Texas Football: 3 deep sleeper breakout candidates for spring camp

In just a few days, Texas football will report for the first spring practice. The players will report for the start of spring camp this coming weekend, with the first spring practice set to take place on March 6.

Head coach Steve Sarkisian and the Longhorns will then take part in 15 practices, including nearly a dozen that will be full-contact and fully padded up. And then, the annual Orange-White spring football game will take place at Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium on April 15.

For those Texas fans starving for some sort of football-related contact that stems from on-field practices and drills, your thirst is about to be quenched.

Texas will see more than 15 new additions to the program via the high school recruits in the 2023 class and the NCAA Transfer Portal pick-ups continue to integrate into the program in spring ball. We’ll finally get to see the likes of quarterback Arch Manning, running back Cedric Baxter Jr., linebacker Anthony Hill Jr., etc. go through drills in full pads in the near future at Texas.

Which deep sleepers could breakout in spring ball for Texas football?

With that in mind, here’s a look at three breakout candidates among the deep sleepers to watch for the Longhorns in spring camp.

Juan Davis, TE

The tight end position isn’t as deep heading into spring camp this year as it was at the same time last offseason. Tight ends coach/special teams coordinator Jeff Banks and the Longhorns do return three players at the position from last year’s squad.

But only two of the returning tight ends, juniors JT Sanders and Gunnar Helm, have taken more than 100 offensive snaps in their collegiate careers, respectively.

The other tight end that returns to Texas in 2023 that does at least have a few dozen offensive snaps under his belt is redshirt sophomore Juan Davis. The 6-foot-4 and 215-pound Davis returns for his third year on campus and he’ll be looking to finally find a breakthrough in camp this offseason.

In the last two years, Davis didn’t take more than a few dozen offensive snaps, mostly as a blocking tight end. He’s only been targeted once as a receiver, which went for three yards in the loss to the Arkansas Razorbacks early in the 2021 season.

With some of the lack of depth that Texas will have in the tight end room heading into spring camp, the door should be open for Davis to finally get his chance in the spotlight. He heads into the spring as the definite third-team tight end behind the duo of Sanders and Helm.

There will be an abundance of reps that could go his way given that some of the other younger tight ends coming into the program, such as Will Randle and Spencer Shannon, won’t be participating in spring camp. Randle suffered a season-ending knee injury last fall that he’s still recovering from. And neither he nor Shannon even enrolled early for the spring semester.

Thus, Davis is in line to get more reps than he ever has in camp in each of the last two offseasons.

We heard about some of the strides that Davis was making toward becoming more of a “complete tight end” in bowl practice in December 2022, per a report from Horns247 (paid content). And it sounds like he got off to a good start in winter workouts, which bodes well for the direction of his game heading into spring ball.