The Longhorns have suffered a significant blow to the team’s tackle depth.
On Monday, the news broke that the Texas Longhorns have suffered the program’s first significant injury of preseason camp with redshirt sophomore Andre Cojoe sustaining a season-ending knee injury, according to multiple reports.
Here’s what it means for the Longhorns and position coach Kyle Flood.
Brandon Baker is the starter
Cojoe’s injury ends one of the most important position battles for Texas in preseason camp and solidifies sophomore Brandon Baker as the starter. A strong technician who has earned praise from his teammates for his intelligence and work ethic, Baker has the pedigree to step in quickly as the replacement for Cam Williams.
At a position that Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian noted can have catastrophic consequences for mistakes, Baker didn’t have a lot of pass-blocking repetitions last year among his 65 snaps — only 14 — but excelled in that small sample size with an above-average grade of 80.2 as a pass blocker. In those 14 pass-blocking snaps, Baker did not give up any pressures.
Sarkisian also said he wants more nastiness out of the right tackle position, an indication that Baker still has room to grow as a run blocker, which wasn’t considered his strength in high school.
One key for Baker to show improvement over Williams? Avoiding penalties, especially false starts — Williams committed 16 penalties last season, the second-most in the country among offensive linemen. If Baker can minimize his false-start penalties, the Horns will spend less time working from behind the chains on offense.
This is a significant setback for Cojoe
Before the injury, Cojoe was projected as the first offensive tackle off the bench for the Longhorns. Now he’s facing a rehabilitation process that isn’t as simple for a 335-pounder as it is for a skill-position player with a timeline that could make it difficult for Cojoe to compete in the offensive tackle rotation by the start of next year’s preseason camp.
Combined with the lost reps that will go to a younger player like Nick Brooks, Cojoe’s future on the Forty Acres now looks much less clear than it did when camp started last week.
Increased pressure on Brooks and Jaydon Chatman
The lack of overall experience along the offensive line is reflected in the new competition to become the team tackle for the Longhorns — redshirt sophomore Jaydon Chatman has played 32 snaps in each of the last two seasons while the true freshman Brooks enrolled in January.
Chatman is now the team’s primary swing lineman after playing left tackle as a freshman and guard last season. When Texas was in a team period last Wednesday as camp opened, Chatman received some reps at left tackle.
Brooks had a summer setback when he was arrested and charged with a DWI, telling the police that he was taking recruits to a strip club. But on the field, he drew buzz for his physical stature as one of the two early enrollees along the offensive line with Jackson Christian.
“I think both those guys have progressed really well. They’ve both really gone at it from an understanding standpoint in a big way. I think for them, training camp now becomes the real test, because they were able to get kind of the offensive installs in the spring, and then go back through it in the summer for the second time, and now they’re going to get it for the third time. It’s a real opportunity for them to show us how far up the depth chart they can move in training camp,” Flood said last Tuesday.
Flood trains his tackles on the left side and the right side, so both Brooks and Chatman have some practice experience at both positions, a positive for the Longhorns moving forward.