teams in receiving yards. They’re all talented enough to start, but they’re in good company with players like Johntay Cook II and DeAndre Moore, who have been waiting in the wings — and true freshman phenom Ryan Wingo, who is capable of earning a starting role.
According to ESPN’s Bill Connelly, Texas ranks No. 38 in the country in overall returning production (67%) and seventh in SEC. The other CFP semifinals from last season rank 101st (Alabama), 128th (Washington) and 131st (Michigan).
According to Connelly, the Longhorns have stocked their returning production drastically since Sarkisian’s first season when they were 120th in the country. In 2022, that jumped to 62nd in the FBS. Last season, they were 15th in returning production, including No. 3 in the country on offense (85%).
That type of depth is what allowed Texas to run its “two-spotting” drill this spring, and have a true spring game with substitutions.
“I can have one field with 22 guys a snap, working,” Sarkisian said. “Well, that means I’ve got 100 guys watching. Or I can have two fields and now I have 44 guys working. Dramatic difference. And then when they go watch the tape, they’re watching themselves, not somebody else.
“We’ve always been trying to do it, and every team tries, but a lot of times that second field doesn’t have enough linemen or things. We’ve done a good job of balancing our roster at multiple positions to where we can do that. We’ve probably done it more in spring practice than we ever have at anywhere I’ve really been.”
Not that the new faces don’t have something to prove.
Gone is Byron Murphy II, the Big 12’s defensive lineman of the year, along with defensive tackle T’Vondre Sweat, the league’s 2023 defensive player of the year, and linebacker Jaylan Ford. That means an opportunity for linebacker Anthony Hill Jr., who was named the Big 12’s co-defensive freshman of the year. His five sacks were the most by a Texas freshman since 2000.
Texas finished with the No. 5 recruiting class in the country for 2024, luring in 14 ESPN 300 commits. Sarkisian’s 2023 class was No. 3 in the country, inking Manning, who is still the biggest quarterback name on a collegiate roster. In 2022, Sarkisian’s first full recruiting class as head coach, he had the No. 5 class and added Ewers into the class after he transferred from Ohio State. That was also the class four-star offensive tackle Kelvin Banks, who committed to Texas on the heels of the five-win season.
The two recruiting classes before those three ranked No. 15 and No. 9 by ESPN.
Banks said a big reason he bought into Sarkisian’s philosophy was because former offensive lineman Christian Jones was proof of player development. Jones was recently drafted by the Arizona Cardinals in the fifth round.
“He had a down year and the next year he went crazy, absolutely crazy,” Banks said. “He had a great year, was high in the rankings as an offensive tackle. Just seeing that and him as well telling me and giving me all the information, everything that was going on, it made me feel like, if he’s doing it, why can’t I do it, too? … Listening, doing it and seeing it working all helped me along the way buy into the process.”
Discipline has been part of that process, the players said, agreeing that Sarkisian is a stickler for uniformity. Tuck the shirt in, take the earrings out, wear the same socks. Get to class on time. Clean up the locker room, close the locker doors, don’t leave tape lying around.
“How are you going to do the big things when it’s quarter four, it’s a long drive and you’re expected to be relied upon and you can’t even pick up your tape?” Gbenda said. “That’s the standard we try to build here, the standard of excellence on and off the field. Sark is really big on that. He doesn’t like playing with jerks or people he can’t rely on. Trust is a big thing in this program.”
Texas hasn’t been without incident, as Sweat, the Outland Trophy winner, was booked into jail after an arrest for driving while intoxicated. Linebacker S’Maje Burrell has since been identified as the driver of the vehicle that hit the SUV Sweat was driving. Police said Sweat was driving a Ford Bronco when he was hit from behind, causing him to lose control, veer off onto a service road and roll the car onto its side. When police responded at 4:41 a.m., the other driver, later identified as Burrell, had left the scene.
On April 10, Sarkisian released a statement saying the school had suspended Burrell from all team activities due to “conduct detrimental to the program.” Burrell has since entered the transfer portal.
Gbenda said anyone who doesn’t follow the rules gets called out by the leaders on the team or position coaches, and some form of individual punishment is done “off to the side.” If a player doesn’t get the message and is a repeat offender, the whole position group gets punished, Gbenda said.
“After a point in time,” he said, “if you’re not getting the message, everybody around you will understand the message.”
The Longhorns are still searching for their first national title since 2005 — the ultimate proof that Texas is indeed “back.” The CFP will unveil a 12-team format this fall that guarantees the five highest-ranked conference champions a spot in the playoff — making that October home game against Georgia significant to the CFP seeding, as the top four seeds will earn a first-round bye. Banks said the “Texas back” talk infiltrates the locker room, but they try not to get consumed by what people outside the program think.
“As a team we’re very focused,” Banks said. “We’re thriving. It was a little taste last year. We want to reach that national stage. We want to show everybody, ‘Hey, we’re not just going to say we’re back and be here and not show it on the field.’ We want to show people what we’re talking about, that’s what we’re building here.”
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