The Texas football team practiced in pads on Monday. Here are 3 staff observations.

With the countdown started to its Aug. 31 season opener against Colorado State, the Texas football team resumed practicing on Monday.

This may be the most anticipated season at Texas in some time. Coming off a 12-2 year that included the Big 12 championship and its first-ever appearance in the College Football Playoff, UT was picked to finish second in the SEC preseason poll.

On Monday morning, the media was allowed to watch around 25 minutes of UT’s practice. Here are three things the American-Statesman observed at Denius Fields:

Jelani McDonald competing for a bigger role in 2024

After stretching, Texas opened Monday’s media window with some 11-on-11 action. And when the presumed first-string offense competed against the presumed first-string defense, some well-known names like Barryn Sorrell, David Gbenda and Anthony Hill Jr. were lined up on defense.

One of the starting safety spots − at least for this Monday − was taken by sophomore Jelani McDonald. A six-foot-2, 205-pound Waco product, McDonald has never started before. He primarily appeared on special teams during a 2023 season in which he compiled two tackles. McDonald was a four-star recruit in high school.

“Jelani McDonald has made some tremendous strides at safety,” Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said during the spring. “He’s very rangy, he’s very physical, he’s a good tackler. Thinking about in high school him basically playing quarterback the majority of the time, that football IQ is translating over to the defensive side of the ball. He’s seeing things unfold, he’s able to react well and we got a glimpse of that from him last year on special teams and now it’s carrying over to defense.”

— Danny Davis

Freshman Xavier Filsaime, safeties getting physical

The shells — shoulder pads and helmets — are now on for the Texas football team, and you could feel the…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/texas-football-team-practiced-pads-174259405.html

Author : Austin American-Statesman

Publish date : 2024-08-05 17:42:59

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.