Texas Second Scrimmage Takeaways

0:00Welcome to the Inside Texas football YouTube channel powered by inside Texas.com. I'm Joe Cook. That's Eric Naline. Thank you for watching. Make sure you like the video. Subscribe to the channel. And of course, subscribe to InsideTexas.com. Use that first link in our description. Use that QR code at the top of the screen. All the latest intel from Texas Spring Practice on Texas Recruiting, Texas Basketball, Texas Baseball, everything over to Inside Texas. And if you were there on Friday night, you would have seen some notes from Eric. If you were there on Saturday morning here today, you would have seen some notes from me about what happened at Texas Scrimmage. Last night, they changed a schedule a little bit, holiday weekend, a little bit of weather, influencing things. Gone on the denious fields on Friday night had a spirited scrimmage. And Eric, we've talked a lot this week about how there's confidence in this team. They feel like Thursday's practice was one of the best. And it seems like this is another good event for Texas, as far as getting through the spring. And feeds into a lot of confidence that the staff really has in this program at the current juncture.

1:02Yeah, yeah, they, um, you know, from, from our sources, they feel like the coaches are on this team and they've had in the past, you know, and we know that they like the 23-24 teams. And then, you know, they felt better about 25 than the results on the field. But they feel this one's the best and the big reason for that is it's not just the talent. Yes, they've accumulated a lot of talent. They've got a number of first rounders for next year. Much different than this year where only Anthony Hill might go in the first round. But a big factor is the maturity and experience of this team is a lot better than it was a year ago. And I think that's pretty obvious just even on the offensive line. You know, you know, he had a bunch of first-time starters last year. Some guys play new positions. This year, they just feel much more better about the overall roster from maturity, experience, standpoint. And then of course, we can all see the talent. Everybody knows that Texas has one of the most talented rosters in college football. If not the most talented. One of the places where that talent really seemed to shine at times on Friday night was in the running back room. And, you know, I like when you get hearing, to get to hearing really,

2:04really good news about a guy, because it's like, okay, I've heard his name over and over. I've heard it again. I've heard it again. How do I maybe temper what is going on in the practice field with maybe some expectations, especially when it's a true freshman. But Derek Cooper had a pretty solid scrimmage as did some of the other running backs. In the scrimmage on Friday night. Yeah, they're, you know, you went on to write that they probably threw it more than they passed it. I kind of had a lot of play anecdotes, you know, plays it took place on the practice field. And then Joe had a lot of the schematic looks of it. So the two pieces, the two intel pieces complemented each other quite well. Yeah, they are extremely hard, Derek Cooper on this. And, you know, not even going to say the stuff I'm hearing about him. But I know that the guy's going to be good. I have no doubt in my mind whenever we hear this much noise about a freshman, they always ball out when we, you know, it was gracing little to an Xavier worthy. It's, whenever we hear this, this amount of noise, the guy's pan out. And so I have no worries about Derek Cooper. I think he's going to play a ton. He's going to play a ton in the first game. And, you know, I mean, if I hadn't seen CJ Baxter start ahead of Jonathan Brooks,

3:06I probably would have never said Cooper would have a chance to start. But I think he's going to, maybe he does have a chance to start. You never know. We're hearing that much noise about him. But he wasn't the only running back. You know, even though they didn't seem like they were more focused on the passing attack, then in the run game in the scrimmage, we heard that Hollywood's mothers had a good run, showed really good speed, Ryan Nibblet had a run, Michael Terry had a 15-yard run. It just kind of feeds in what we've been saying. Where last year is like, you know, they had like one and a half running backs this year. They've got five or six guys that they can, they feel confident, given the ball. One of the other things with that offense and what Steve Sarkeesian's talked about a lot is they're putting archmaning on the pace that they want them to be on. You know, you're putting them into mostly seven on, mostly group work, mostly individual work. But we heard, I heard that he did get an opportunity in 11 on. That's not something Steve Sarkeesian said. Yeah, I think he wanted to have happen. But we know that archmaning is a real big competitor. And one of the other interesting things about archmaning is he had a good series with,

4:09I think the offense on seven on seven. And right after it was done, Will Muschamp comes up to arch and says, you know, hey, what do you see? What do you find? How did you find the pole and the coverage here? And that I think speaks to not only, you know, we've used the term all in so much. But it speaks to just how they're going about doing that. You can put in Max effort. But if you're not using Max efficiency as well, it's, you know, how much utility is there? But when you got the defensive coordinator working with the starting quarterback to figure out where the problems were, it's a good way to illustrate what's going on in on the 40 acres. Yeah, my Muschamp trying to get that fixed right away. So you bet he can't talk to the opposing quarterback during timeouts during the season. But yeah, you like to hear that. And that's, you know, that's, that's, that's an advantage for Muschamp. It's testament to how much he respects arch's mind. And it's also testament to aren't to be able to find those spots to pick apart. On a relatively new defense that he hasn't seen a whole lot of, at least different looks.

5:11You know, he does some of these coverages, but they're mixing it up in different ways than they have in the past. I think he said they used a lot of cover one last night. But yeah, you know, it's, it's the value of having a curious coach that's always looking to figure out what he's missing. And, and a quarterback that that's good enough to challenge him. You know, that we talk about experience on the team. March is so much more experienced this year than he was last year. Would it start saying that in that recent article where he was, he, a lot of guys would have broken and he, he just got stronger. He got stronger in every way. You know, I think, um, hopefully that hopefully they get arched a little bit more looks because it seems like there's a lot of value for what it can do for the defense. Speaking of the defense, one of the people that I talked to, big on, on defensive scheme and stuff like that, like you mentioned. And the Saban tree has just a way of doing things. Ripple is, is the very common terminology. And I think to put it in layman's terms, it's just pattern matching, but single high safety. There are some formations to where that's difficult to, to run it against,

6:15depending on what the offense does. But it seems like from what I heard, Will Mushamp is trying to tinker with and find out new ways to use that defense in the middle of his install. And, you know, I think that speaks to what exactly we're going to, or probably going to see throughout the course of spring. And in the preseason that this is going to be a Mushamp defense. What you've seen for almost a decade in Athens, Georgia, schematically is what you're going to see pretty regularly here in Austin. What you saw for so long in Tuscaloosa, you're going to see a lot of stuff from that playbook. But the thing about that is, I think it's very interesting. We've talked a lot about how Steve Sarkeesian is very much on the cutting edge of offense, you know, really stresses with RPOs and tries to figure out the latest and greatest way to run his own offense. Will Mushamp's doing the same thing with his own defense, kind of speaks wise, getting paid almost 3 million a year. And it speaks to something that, you know, I'm not exactly sure we've seen

7:18from the University of Texas throughout, you know, as long as I've known you, as long as we've both been covering this. Where sometimes I just try to play talent ball. And at Texas, you can do that. But now they're trying to deploy some schemes that really, really are challenging to opponents, both on offense and on defense. Texans know, when you're injured, there's one name that gets results. Andre the lawyer, trust the team that has secured millions for their clients and help thousands of Texans win their injury cases. Car regs, slip and falls, 18-wheeler accidents on the job injuries, wrongful deaths. Don't let the insurance companies tell you what your claim is worth. Andre the lawyer will fight for you. His principal office is in Dallas, but they serve Texans throughout the state. So don't wait, call 214-444-8808. That's 214-444-8808. Contact info is in the description. Yeah, look like they went into a plan last night to kind of test these certain aspects out, you know, what, what, what,

8:19much more wants to install that defense? Well, how are you going to challenge it? You know, they went in a lot more 11 personnel, typically throughout the spring. It's been 50-50 on 12 personnel, 11 personnel. We were 12 versus 11. Last night, we heard a lot more about 11 personnel. I think that's the way to try to stress that man coverage. You know, there's a lot of different ways to get guys out of man coverage. We saw it last year, you know, a lot of crossing routes, you know, pick plays and that sort of thing. So, you know, that's going to be a good look. Obviously, that they game playing that together. Hey, what do we specifically want to work on in this practice? And it sounds like they got a lot of value out of it. We didn't really hear about any individual water severs making plays, even though they threw the ball a lot. But we did hear good stuff about KJ Lacey and Diabelle. Diabelle threw a pick, of course. I think Lacey might have as well. But if Samara Matthews just keeps picking everybody off, he's not, you know, that guy gets making a lot of noise. But Diabelle looked really good too. So, you know, I just think that they had a plan going into the, into the scrimmage and it sounds like they had a lot of good looks. And honestly, it sounds like the offense may be won slightly.

9:21But it sounds like iron sharpening iron. You know, it sounds like zero sum in a good way, where, you know, the offense has a bunch of playmakers in coherent scheme. And then the defense has the same. I can echo the Lacey bit. It was like, yeah, that short quarterback's doing pretty well. I'm like, well, I think there's only one short, short quarterback on the roster. But speaking of 11 personnel, I mean, there's one tight end on the field at a time. And there was a tight end who had a really strong night on Friday night. Yeah, my phone was blown up about Spencer Shannon. He had a handful of catches. One of really good catch was machine balls all over when we tipped it up, caught it and picked up about five, six extra yards for a total 15 yard catcher. So, and Nick Townsend had a had a deep pass as well, I believe. But yeah, Shannon had a really good scrimmage. And, you know, it goes part and parcel that he's bigger and stronger. And now he's a better route runner that could be counterintuitive to some. But he's more coordinated than he has been in the past. He's just a stronger overall athlete from head to toe. You know, you got to be in control of your limbs.

10:21You got, you need strength to do that. He's just really coming into his own. I was really taking it back when I saw him at that first practice. And, you know, we keep hearing. Yeah, they got Michael Masonous. They like, they like him quite a bit. But, you know, don't don't forget about Spencer Shannon. And, you know, he keeps having scrimmages like that. That's going to keep building noise. Yeah, a wide tight end like that. And two of them sounds like a lot of fun for Steve Sarkeesian. Last, but certainly, certainly not least. We got to talk about the player you put on the cover of your article. That's Tyler Atkinson, a freshman linebacker, five star. And he had quite the night on Friday. It sounds like. And he was not just doing it in coverage, where he probably still has some learning curve to traverse. But they were putting him and pointing and shooting him like we think we know he'll be able to do pretty well this upcoming fall. Yeah, we can ask about him. And, you know, we've written a fair amount about it, but maybe you haven't heard as much noise about him as Germain Bishop. And Tyler Atkinson, the other super freshman that we expect to play a lot. Tyler's going to play a lot as well. This is probably the loudest we've heard of him.

11:22He had a couple of blitzes untouched, which of course, if you're going to go zero, some you've got to figure out all right. Somebody either running back or off its alignment, and Mr. Assignment, but he was making noise in the back field on a couple of occasions. It just really looks apart. Athletic, very twitchy. All the stuff we know, but now that, you know, instead of doing it on a high school field, he's doing it in scrimmage. And I think that's going to be his thing this year, is, you know, they're probably not going to have him out there on first and second down. I mean, he'll rotate and don't get me wrong. But, you know, they're not, I don't think they're going to want him out there reading the run, you know. I think they're going to want to blitz him, point and shoot, like you said. Same stuff they did with Anthony Hill, his true freshman year. I think they're going to do with him as well. But also, Justin Crier, keep hearing good stuff about him. Heard some more stuff last night. Biles, of course. So they've got, you know, entire Anthony still out, but they've got some, they've got some talent there for sure. We still want to get the full picture of it. But Ackinson had probably his, you know, maybe the best practices had so far. I don't know that for sure, but I know he had a good scrimmage.

12:24Always good to hear about the true freshman doing well. We'll have a lot more notes on this scrimmage over in Inside Texas and a lot more notes about spring football over in Inside Texas. So make sure you've used that first link in our description. Use that QR code at the top left of the screen. Sign up 50% off the ultimate fan bundle. That's the best of what we offered inside Texas. Plus the best of rivals. And on three as well, going to be a great time as we finish up spring ball two more weeks of it left. Great time to join Inside Texas. Eric, happy Easter, happy Easter to y'all. Thank you for watching. See you next time on the Inside Texas football YouTube channel powered by InsideTexas.com.