AUSTIN, Texas — Kelvin Banks isn’t walking through the doors of the Texas Longhorns football facility.
Neither is Cam Williams. Nor Hayden Conner. Nor Jake Majors.
The core of the Longhorns offensive line that helped Texas win a Big 12 championship and make back-to-back appearances in the College Football Playoff semifinals is no longer on the Forty Acres, producing the first significant transition period for Kyle Flood’s line in the Steve Sarkisian era since Flood assembled a group that earned recognition
as Joe Moore Award finalists in 2024.
During the offseason, Sarkisian was clear that he expected growing pains replacing four starters with a combined 11 years of starting experience, citing continuity and consistency as keys for the Longhorns to improve throughout the season.
He wasn’t wrong.
“We ran it really good last week. We ran it okay today, so I don’t know. Verdict’s still out,” Sarkisian said of the running game after the win over San Jose State.
Against Ohio State, Texas managed 166 rushing yards on 4.5 yards per carry, in stark contrast to the struggles last season against elite defenses. The effort against San Jose State wasn’t as heartening given the quality of opponent — 155 yards on 4.8 yards per carry.
Through two games, the consistency is lacking because of breakdowns in technique and fundamentals. Against Ohio State, Texas had success against a defensive line that often took a more traditional approach with big, physical players engaging in one-on-one matchups. The Spartans, however, didn’t have the size or physicality to match up with the Longhorns in those situations, choosing instead to rely on their movement and quickness, which caused problems for Flood’s line.
“We totally lost our fundamentals. We got on our toes. We were falling over ourselves. We give up way too much penetration,” Sarkisian said on Monday.
Sarkisian blamed an inability to translate the scouting report to the game.
“You’ve got to wipe the slate clean on a Monday morning. Here we go, here’s the scouting report, here’s what they’re good at, here’s maybe what they’re not so good at, here’s how we’re going to try to exploit them. Here’s the guy that I’m lining up across the majority of the game. Here’s his strengths, here’s his weaknesses. How am I going to play him? I didn’t think we carried enough information into the game and applied it up front,” Sarkisian said.
So the necessary growth will have to come from the maturity to understand the need to adjust each week.
With the significant decrease in experience across the line, some of that growth has to come from in-game adjustments.
Sarkisian cited a zone running play early in the second quarter on which senior center Cole Hutson missed a blitzing linebacker who brought down redshirt freshman running back Christian Clark for a two-yard loss. Early in the third quarter, Hutson was ready for the weak-side linebacker coming downhill on the same play call and Clark was able to find a seam for a 13-yard gain.
A weak link through two games has been at the left guard position, where redshirt sophomore Connor Stroh unexpectedly won the starting job over redshirt junior Neto Umeozulu. Given Stroh’s play over 89 snaps, that’s an indictment of the lack of development from Umeozulu, a top-100 prospect and the No. 4 interior offensive lineman in the 2022 recruiting class, according to the 247Sports Composite rankings — a 6’7, 350-pounder with questionable feet, Stroh has graded out at 48.3 overall and 41.4 as a run blocker by Pro Football Focus, abysmal, failing grades.
Although Stroh has reshaped his body to improve his conditioning, he consistently ends up on the ground because of his poor balance. Against Ohio State, defensive end Eddrick Houston only needed a handful of plays to take advantage of Stroh getting out over his toes, using a jerk and swim move to dump the big lineman on the turf.
Once that lack of body control ends up on film, it becomes simple for opponents to exploit — San Jose State needed even less time than Ohio State did to send Stroh toppling over.
As former Texas offensive lineman Donald Hawkins pointed out on Twitter, the balance issues for Stroh should be an easy fix — he just needs to bring his feet with him on contact, getting two feet on the ground instead of lunging off of one foot.
After holding up well in pass protection against the Buckeyes, Stroh struggled against the Spartans, allowing a pressure by a stunting linebacker looping across the formation that caused an incompletion and then getting knocked over on a bull rush, plays that contributed to a 47.1 pass-blocking grade on Saturday.
In 48 snaps, Umeozulu has been more consistent — he hasn’t allowed a pressure in pass protection and his run-blocking grade is 63.8, only slightly below average.
The platoon looks similar to Hutson and DJ Campbell splitting time at right guard last season with Campbell playing roughly two thirds of the snaps.
“I just felt like both those guys with the lack of experience that they’ve had, and you don’t have a lot of information on them yet, in live games with live bullets, so for now, we’ll stay with that platoon,” Sarkisian said.
For mental and physical reasons, Sarkisian expects to continue playing Stroh and Umeozulu at left guard.
“There’s a physical conditioning factor that you’ve got to get used to playing that amount of reps. And I think there’s a mental conditioning factor where you got to stay locked in, you know, for 20-30, 40-50, 60-70 reps. If we can help them grow into that — and they’re both capable to do it — then that’s probably the road we’ll go down until something changes that,” Sarkisian said.
Other growing pains seem like a function of youth. At right tackle, sophomore Brandon Baker is known as a hard-working, technically-refined player, but he’s also committed three false starts in two games and allowed five quarterback pressures against Ohio State. On one notable play against San Jose State, redshirt sophomore running back CJ Baxter was dropped for a five-yard loss on a first-down screen pass because Baker was slow to release and couldn’t make the key block.
The hope is that continuity throughout the season will improve the unit’s consistency, but right now the verdict remains out on this rebuilt offensive line, just like the verdict remains out on the Texas running game.
