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One Stop Shop for Official Signings (C/O 2019 NSD1)


Huckleberry

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My bad joke went right over your head. You should feel as bad for missing it as I do for making it. Shame on you.

Damnit. That’s what I get for trying to keep up with this shit during a morning production meeting. It was a fine joke, sir.
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3 hours ago, Huckleberry said:

My biggest concern about Liebrock is making sure he doesn't die in a freak gasoline fight accident.

I think he’s gonna be great here.  huge frame, will probably be legit 6’5” 260 and athletic in a couple years.  this is the kind of player that makes the power spread go. 

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If we actually learn to run the ball besides Sam, Brown and Ingram will be a fucking hell of a duo. Brown is my favorite recruit this class. He has "it". I love his highlights. 

 

I should say 1A and 1B with Jake Smith being the other. 

Edited by Spider2YBanana
Jake Smith wins the Heisman
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QB: Roschon Johnson. He fits the Herman offensive system like a glove, and by all accounts he's a fantastic cultural and character fit. Be excited.
RB: Derrian Brown. Fluid runner, pretty good vision and cutting ability, great hands out of the backfield. Good complementary back, maybe not a feature back. We need more here.
OL: Tyler Johnson. Superstud, can play tackle or inside. We need more here. A lot more.
TE: Brayden Liebrock, Jared Wiley. This is a phenomenal pairing. An elite pass-catching TE (best since Blaine Irby, IMO) and a guy who can become Herman's ideal inline TE in a year or two.
Inside WR: Jake Smith, Jordan Whittington. As good as you're going to get in college football recruiting. Both of these guys can be Day 1 players, especially Whittington since he's enrolling next month. Both can take snaps out of the backfield as well, which may be a necessity depending on how RB recruiting turns out.
Outside WR: Kennedy Lewis, Marcus Washington. Marcus is just a damn good football player who could contribute as a freshman. Kennedy has a high ceiling with his size and speed, but he'll need time to develop. Very good haul that should have been even better.
DL: Jacoby Jones (JUCO), Myron WarrenT'Vondre Sweat, Peter Mpagi - a lot of upside here. No true blue-chips (though you could make the case for Warren and Sweat), but three players who could wreak havoc after a year or two with Yancy + Jones, who can upgrade our pass rush immediately. We might need to take another player who can develop into a DT, with the departure of Mike Williams.
LB: De'Gabriel FloydMarcus TillmanDavid GbendaCaleb Johnson (JUCO) - an A+ haul of versatile backers, exactly what Todd Orlando needs. Floyd and Johnson should play early. Floyd could be on the Caden Sterns 3-and-out track.
CB: Marques CaldwellKenyatta Watson - our staff loves length and physicality, and they got it. Watson can be a special teams difference-maker as a freshman, and wouldn't look totally out of place if he had to play on defense by the end of his freshman season.
S: Tyler OwensChris Adimora - Major speed upgrade with Owens, Adimora is another one of those guys who screams "football player".
Overall it's a pretty good class with two big positional holes that need to be addressed (OL, RB). On top of that, we're missing a day 1 difference-maker at DL and perhaps one more freak outside WR who can put us over the top. Oh yeah, we need someone who can play nickel.


Anyone who doesn’t follow recruiting should just read this to know how we did. Spot on.


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(Ian Boyd) Inside the Gameplan: My 5 favorite defensive signees

Everywhere around the country, defensive coordinators are having to make tough decisions about what to look for in personnel, particularly at linebacker. The results of those decisions look increasingly different than they did 5-10 years ago and the ongoing trend towards smaller, faster, and more coverage-savvy defenders is only going to intensify in the coming years now that the strongest programs in the country are embracing the spread passing attack. Of course that’s all to Texas’ benefit, because it’s been a long time since it was possible to play great defense in the Big 12 with personnel chosen for their run-stopping ability and now they won’t be punished in any hypothetical posteason opportunities for orienting their recruiting in that direction.

The trick to beating 2018 Alabama, for instance, has a lot more to do with holding up in coverage than being able to take on a lead block. Oklahoma’s hilarious trend towards base personnel not only failed to offer them anything against Georgia last year but their ineptitude when playing anything other than a base 4-3 is about to cost them again when they face Tua Tagovailoa and friends.

There’s two good ways to try and defend modern spread attacks and both of them share some similar features in terms of choosing personnel. The first is to continue to play aggressive run-stopping schemes like Texas’ tite front paired with aggressive run fits from the OLBs, but to get faster everywhere so that when teams use RPOs or other schemes to get the ball in space the defense can recover. Texas’ handling of bubble screens over recent years is a good example, they’d often send the nickel to outnumber the run and trigger the bubble screen, which would then face a big corner like Davante Davis hemming in the WR’s block while a fast safety like Brandon Jones closed in from the hash.

The other route is to drop everyone back and dare opponents to beat you in the box, running on your DL. North Dakota State dominated spread offenses at the FCS level with this strategy and it’s more or less how Alabama tends to play it as well. At times North Dakota State did that with base 4-3 personnel but their LBs tended to be pretty quick and Alabama does this from nickel and dime sets that field LBs that can run better than 4.6 in the 40.

A good, modern defense needs to hit two out of three on the following methods to stopping spread offensive tactics.

Method 1: Don’t have glaring weak spots. 

Spread offenses get the ball to a defensive weak spot in the same way that water flows to a leak. If you have someone in the defensive backfield who can’t handle playing in space then the offense is going to figure out how to create a formation where he does exactly that, and often against a particularly nasty space player. Texas had dozens of formations this year with its base 11 personnel package and half of them were designed to make someone cover Lil’Jordan Humphrey who had little to no hope of successfully doing so.

Method 2: Do have strong spots that can cover for others.

If you have one or two weak spots they can always be covered up, provided competence, assignment soundness, and versatility, if you have one or two guys that can hold up in isolation or command extra attention. For instance, the LB who isn’t the fastest to the ball might hold up if the DL in front of him are commanding double teams or the cornerback is so good that the safety behind him can drop down alongside or help over the top. Of course, ideally the LB doesn’t need both but that’s the gist of this. Defenders that can take away opposing strengths without needing help are invaluable for stopping the spread and negate the need for everything to fall perfectly right with a roster that can always field 11 exemplars of good, sound play in space.

Method 3: Be able to attack the offense and flip the script

This is a lot trickier to pull off because spread offenses are designed to read defenses and get the ball out quickly. Perhaps the nastiest thing that Art Briles brought to the game (X’s and O’s wise) was an offense that could find and attack opponents with vertical passes in which the QB was dropping back and almost immediately throwing to a spot. The traditional defensive measure of having a blindside edge rusher trying to work around a tackle is typically next to useless against that type of play. The best “edge player” in the Big 12 of the last two years was Ben Banogu, a guy who’s most devastating move was an inside tackle-end stunt that he executed with a quick DT named Corey Bethley that could result in an inside pressure from Banogu.

Anyway, if you can field attacking pieces in the form of nasty pre-snap disguises from versatile defenders, free-running blitzers that target weak spots in protection, or the very rare DT who lives in the backfield every snap then in THAT event you can actually attack offenses effectively enough that you needn’t always be perfectly sound or elite in the defensive backfield.

Texas’ main means of arriving at these three methods is to field nickel and dime defenses with freak corners and highly versatile safeties, then utilizing Todd Orlando’s different protection-busting blitzes with the LBs to get quick pressure up the middle that can thwart any offensive design. Without landing players that can make those methods work, nothing else really matters. Here’s five guys that can help Texas build some formulas in the coming years for realizing at least two out of three methods in a given year.

No. 5 Tyler Owens

The ceiling here is Brandon Jones with ball skills. Owens dominated this season at Plano East after starting to put everything together as a 6-2/200 pounder that has run a 10.4 in the 100m and recently learned that it’s fun to hit people at speed.

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If you’re going to play the nickel aggressively against the run than you need serious speed behind that position to help recover when teams throw on RPOs or play-action, which is why Owens can be invaluable.

It’s very difficult to combat the spread without being able to put people on the field that are both fast and effective open field tacklers. Owens is a near lock to be exceptional in both regards and also has some promise as another DB (Caden Sterns) who can make plays on the ball in the air and make the deep field a no fly zone for opposing passing attacks. The path to defensive excellence that Texas is pursuing is one in which they can flood the field with guys that can run, tackle, and play multiple spots. That means that there’s a need both for numbers at the safety position as well as some standouts, which is Tyler Owens.

No. 4 Caleb Johnson

One of the most prized players you can recruit now is going to be the space-backer who can read the triangle well enough to play as an inside-backer. Even in dime personnel you can’t get away with dropping a stiff defender between the hash marks. That’s prime real estate that spread teams are running crossers or option routes in. If that guy is an effective blitzer? Even better.

Gary Johnson was essentially this sort of player, although he leaned pretty heavily on his freakish athleticism and didn’t realize his actual potential with skills as either a coverage defender or a blitzer. It was very common for the sorts of well-timed insert blitzes that saw T.J. Watt post 11.5 sacks at Wisconsin or Steven Taylor get 18.5 sacks in two years with Orlando at Houston generate a scenario in which Gary Johnson got nothing. Johnson’s 5.5 sacks as a senior playing in this scheme behind Charles Omenihu and Chris Nelson was an important underachievement that hasn’t really gotten enough attention in the discussions of Texas’ woeful third down defense in 2018.

Caleb Johnson is an exciting addition because he adds immediate help, he adds long-term help (currently a RS freshman), and he does so with method 2 and 3. At 6-1/215 he’s a space-backer that excels at running to the ball and erasing space but he’s also accustomed both to doing so from inside the box AND executing auto-blitzes and timed insert blitzes that helped him generate 5.5 sacks as a freshman at Fullerton College.

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With Johnson Texas is trading out Gary Johnson for someone with less speed but a better command of the position, which given Johnson’s absurd acceleration is a no-brainer deal.

No. 3 T’Vondre Sweat

The featured position up front in this defense is arguably the nose tackle, who gets to shoot the backside gap against Big 12 centers trying to climb to a LB and guards that have to get over and stay in front of him.

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If you’re an extra quick defender, the tite front nose tackle position makes you a nightmare because it gives you a good angle and matchup to shoot the backside gap. If you’re extra powerful, it does the same. Check out that TCU guard trying to get over and maintain some semblance of control over Chris Nelson’s path to the backfield. In either event, the other team is left to have their center and guard very intentionally commit to the double team or risk giving up run-killing penetration in the A-gap, which now frees up the LBs.

T’Vondre Sweat has a little of both AND has already mastered the Chris Nelson belly dance to boot. He might be able to play the 4i position, which gains similar advantages but has to mitigate a greater distance from the mesh between the QB/RB and trying to beat an OT in pass protection. His most likely future is slowly gaining extra size and strength before emerging down the line as a nose that makes run defense too easy for Texas, and makes the difficult calculations about getting extra coverage and speed in the backfield simple.

No. 2 Kenyatta Watson II

The plan for the middle of the defensive backfield can generally be to load up on as many physical athletes as possible so that there’s always guys coming off the assembly line with a few years of instruction on anti-spread schemes. Playing strong up the middle requires a lot of know-how and after an increasingly high baseline of athleticism is met, then big picture conceptual understanding becomes more valuable than sheer speed.

Even a player with Tyler Owens' speed can be chewed up if he doesn’t know where the ball is going. The field is still plenty big and offenses aren’t putting too many slowpokes on the field. Solving for the problems that teams present is as much about getting versatility in the middle of the field as it is matching athletes. You want to be able to prevent offenses from knowing where they have one-on-ones and where there will be help. It’s possible to do the same outside at cornerback at times but generally it’s much, much easier if you have some freaks there that can hold up when the QB inevitably finds them isolated on his WR.

A defense that can’t ask their cornerbacks to play some man coverage and hold up without a safety over the top can run out of bullets in a hurry against teams hunting matchups with the run and pass in the middle of the field. Kenyatta Watson II is Texas’ attempt at adding another CB to the roster that can shut down his side of the field, or at least hold up without giving up loss-ensuring production. He’s got the highly coveted size at 6-2/187 but he also has the necessary footwork and twitch to avoid getting behind and inhaling exhaust.

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The hope here is that Texas will have another player they can utilize like Kris Boyd to press up bigger receivers that thrive on getting a free release against off coverage to go win jump balls (David Sills IV) or to stay over the top on a burner (Jalen Reagor).

No. 1 De’Gabriel Floyd

Floyd is your script-flipper, at 6-2, 240 with a 35.6” vertical leap you want this guy attacking on the insert blitz and killing opposing plays before they can get started.

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His HS team amusingly would use him regularly as a robber like Texas does with their joker position and he’s pretty solid in space. That’s not where his value would be for Texas. What Texas wants is for teams to have to worry about this guy reading their run play and getting someone out to him on time without asking the center to handle T’Vondre Sweat without help. They want teams worrying about whether the RB picking him up in an interior gap will even make a difference in whether or not he gets to the QB. Floyd is the sort of violent and explosive LB that this scheme is designed to weaponize but that Orlando has yet to really have in Austin. Malik Jefferson was getting close but didn’t offer the same kind of pass-rush that Floyd can bring. It may take a while longer than people would like for it all to come together for Floyd, though perhaps it’ll be much quicker than normal, but he has all the tools to become the kind of attacking piece up front that changes the game.

With these five signees Texas is going to be better positioned in the future to make a good run at all three methods to playing high level, anti-spread defense in upcoming years. If you can do that in today’s game, you’re at a major advantage both in Big 12 play and now nationally as well.

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(Ian Boyd) Inside the Gameplan: My 5 favorite offensive signees

defenders that the offense has to avoid or else by dedicating numbers and leverage to take something away. The offense can take a good deal more initiative in determining where the focal point of a given play will be.

Because of that, an offense can be built more heavily around role players provided what the role players are effective at executing includes the necessary counters to opposing strategies. For instance, in the 2018 Texas passing attack the TE and the Z receiver needed to be capable of beating zero coverage if teams were going to move everyone over to carefully bracket Lil’Jordan Humphrey and Collin Johnson. If they could clear that fairly low hurdle then all was good.

Another theme of 2018 was Texas (and Iowa State) learning that having a physical, run-centric approach to offense is great but it’s even better if it’s primarily geared towards helping the passing game. That’s the best way to keep up with the Oklahoma's and other Air Raid teams of the Big 12, you have to be able to score.

Tom Herman has also revealed an additional preference for style beyond having a physical, running QB that can make the situational run game a brutal weapon rather than a problem to mitigate. In particular, Herman likes to attack opponents mentally with hybrid personnel that can allow the offense to thwart the rules of modern, position-based defense. Defenses today are designed to try and match routes from zone and pick players for each position that can match the types of athletes likely to run routes into their respective zone. Attacking that style on offense is all about hybrids, matchup weapons, and versatility. While you worry about the exact projection and fit of various recruits on either side of the ball per 247’s nebulous positional designations the game is moving beyond that paradigm.

Finally, there’s the OL which still sets the floor for an offense. Texas finally fielded a unit that allowed them to explore their ceiling in 2018 but this is an area that has confounded the program for as long as I’ve followed Longhorn football. The gap in achievement between Texas and Oklahoma this century is most easily illustrated by looking at the differences in the OL. Championship programs are often praised for the famous QBs and skill players that roll through but then you look deeper and you find a parade of All-Conference and NFL linemen that consistently fill out their depth charts.

Here’s my favorite Texas recruits from NSD1 in terms of accumulating the sort of pieces that can be used to build a modern offense.

No. 5 Jordan Whittington

Whittington is your next Lil’Jordan Humphrey, a big slot that is essentially an exploration of what the modern TE position can look like. You won’t hear that elsewhere since Whittington doesn’t play in the box as a blocker and currently checks in at “only” 6-1, 205. Here’s the deal though, Whittington has a thick frame that will likely continue to add weight up to 220 or so, he’s quicker than fast (probably 4.7 40 but 4.1 shuttle guy), and he’s very physical.

Here’s a shot of him playing up on the line as a receiver:

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He’s up on the line where he can be pressed, which means that the other wideouts don’t have to be, and he has little problem winning past the line and getting to his spot down the field. Then he wins a jump ball and finishes the play by needlessly stiff arming a dude to the turf. This is a guy that you can use in the slot as a chain-moving matchup weapon. He projects really well to running the same kinds of option routes that Humphrey has been murderous on and he has the quickness and physicality to not only hold up running around in the middle of the field but to administer punishment.

No. 4 Brayden Liebrock

Liebrock is a slam dunk prospect whether he learns to block a DE effectively or not. He’s a Mark Andrews clone with his ability to run routes at a high level, even against good skill athletes on the perimeter, at 6-5, 220.

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You can tell from his four-star rating and everyone’s general confusion about how good exactly Lil’Jordan Humphrey is (fourth round, seriously?) that the importance of having big, matchup nightmares that can’t be handled in man coverage running up the seams is still lost on many evaluators. There’s also the regularly overlooked value of having a big athlete on the perimeter to bully opponents in the screen game, which is obviously an enormous part of the college game, and to play on the line so that the outside receiver can play off and avoid press coverage. This has been a useful trick in Norman for getting tiny speedsters like Marquise Brown and Dede Westbrook free from press coverage.

All of that value is only magnified if Liebrock also learns to play like Andrew Beck, taking on DEs solo on tight zone or power. In that event his ability to suddenly flex out would leave defenses out of answers because his regular usage on the field wouldn’t prevent Texas from playing another matchup nightmare in the slot, like Jordan Whittington.

No. 3 Tyler Johnson

Texas needs a lot more Tyler Johnsons, or at least more OL that Herb Hand and Yancy McKnight can work to transform into big, zone-blocking technicians. In the same way that healthy defense requires constant refueling with DB recruits that can fill out a defensive backfield and spin down to linebacker, offense has to have fresh meat for the grinder up front.

Tyler Johnson is about as good as they come in terms high end talent for the OL and could be the LT of the future. He’s highly athletic with the sort of quick feet you need to survive on the edge along with the necessary anchoring size/strength and reach. He’s about 6-5, 300 or so already so he’ll obviously get his chances to play early anywhere he can crack the depth chart.

Here’s an instructive clip on some of the more promising attributes of Johnson:

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This is inside zone blocking and Johnson dominates a 4i that tries to loop outside into him and puts him on skates. You can tell that he has quick feet and very little difficulty leveraging his athleticism and power in combination to dominate DL. We’ll see how long it takes for him to truly master the kick step but he’s big and strong enough to have a chance at guard until that day comes. Big frame, quick feet, good reach, basically a model of what you look for in building an inside zone-based OL.

No. 2 Roschon Johnson

Since breaking down some Roschon Johnson’s junior film I’ve suspected that the QB torch at Texas would likely pass from Sam Ehlinger to the Port Neches-Groves star once no. 11 has moved on from Longhorn football. The qualifications for a Tom Herman QB basically go toughness, football IQ, and then accuracy.

Obviously the QB needs to be able to hit targets in the passing game to make the offense work properly and there’s a baseline of passing game skill that has to be achieved that is always inching higher, but Herman QBs are differentiated moreso by their toughness and understanding of the game then achieving higher levels of skill. The goal of flooding the field with hybrids and hammering home a million versions of inside zone for the OL is to be able to clear up the game for the QB and allow him to get the offense into one of a few concepts that they can execute at a high level and to go hammer mismatches.

Johnson is a smart football player, smarter than was sometimes apparent in his senior year when PNG regularly turned him into a wildcat triggerman that would focus on carrying the rock 20-30 times in order to overpower opponents. The PNG offense was built around a few main concepts, notably the power run game, but they had a million ways to run it and would carry a few opponent-specific versions of their favorite plays into each week with Johnson expected to know how to utilize them to attack opponents. They had RPOs, dropback passes, and then of course the single-wing runs for Roschon that essentially turned him into the feature back.

Check out the workload he logged over three years as the starter for the Indians...

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Obviously Port Neches-Groves wasn’t doing much on offense other than what Johnson could do for them. It’s also notable that his senior team wasn’t as strong either at the skill positions or along the OL where his B12-caliber teammate Jaylen Garth (6-4, 270 pound junior LT) missed most of the season.

Maybe the most impressive stat here was the volume of carries and throws that Johnson was able to log as the feature of the entire offense. Three consecutive seasons with a 230+ carry workload is no joke and is a promising testament to his ability to handle something like 10-15 carries per game or 150 per year while at Texas.

He’ll need to grow as a passer, mostly in terms of mechanics, and will inevitably pack on some helpful weight that pushes him towards 220 or so. The hope will be that he can be a savvy and precise distributor while adding an overwhelming extra dimension as a runner in the option game and on third downs, much like Ehlinger.

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No. 1 Jake Smith

Smith is probably the best talent coming to Texas. The national Gatorade player of the year had a senior year that included 1112 receiving yards and 22 touchdowns along with another 741 rushing yards and 15 more touchdowns. That breakdown is a perfect example of where football is headed, in which the pass sets up the run and hybrids are prized for their abilities in the passing game that set up rushing opportunities.

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One of the funny things about this highlight is that the ball comes out late but Smith is so wide open that it doesn’t matter. With a QB that trusts Smith enough to throw to a spot rather than waiting for the route to break open, this kind of concept becomes pretty much unbeatable without a double team. In the future Texas will probably continue to use slot receivers of the Lil’Jordan Humphrey mold who are matchup problems on the hash marks and who can line up on the line of scrimmage so that Smith can line up off the line.

Imagine a Z receiver that can run vertical routes down the field but also motion in for sweeps and runs, or stack behind the slot and try to get free running down the field. With Smith on the field Texas could have an 11 personnel package in which they motion the RB out and watch a LB chase him before bringing Smith in and forcing the defense to try and play a CB in the box. Or they could start him in the backfield and then motion him out if the defense tries to match him with an LB.

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How this would work would depend on how defenses chose to match up but in this hypothetical, if Smith simply knew how to run tight zone as a RB then they could use that threat to move him around only to move him back out. The defense then has to figure out how to motion into a defense that doesn’t risk a LB chasing Smith and getting demolished on a vertical go route without also surrendering a horrible matchup against Lil’Jordan Humphrey (or another slot).

There’s a lot of possibilities for a hybrid with freak athleticism like Smith. It’s a good bet that his ability to threaten the defense with his ability to score from virtually any position on offense will be one of the most dominant features of an upcoming Texas team.

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