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Hey everybody, it's Paul and I want to talk to you about David McClelland. He's a fiduciary financial advisor and partner with Forum Financial. He works broadly and deeply with his clients as a financial life coach. A former multinational championship swimmer at the University of Texas, he specializes in financial planning. He's contributed numerous articles to places like Kiplinger Magazine on the topic of retirement tax bombs. And he is an absolute expert and master within his subject area. Contact David today at 312-933-8823. Schedule a free one hour consult. Assess your financial situation. See if there's an opportunity to move forward. If you are in the process of accumulating wealth or you already have some and you're looking to preserve it and invest it judiciously, David is your man. Give him a call. 312-933-8823. What is going on, folks? Welcome to every Good Trophy podcast. This is a second recording because I did one earlier tonight. We had some big storms in Colorado knocked out my power and it apparently knocked out my recording. So delightful. I talked into a microphone alone by myself in a dark room like a psychopath. And I get to do that again one more time. Thanks. Thank you for joining me on this journey. Hope you appreciate it. Hey, the purpose of this is to talk about the spring game, give some impressions and basically just empty the notebook on everything that that I saw in the Texas spring game. I'm being charitable calling it a spring game already, aren't I? It was more of a staged event with some actual football in it, some useful stuff. There was some live action. There was some seven on seven. And then of course there was some actual, like scrimmage type stuff. Bunch of players were held out. That's fine. We can kind of factor that in as well. The good news about that is we were able to really get a good look at a bunch of young players and a bunch of transfers and a bunch of upper comers. And I was pretty excited by what I saw. By and large, this is the most talented team that Steve Sarkeesian has had at Texas. He just needs to navigate a pretty difficult schedule, get in the playoffs, and then let it go from there. The one thing about the playoff format that is changing our thinking for the college game is that it's really about getting in there. And once you're there, quality kind of proves out. And that seems to be the fact, whether it was Indiana getting, you know, in as the, you know, the overwhelming one seed and taking care of business in the Case of Ohio State getting into the low seeds, actually having to play an extra game, but just being the best team and winning out. And then of course, the year before, Michigan won in a slightly different format. Not the traditional 12 team format that we have now, but kind of a similar deal. In any event, let's talk about the Texas Longhorns. We're going to start on the offensive side of the ball and I want to talk about a guy who went out and battled and I think actually impressed me even in his failures. And that was K.J. lacy. He got a ton of work. Obviously Arch Manning did not participate in the scrimmage elements. He did do some 7 on 7 throwing. Lacy looked good. He was under pretty withering pressure. He was also throwing against often the number one defensive backs. And you know, frankly, even when you're throwing against the number two defensive backs at Texas, those are a bunch of really good guys. You'd be starting at, God, 80% of the P4, so, you know, it's not like you got a break. And the same goes for our defensive line. If you look at our young edge rushers, yeah, none of them are Colin Simmons, but they're kind of just, just as physically impressive as some of our older guys. They're just not as mature and as seasoned. So. So we'll talk about them in a second when we flip to the other side of the ball. But Lacy really hung in there and I'm kind of a guy that I want to see a young quarterback struggle. I want to see how he handles it. I want to see things go against him and see if he pouts. Does he start pointing at teammates? Does he start exhibiting negative body language? Does he do the hands up like, I'm doing all I can. These guys need to block for me like he didn't do any of that bullshit and that's a good thing. My other concern with Lacy is his size. Not so much height, because I think we've learned in the college game that height could be negotiated by your system, by clever movement in the pocket, finding your windows. Morris frame. Usually those smaller bodied quarterbacks are not just more susceptible to injury, but also they don't have the body strength to throw and drive balls down the field a little bit off platform. So that's not the case with Lacey. He's got a pretty snappy arm. I wouldn't say it's a great arm, but it's sufficient. And he's really good at getting himself into a throwing position. So you saw him do a lot of rolling Scrambling half rolls, trying to just find a window and buy a little more time and let the route develop as he's getting a guy running right down his throat. And he got off some good balls. He did have a couple of setback throws, but generally when he got protection and there was a decent route, he, he connected and he throws a very catchable ball. Threw a absolutely gorgeous sort of Corner out to McCutcheon in red zone for a touchdown. It was the only place the ball could have been placed for a completion and he placed the ball there and McCutcheon made a great catch. He had a beautiful connection with Jermaine Bishop. More on that guy in a second. That was just wonderful. Beautifully thrown ball, a little bit of a sort of a post over combo route that basically he anticipated what Bishop was going to do running to green on the post. And that's exactly what Bishop did. And beautiful connection, beautiful ball. I like K.J. lacy. He needs to be our number, number two quarterback. And I don't want to do this thing where we mess around even in early games, like if we're blowing out Texas State. I don't want to put in M.J. morris as the number two quarterback just because he's the senior guy or whatever. I think that's meaningless. I think KJ Lacy needs to get snaps and he needs to prepare himself. He has to start a football game this year and let's hope that doesn't happen. But it could happen. So I think he needs to be the number two. I think he needs to get all the work at number two. And MJ Morris has fulfilled his role, which is to come in and be depth, maybe throw a little coal in the fire of Lacey's motivation. And I think that worked. I think it happened. Here's why it can't be M.J. morris. He. He's just not very good and, and he's been not very good now at four different places. He started his career at NC State, interestingly enough. I don't know if you guys know this, maybe it's a little too deep lore here, but at NC State he played young, played as a freshman in 2022 and he was kind of like the next bright thing. Like everyone was really excited about him. He had seven touchdowns and one interception in a few appearances. Started a couple of games like rallied, had 148 passer rating. I mean, there was all this talk about, oh, M.J. morris. We can't wait to see what he is in 2023. You know, his sophomore year he was bad and every year he's gotten worse at quarterbacking, and that's not how it should go, particularly when you're transferring and going to lower levels. He ended up finally at Coastal Carolina, and that was last year. He was supposed to be the starter there. They benched him after three games and they. They deservedly did. So. He was 20 of 36 for 163 yards against Virginia in their opener. Zero touchdowns. One pick, Charleston Southern, 13 of 22 for 102. And he threw three picks in that game. And then finally they had enough, basically benched him the next week at Appalachian State. That was his career at Coastal Carolina. He comes to Texas, obviously needs to fill out the depth in the, in the quarterback room. And the hope was, you know, hey, Matthew Caldwell didn't have like devastating stats at Troy. And then he gets in and he exceeds all of our expectations. And I think they hoped similarly for MJ Morris. He was a mature guy. He's played a lot of football. None of it shows on the football field. He throws behind people. He holds the ball too long. He doesn't anticipate. He gets a lot of tipped balls because he doesn't have a sense of the pocket and what the windows are and where they should be. He stepped up a couple of times and threw decent balls, but it was so erratic. It was really poor. And he can't be our backup quarterback. So I think Sark needs to understand that and just go with Lacey and let's roll with that. Wide receivers look fantastic. We've got seven wide receivers that I trust. That's more than any year I can think of Texas football history. And obviously we know the top line talent. Cam Coleman, Ryan Wingo. I think we all trust Emmett Mosley. V. But I really liked what I saw from Sterling Burkhalter. He is an example of a positive veteran who's played a lot and been in a lot of spots. But the arrow on Sterling Burkhalter is always pointed up. So he's gotten better every year he's played football. He's now 23 years old. Last year he was Wake Forest number three wide receiver and had a nice year. Did a good job for them, and that was a surprisingly good Wake Forest team. Kind of flew under the radar because they're in the acc, but they had a great year and he was a. He was a solid part of it. Now he was the number three receiver. He was not like a star there, but he's exactly what was promised. He comes in, he runs good routes, he's six' three. He's got a big body and he turns and presents himself and he'll make tough catches. And that's exactly the guy you want coming off the bench, you know, in that sort of role. Cohen, Brown, true freshman, looks good on the hoof. He's not quite ready yet. And there's too many good receivers for him to beat anybody out yet. But I like, I like that guy. Dalen McCutcheon was fantastic in the scrimmage. He was sort of the de facto number one for Mosley when it wasn't going to Bishop. And Bishop is incredible. He's an athletic genius. He is going to play this year. He has to play this year. And it's not just that he's incredibly quick and he's incredibly fast. It's the deceleration, acceleration. He's just, he's an athletic genius. And there's guys that you see who move in a certain way and it's, it's his body type and that kind of movement is usually something you see in Florida type guys, you know, like it's a common archetype there of these like Peter Warwick, you know, Travis Hunter glidy type guys who are, who are running a 4, 440 or 4 340. But it looks like they're kind of jogging and then they can glide laterally like while they're still in stride. That's Bishop, and it's just very impressive. I don't know when he's going to start. I don't, I'm not. I don't really care. The point is he's going to get in the rotation and he's going to make a big impact because this is a guy who not only you'd think a guy with that profile, but being a true freshman would be kind of a screen guy, would be kind of like, hey, let's flip it out to him. Let's see what he can do. Let's run some basic, simple stuff. Dude, you could run the offense with this guy. He's obviously understands football at a high level. He presents himself to the quarterback beautifully on routes. Like he's very sophisticated and he's got great hands. So he had an amazing play where they are in the red zone. A ball was thrown into him on a line and Cunningham, the safety who outweighs him by 40 pounds, had his hands on the ball and Bishop reached out and ripped the ball out of his hands like he was a freaking arm wrestler. So very impressive. Just an all around impressive guy. If it sounds like I'M raving about him. There's a reason and obviously Kalik Lockett was held out. I would have liked to have seen him, particularly after that strong Michigan bowl game. But he's going to be back. He'll be back in the summer to work out, and he's good to go. I just think this is a very impressive receiving group, so we need to capitalize on it. Sark has not traditionally liked to play a rotation at receiver, and I think this is the first year where he probably should consider it. I'm not saying they get equal snaps to Wingo Coleman, but I'm saying that there's a good opportunity to play a lot of guys, a lot of body types. And as much as Sark loves all personnel, boy, I would really prefer we live in 11 and 10 because we've got a bunch of receivers who are going to put massive pressure on the opposing defense. They're going to make some hard choices and I think the more we do that, I actually think ironically, the better we'll run the ball because I think teams are going to just play a dime against us. I think you're going to see five man boxes. They're just going to say, hey, we can't give up single score touchdowns. We've got to make Texas proof they can run it. And that sounds good to me. Offensive line, I mean, N A, you know, not applicable, you know, incomplete, whatever you want to say. Obviously our best offensive lineman, Goosby was out. We didn't see any of Lawrence Seymour, who's going to be coming in probably May and June. May or June, probably May. And he will cement. Hopefully that interior offensive line saw some Ceani, saw a little bit of Sikorski, saw some of the younger guys, you know, look, they, they went against a very talented D line and Will Muschamp brought it. There was no, hey, Will, you know, lay back for the scrimmage and let my guys feel some success. There was none of that. Mustamp was bringing it. He was blitzing constantly. He's running line games and you could tell RD line. They, they see the quality of talent around them and they're all trying to get in the rotation. So guys were playing really hard and these O line lost most of their battles. Something to think about. Michael Terry got some run, got a lot of run at running back. Obviously he looks incredible. You know, he's like 6, 3, 2, 27, 228 and jacked like many tall running backs. He has trouble getting his legs up and he gets hit a lot at his Feet at his ankles, at his thighs and he goes down at contact. If you're a tall running back and you go down at contact there, you're not going to ever be very successful. It's a lot like C.J. baxter. You know, the counterpoint to that is Eric Dickerson who ran constantly with his feet, like getting off the ground and he would sort of glide and then people would dive at him and he just sort of trample them or like run over them. And I don't mean lower shoulder, I mean literally just sort of run over them. You know that part of what he was magical. But why he was magical. I'm obviously not comparing Michael Terry to Eric Dickerson, but ultimately if you're a tall running back and you can't get your legs up and you go down at first contact, you're not going to be the guy. At Texas that's not happening. So either he needs to transform his running style or he needs to think about another position. That's just how it's going to be. Cooper, a lot of good press for him in the offseason and I think he lived up to it. He had a fumble, he was getting nailed hard during that fumble and he got ripped out. I don't really hold that against him. What I most liked about what I saw from him was a couple of goal line carries. Texas got the ball about the five and gave it to Cooper. He had a tiny seam and a lot of young backs would have tried to bounce it out because they didn't see the hole. Cooper burrowed in there, got his pads low and drove his feet and he drove that ball to like the 1 yard line, single handedly gained 4 hard red zone yards. And boy have we needed that at Texas, so love that. And then the next play they hand it to him and he does the same thing. A lot of young backs would try to bounce it because that's what they've done their whole high school career and they get rewarded for it. College, obviously you end up with a negative three yard run, but obviously he's been coached up by, by our new running back coach. He's also, when I watched his high school tape, obviously he was very dynamic. He's very explosive, he's very fast and he's a big guy. He's 210, 215. He was a little stiff, looked at me and he had troubles with level change and that's sometimes your ankle flexibility, hip flexibility, whatever. He kind of ran high and kind of had this awkward running style. Didn't See any of that. I just think he got coached, you know, he just, they just said, hey, don't do that. Here's what you do. And he went, okay. And some guys are good enough athletes that they can just do that. So I thought his pad bubble was good. I didn't think he was running high at all. And I love him. He's got some suddenness to him. He's really well put together. And then actually saw some film of his drills before the scrimmage. Running dummies doing different stuff. Man, he looked good. He looked very, very fluid. Good stuff for a big back. So love Derek Cooper. James Simon, kind of a forgotten guy because of Hollywood Smothers and because of Relique Brown. He's solid. He had a nice little outside zone run. He's a, he's a good little player. He's not playing this year until, unless we're blowing somebody out. But he is only a red shirt freshman. Both mothers and Brown are gone. Next year he's going to be there with Derek Cooper. And then the question will be, do we think Simon's good enough to be the backup or do we want to bring in another guy, have another free agent come in and we'll find out. James Simon gets to determine that probably with his, with his development, but he's a good player. Don't, don't forget about him. That's the running backs. That's what, that's what sort of stood out to me. I did see a little footage of Relik Brown doing some drills and like bringing back a special teams kick. And he is, he is very, very quick, very fast. He is, he's built like a little tank. He's probably 5 foot 8 on a good day, but he's well put together and he's not going to fall over if a feather hits him. So that was exciting. Like the running back room, it has dramatically improved from last year. If you guys recall. I was very critical of our running back talent before the season. It wasn't, it was looking back, you know, with, with hindsight and commenting and nitpicking the coaches. I said before the season, I put my flag down and said, hey, our running backs aren't very good. And people were all in a tizzy about it. Even got communication from someone in the Trey Wisner camp that did not appreciate that. But everything I said was true. So I'm glad we made that room. Frankly, our wide receiver room wasn't talented enough. Now, I mean talented by the standards of college football, not Texas talent. We needed to upgrade that. And I think the coaches, I think there was a come to Jesus meeting in several positions, the offensive line, running back and wide receiver. And I think it's, we're a better team for it. I think also a tight end, that's the next position I want to talk about. So we've talked about this group being so improved that now people are over steering and pretending like this is, you know, Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez, you know, at the Patriots, like we're not there. We're, we're like fine at tight end. And we were, we were not fine at tight end last year. Other than injuries and his pass catching ability, we didn't have depth there. We didn't have enough good bodies to credibly do like 12 personnel or even 13 when we want to do goal line. Obviously that was another part of our goal line issues. Now we do, now we can. And we've got some younger guys who are physically talented like Townsend, like you know, some of our other pass catching options that I think we're going to be okay. Massunas is a good transfer from Michigan State, number 15. He had a couple of good edge blocks, got whipped on pass pro. We like to involve the tight ends in play action at the University of Texas. Sark likes it and we're not very good at it and we never have been. Tavian Sanders wasn't good at it. Gunnar Helm wasn't good at it. So Michael Bassoonis, congratulations, you're joining a long line of Texas tight ends who can't block pass protect on play action. Now you might ask why would you have your tight end pass protect against an edge whose entire job is to defeat people in pass rush and tight ends entire job is not to pass block. They get very few reps doing that. That's a great question for Sark, but I know the answer. The tight end is there to get in the way and it's usually on play action. You've got misdirection in the backfield. You're trying to hit something deep. Usually one of those deep overs or maybe a deep post you're getting, you want the tight end just to get in the way. The quarterback steps up and then throws his ball and needs to get off quickly. But if it doesn't, if it doesn't, it's a sack like every time or it's a hit on the quarterback and we don't need that. So anyway, that's, that's, that's the life of our play action game when we use the tight end as a blocker. Hey, Sark thinks we hit more than we lose, so I got to deal with it. Spencer Shannon has improved. Another. This is becoming quite the I told you so podcast. This is obnoxious. You guys should just sign off now. But Spencer Shannon, I've said since we got him that he would be a lot better as a power forward than a small forward. And his weight for three years stuck at about 240. And I kept saying he's never going to realize his potential until he's over £260. And guess what? He's £264 now. And suddenly not only is he blocking better, he runs routes better, he's stronger, he catches better. When he does catch it, tacklers bounce off of him. So it's one of these things that I think Joe fan or Joe analyst thinks you gain weight, you get slower. Not really. When Ben Johnson was a skinny 150 pound, 5 pound sprinter from Canada, and then he took a bunch of steroids and he started lifting heavy weights, he gained 45 pounds and guess what? He got a lot faster. So for the athletically gifted, when you gain weight, particularly if you're a guy with big leverages, long leverages like Spencer Shannon, who's like legit 6, 6, 6, 7, gaining weight and actually filling out your body makes you a better athlete. It does not make you a worse athlete. Now, losing weight is helpful when you're starting. Right tackle is, you know, 375 pounds. He's going to move better and he's going to be a better football player at 335. I agree with that. But other than that, you need to fill out your weight to your frame and to your best use. And that's what Spencer Shannon finally did. And now we've got a functional tight end who can get out there and, you know, block and is a legitimate pass catcher now. So good for him. I'm excited to see him. Tight end room is better. But now, like we've so oversold the improvement that now people like need to steer it back a little bit, dial it back a little bit. All right, let's talk about O line. Anything else? I will say the O line didn't allow free runners. And you might say, well, that's a pretty low bar. Well, if you are a fan of my YouTube work on the deep dive with Mr. Ian Boyd, you saw multiple times last year we had free runners. Literally, guys did not get picked up and that didn't happen. So that's an improvement. We had better communication. We need to be a lot more physical on the pole, particularly if you've got a agile offensive line. Like if you've got some guys like Brandon Baker inside at guard, you know, that's a very valuable pulling. You can get out there and run counters and do some, you know, pin and pull and all that kind of stuff. Hey, we need to get a lot more physical on our polls. I saw a couple of instances, one with Jaden Chapman where he had a poll we had the right call on. We had a nice little run on the edge near the goal line in the red zone. Chapman pulls around the corner and he is opposed by a 200 pound freshman, Terray Davis. And Chapman and Terry Davis kind of tied at the point of attack. That's not acceptable. If that guy's gonna come meet your block, he needs to be buried. And if he's not buried and he tries to like matador you and run, like run around you, you just need to turn a shoulder, get your hands on him, be strong. And that guy, you know, he's, he's, you can neutralize him in the back. Will read off that, read his, cut off that block. What you can't do is square up on a dude and tie who weighs 100 pounds less than you. We gotta look, we gotta get stronger and you need to bring it, you got to bring some aggression. It's a little shocking sometimes to watch us in those situations. And then you go watch some Michigan tape and you go, okay, like these guys are trying to bury people. You go watch Iowa. Even as pathetic as their offense skill talent is other than molten the running back, I mean they're trying to bury people, they're trying to hurt people on the field and that's how we need to get so, oh, I'm done with the offense. I don't have anything else. I think I, I emptied the notebook with all my impressions. Before we go to the defense, I want to talk about playing offense in the mortgage world because there's only one guy you want to be your quarterback and that is Gabe Winslow. 832557, 1095. That's 832-557-1095. Why Gabe? Well, if you're a loyalist and you want to go with Longhorns, well, he is that. He's a proud Longhorn grad. If you want to go also with like really good people who are awesome at their job, more important, go with that as well because Gabe's awesome at his job. He's really, really sharp. He's got a law degree. He's spent over 20 years in the industry. He's been on the title side as well. He knows every aspect of this and he is going to go out as a broker. He's going to go out and shop your deal to a bunch of different lenders who are trying to compete with each other. This is not Chase bank where they just send it to their Chase lender and the Chase lender says your interest rate will be 6.6. And we don't really care about competing and you could go away or you can do it with us and we don't really care either way. That is life in big Corpor Corporation usa. That ain't Dave Winslow. He works for himself and he is all about kicking ass and delivering for the customer. He takes a lot of personal pride in it. Skip, give him a call. I mean, seriously, if you're doing this through Google searches or calling random numbers or the neighbor that lives down the street, you're not doing it right. Gabe's in the top 1% of the 1%. Give him a call, find out why. 832-557-1095. All right, let's talk deep. Our defensive line is really good. It's really deep. We don't have guys on the interior who can compare to, say, you know, Sweat Murphy combo in their prime. I get that. But we have more depth and we have more guys that can play. So that's a good problem to have outside. This is as good an edge room as has ever been in Texas. Colin Simmons, I don't need to extol his virtues and obviously it's good he didn't play in the scrimmage because we would not have been able to get passes off and also the small risk of injury and all that nonsense. Smith Aragbo. If Colin Simmons has the best get off on the team. Smith Arago's number two, number 46, flies off the football. He is incredibly quick. Probably weighs 230, 235. So he's a lighter guy, but he's long. He's six three, six four. He's got long arms. Absolutely flies. It's shocking how quickly he gets off the football. Very impressive. If I had my druthers right now, based on what I saw in that scrimmage and knowing Smith Aragno's progress from last year, if I was doing like a greyhound interior rushing package where you're trying to get stops on the team, where you're up know two scores and they've got the, you know, ball. They're just going, hurry up, no huddle. They're trying to make it up. In the fourth quarter, I'm going to have Colin Simmons and Smith Arogbo on the edge. I'm going to have Mr. Jackson, Lance Jackson. Jackson kick down inside at one defensive tackle and I have Zena Umiya Zulu kick down inside at the other defensive tackle. And I'm going to tell these guys to pin their ears back and fly. And then I'm going to have one Mr. Biles, the new linebacker from Pitt, picking a gap and sprinting through it. And then I'm gonna have six DBs on the field with those five guys. I'm bringing five and I'm covering with six. We're gonna get brutal pressure and you're gonna have to get rid of the ball quick against a bunch of really good DBs that are playing the pass. And I don't think it's going to go well for you. So that's what I do. That's how much Mr. Aragbo impresses me. Jamarion Carlton looks good. True freshman, 6, 5, 2, 8. Looks great on the hoof. I think he ultimately grows into a very similar body and use of Taquan Graham, other Temple product. I think he's going to be his best at like 290, 295, and he's going to be kind of a tweener. He's going to play defensive tackle for you. He can three technique. He can also go four. I like just a very useful piece, kind of how we use Hero Canoe. Canoe is just awesome. He's going to be our best interior defensive lineman. I love that guy. Great transfer, great pickup for Texas. Extremely athletic, Very, very strong, ton of power. Love the D1. And, oh, I'm leaving out Richard Wesley. I mean, he was amazing. He's a true freshman. He's young. I think He's a young 18. He's. He's really young and he is gigantic and basically moves as well as Xena Umi Azulu, who I think is going to have a big year. Very impressive. The hits that we've had on edge the last two or three years in recruiting, they just don't stop. It's unbelievable. And boy, go back and think about our edge room in 2021. We got like 13 dudes from LSU and Bama out there trying to get stops. Holy shit. I mean, it's just a different program sometimes. I know the drive is getting national title and I'm right there with you. Sometimes you got to Stop and sniff the roses a little bit and remember what Sark has done in a reasonably short time. We can't hold every coach to the Kurt Signetti standard because Kurt Signetti is a freaking unicorn. So we're compiling some talent and we're going to see it on Saturdays this fall. Love, Rocky Cummings. Young linebacker, true freshman. I loved his tape, and all of that has translated to college. Everything I saw on his tape, he is tall. He's like 6, 4, 2, 25, 230. He'll be 240 soon enough. He reminds me a ton of some of the best Iowa State linebackers. Guys like Mike Rose who were tall, big, and could flow and could run and could pass coverage and they could blitz. They could just. These do everything. Middle linebackers, who you never have to take off the field. That is incredibly valuable. Baylor's Matt Jones was another guy like that. If you, if you remember him, and I hate to say it, he reminds me a lot of Danny Stutzman, but not a douche. So hugely impressive guy. I saw a couple of plays where he basically shed a blocker, shuffled laterally, kept his base, stayed bendy and low. Because you worry about a guy like that who can, even when he can run, you worry about a guy that tall kind of overrunning, literally overrunning, you know, short 5, 8, 59 backs who kind of scored underneath him. Nope, he is a freaking linebacker clinic tackling video. When he flows to the ball outside the tackles, it looks like. It looks like the coach made his son do, you know, do the video. And that's what it looks like. So I love Cummings. I think he's gonna have a great career. Keep your eyes out for number 30. Rasheed Biles is freak and he could fly. I've, I've likened him. I've said, you know, 20, 25 years ago, Rasheed Biles is your starting strong safety. But in today's college football, your starting strong safety puts on 10 pounds and suddenly he's a linebacker who can just fly. He can cover, he can blitz, and we blitz the shit out of him. And it was very impressive. He has incredible get off. He is stop start is wild. He has a nose for it. The timing on our blitzes is much better. There are many, many good attributes of Pete Kwakowski. I, you know, I, I explained why we did make that change and why I was good with it. He wasn't good at timing up blitzes. He didn't have a feel for it. Mustiam has a great feel for that. And boy, Biles is the perfect tool to. To employ in that regard. And the other thing about a blitzing interior linebacker, if you already have a pretty good baseline pass rush, which Texas does with four or even three, adding that extra linebacker, that's tough, man, especially if you can cover outside and they can't just get the ball out quickly. Love, Biles. Colton Vosic was healthy. He looked good. He's always looks good when he's healthy. He's almost never healthy, so please stay healthy, Colton. Let's see, what else. Juice crier, number 28. I watched his tape at Florida State. I thought he was tough. I thought he was physical, I thought he was slow, and I thought he lacked quickness, and I thought he could really be exploited in the passing game. Kind of moved a little better than I thought a Texas uniform. I don't know. I don't know what happens, you know, when you put on the white, but the white burn orange, but suddenly you move better. I guess. I don't know. Maybe he was a little injured last year. Maybe he worked on it. I don't know. He. He flowed better. He looked more natural, less mechanical. And like what I saw, we kind of a more traditional mic. So if a team wants to kind of bully us and, and try to run the ball and take advantage of our smaller linebackers, you roll out Juice Crier and you'll put an end to that. Not a lot of teams on our schedule can do that to us, but Georgia, we happen to see them in the SEC title game, which I think might happen. They may. They may try that. In fact, I'm pretty sure they're going to try that. Like him, Atkinson looks good. Runs around well. Doesn't fully know exactly what he's doing in every aspect yet, but that's to be expected from a true freshman. He's small, but he's really, really fast, really quick. See what else any more linebackers jump off. Ian Griffard is an absolutely gigantic human being, and we got him in a little better shape. He was a little slower and tended to stand up more when I saw him last year at Arkansas. He's getting better pad level. He looks better in terms of fitness. He's getting lower, better bend. And when that guy stays low, you cannot move that human being. Now, I'm not saying he's going to shed a guard and then go sprint to the sideline and make a tackle on a sweep, you know, the way old Casey Hampton used to do back in the day, or even Moro a Jomo, if you Want a much lighter version, but someone's trying to run duo on us or inside zone and bully us again. He's coming out there in that juice crier package. Just saying, nah, nah, you're not going to do that. And that's good. He's a good compliment to Canoe because Canoe is very quick and very powerful. Gifard just holds space and says, hey, you know, please double team me. And then let's, let's let our other really talented defensive linemen have one on ones and they're better athletes than your offensive lineman, so you're gonna lose. So love that. Grayson Littleton had a great pbu. They called a PI on it, which it was not. And I think Masjaf did not like that. Let's see what else. Derrick Williams. I was really watching him to see if he moved around okay. He did. He looked like Derrick Williams. It's not 100% back from what we saw. That freshman who would kind of flash, you know, that crazy range, you know, in a 6 foot 2 frame, which is, which is really massive for a safety. He looked good. I mean, he floated around. Well, I'm not going to say that. Yeah, it doesn't look exactly 100% there, but he does not look like a guy coming back from a knee injury. So that was really encouraging. Boy, we really need him because he would be just a great safety pair. Him and Jelani Donald. That would be just an awesome pair. Two really big guys who are long, who can flow, who can move laterally, who can turn and run and then they can. You can throw them in the box and they'll go hit somebody. So that's a crucial thing. Xavier Filsame did not appear and I really wanted to see him because I know he's very physically talented. Every time I see him, he's doing something wrong, like whether in a game. I think I picked on Mr. Falsami. Poor Mr. Xavier in that Vanderbilt game. The more I look at it, the more I think that's just really bad coaching and that's why Dwayne Aquina was not brought back. He just didn't develop those guys at all. That's just a fact. So I really wanted to see Falsami after being coached by Gideon and Must Champ. That's a great combo and I really want to see what he can be because he is. He's fast as hell and he's. He's a guy that could really help us in safety, particularly in certain dime packages where you kind of want to play two safeties deep and then press with four, man, you know, sometimes four corners, right? And you just press across the board with two guys deep and they kind of have your back. And then you rush three and you bring a linebacker and the other linebacker helps to, you know, sort of drop in the zone or pick up a running back. Boy, that's. That would be a tough defense to solve. If you're trying to throw the ball and Texas has got the lead, you know, throw that in with my greyhound package. Keep alternating and you're gonna get some stops. That's what it's all about. That's the D. I don't have a ton more. I'm sure there's people that I saw that impressed me and I couldn't remember to write it down or whatever. Do I have any concerns about our defense? I mean, they're, they're marginal. Like they're situational. You know, hey, maybe someone could get big and run on us a little bit for a while and then we'll make a personnel adjustment, right? Could someone, gosh, hit us schematically some with like, wide receiver, screen game, running back, screen game. If we're, we're blitzing our interior linebackers a lot. Yeah, but Mus champ will just stop, you know, like, I mean, I guess my point is, in the past when I'd be concerned about our defense, it was big picture coaching stuff. It was, hey, this corner, you know, Gilbo can't hang the, you know, to the degree that Muhammad can, or, hey, this safety can't really run, or this linebacker is physical, but I hope he doesn't get in a foot race or, you know, we're not dynamic here or there. Those are more concerns and they're kind of hardwired into your defense and you can't really do much about it. I don't see a lot of that. So I would be shocked if we didn't have a top 10 defense. I'd be kind of surprised if we didn't have a top five defense. Got a bunch of good offenses too, on our slate, so we'll see. I'm have to eat my words, but I like the looks of this. I mean, you know, kick field goals that are makeable. I will say our field goal kicker has a big leg, so we might try some stuff that, you know, that kind of like 4th and 13, where you're on the 34 and you don't run a punt because that just, you know, it's going to go in the end zone and like, it's going to be a useless exchange. You don't want to go for it because it's 4th and 13. We might roll that guy out there and kick that thing and try to get points and I think There's a probably 60, 60, 70% chance that we get that. So that's useful. That's an asset punting. I don't have an opinion. We'll see it in games and with that, I'm out. Support our sponsors. You could read my stuff at Inside Texas, but I can't wait to do another one of these and I hope this all recorded so I don't have to do another one. A third one. I'm about to lose my mind. All right, y'. All. Y' all take care. Hey y'. All. If you are buying or selling a house in the greater Centex area, there's only one person you need to talk to. That person is Laura Baker, real estate agent extraordinaire. You can reach her at 512-784-0505. Here's the hard truth about real estate. There's a whole lot of real estate agents and then there's a small number of real estate agents who do all the transactions, all the work and have all the expertise. Everyone else is frankly a hobbyist. That's why you want to go with an award winning member of the Andy Allen team in Austin, Texas, and Keller Williams. That's Laura Baker. She is absolutely extraordinary at what she does. My friend and colleague Ian Boyd used her to move to Austin from Michigan and raved about the level of detail, service and attention that he received. I have gotten nothing but amazing feedback from folks who have used Laura. Make sure you dial those digits and get the best possible real estate agent in your corner. 1, 2, 7,
Host: Paul Wadlington
Date: April 28, 2026
In this episode, Paul Wadlington delivers an in-depth, position-by-position analysis of the Texas Longhorns’ spring football game. Drawing from his personal observations and “emptying the notebook,” Paul provides honest assessments of players, units, and coaching decisions, spotlighting emerging talent, strengths and lingering concerns on both sides of the ball. The episode dives into the potential for Texas to compete at the highest level in the upcoming season and the importance of player development and depth across the roster.
“By and large, this is the most talented team that Steve Sarkisian has had at Texas. He just needs to navigate a pretty difficult schedule, get in the playoffs, and then let it go from there.” (06:20)
“He didn’t do any of that bullshit and that’s a good thing.” (16:45)
“He gets a lot of tipped balls because he doesn’t have a sense of the pocket and what the windows are.” (22:00)
“The arrow on Sterling Burkhalter is always pointed up. So he's gotten better every year he's played football.” (25:05)
“It's the deceleration, acceleration. He's just, he's an athletic genius... That's Bishop, and it's just very impressive.” (27:25)
“I think this is the first year where he probably should consider it.” (31:00)
“A lot of young backs would have tried to bounce it out because they didn't see the hole. Cooper burrowed in there, got his pads low and drove his feet…” (40:45)
“We're, we're like fine at tight end. And we were, we were not fine at tight end last year.” (46:10)
“When you gain weight, particularly if you're a guy with big leverages… makes you a better athlete.” (50:20)
“You’ve got to bring some aggression. It’s a little shocking sometimes to watch us in those situations.” (57:00)
“It’s shocking how quickly he gets off the football. Very impressive.” (1:00:50)
“Everything I saw on his tape, he is tall... He'll be 240 soon enough. He reminds me a ton of some of the best Iowa State linebackers…” (1:06:44)
“Rasheed Biles is a freak and he could fly.” (1:09:20)
“In the past when I’d be concerned about our defense, it was big picture coaching stuff… I don’t see a lot of that. So I would be shocked if we didn’t have a top 10 defense. I’d be kind of surprised if we didn’t have a top five defense.” (1:20:42)
“I’m kind of a guy that I want to see a young quarterback struggle. I want to see how he handles it... He didn’t do any of that bullshit and that’s a good thing.” (16:45)
“He's an athletic genius... it's the deceleration, acceleration... move in a certain way and it's, it's his body type and that kind of movement is usually something you see in Florida type guys.” (27:25)
"The hits that we've had on edge the last two or three years in recruiting, they just don't stop. It's unbelievable." (1:03:36)
“He is a freaking linebacker clinic tackling video. When he flows to the ball outside the tackles, it looks like... the coach made his son do the video.” (1:06:44)
"I would be shocked if we didn't have a top 10 defense. I'd be kind of surprised if we didn't have a top five defense." (1:20:42)
Paul concludes that Texas is equipped with “as much talent as any Texas team” under Sarkisian, with particular strength in the WR room and defensive front, plus newfound depth at skill positions. The key to a breakthrough season will be handling the schedule, roster management, and capitalizing on playmaking talent. He expresses confidence that the Longhorns should field a “top 10, maybe top 5 defense,” and sees very few weak spots across the board.
This summary captures the major themes, player evaluations, and notable insights from Paul Wadlington’s “Emptying The Notebook On The Texas Scrimmage” episode, providing listeners and fans a detailed recap of Texas football’s key storylines heading into the fall of 2026.