Texas Football: 5 most imperative Longhorns players for 2023 season
4. Barryn Sorrell, EDGE
Texas needs an impact pass rusher to step up this fall. One of the lacking parts of the defense in the last two seasons under Pete Kwiatkowski was the ability to get home against opposing quarterbacks off the edge.
PK and the Longhorns did do a nice job last fall drumming up pressures on opposing quarterbacks, especially up the middle thanks to a massively improved group of players along the interior defensive line. In fact, Texas led the Big 12 in QB pressures last season.
And while Texas led the Big 12 in total pressures last season, it ranked third in sack percentage.
Big 12 team leaders in QB pressures last season.
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1. Texas: 190 (33.7 pressure%, 14.7 sack%)
2. Texas Tech: 179 (37.1 pressure%, 15.3 sack%)
3. Oklahoma: 178 (31.8 pressure%, 12.7 sack%)
4. Oklahoma St: 163 (29.9 pressure%, 11.8 sack%)
5. Kansas St: 159 (30.1 pressure%, 16 sack%) pic.twitter.com/cTaDjYJ8ym
That signals to me that Texas needs to be able to get home at a lot higher rate this fall, not just drum up pressure on opposing quarterbacks.
I think junior edge rusher Barryn Sorrell will be the player that is most primed to have a real breakthrough in terms of actually getting home against opposing quarterbacks in the pass rush this fall. Sorrell led Texas in sacks last season, with 5.5.
And that came while Sorrell was playing opposite senior edge rusher Ovie Oghoufo, who pretty constantly overran opposing quarterbacks in the pass rush in the last two seasons. Now that Sorrell could be playing opposite sophomore 6-foot-7 edge rusher Ethan Burke this fall, I think he will have a lot more opportunities to get home and clean up plays in the pass rush compared to the chances he had last year playing opposite Oghoufo.
Another year in the system also sounds like it’s doing wonders for Sorrell. He’s gotten bigger and more agile at the point of attack from what we heard coming out of spring practice in the last couple of months.
It’s also worth noting that Sorrell was already one of the best edge rushers in the Big 12 last season in terms of the ability to set the edge in run defense. He was critical to Texas being able to contain the off-tackle and outside zone run plays last season.
If Sorrell can get to at least a mark of eight sacks while continuing to excel as a run-stopper at EDGE, he could finally give Texas the impact player it desperately needs at the position this fall.