AUSTIN — After sustaining an ankle injury in the season opener against the Texas State Bobcats and missing the win over the Ohio State Buckeyes, Texas Longhorns freshman running back Derrek Cooper made his return against the UTSA Roadrunners on Saturday and finished with 11 carries for 44 yards and a touchdown.
“He’s not quite 100 percent yet, but I needed him to play tonight knowing what’s coming down the road in SEC play. So I was proud of him of working the way that he worked to get himself ready
to play this week, but I think there’s more out there for him as we continue to go,” Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian said after the game.
Listed as the team’s third-string running back behind senior Hollywood Smothers and fifth-year Raleek Brown, Cooper scored his first career touchdown on a one-yard run midway through the fourth quarter after notching a 10-yard run, his longest of the game.
“It was great having Derek back. I thought he was effective,” Sarkisian said.
At 6’1, 212 pounds, Cooper has a different physical profile than Smothers and Brown, who are both listed under 200 pounds.
“You could feel his physicality. The guy falls forward when he runs the ball, even on his touchdown run — he’s getting met before he hits the goal line and finds his way in,” Sarkisian said.
Pro Football Focus only credited Cooper with one missed tackle forced, but 40 yards after contact, a testament to his running style.
But Cooper isn’t just an inside runner who needs momentum to be effective.
On his first carry against UTSA with the first-team offense, a Counter play, Cooper flashed his lateral agility to get outside around the block of sophomore tight end Emaree Winston and made a nice move in the open field before multiple defenders brought him down.
Working out of the Pistol on his second carry, Cooper had a big hole filled by a scraping linebacker he needed to make miss in it and opted for power, getting chopped down for a five-yard gain. It’s not a bad instinct to maintain momentum and finish with toughness, but as the Florida product continues his recovery and gains some confidence, he may have a little bit more to show that defender in a similar situation.
Still working with the first-team offensive line later in the game — and still operating out of the Pistol — Cooper showed some good patience to find a cutback lane against the flow of outside zone.
If the Texas running game has established an identity through the first three games, it’s a surprising one as an inside zone/duo team rather than majoring outside zone, the expectation heading into the season. Late in the UTSA game, though, the running game received a boost as Sarkisian turned to outside zone.
“I probably didn’t get to enough outside zone early enough in the game last week,” Sarkisan said. “We got to it later and I thought Derek Cooper reaped the benefits of that, I thought Michael Terry reaped the benefits of that, and it was great for those guys to see them run.”
Cooper’s 10-yard run came on pin and pull, a variant of outside zone where uncovered linemen pull instead of climbing, and Cooper looked like a good fit in the scheme in setting up his blockers before getting around the edge.
In I formation on the goal line, the middle got clogged, but Cooper spotted an overmatched defender on the edge and ran him over to find the end zone, good instincts that could earn him a role as the short-yardage and goal-line running back, something the Longhorns haven’t had in the Sarkisian era.
Regardless of whether Sarkisian chooses to carve out a role like that for Cooper, with Texas set to play eight straight conference games after the bye week that follows the conference opener, the Longhorns will need a back to supplement Smothers and Brown, and Cooper looks prepared for that as his ankle heals.
