Texas Football: 3 players losing starting jobs halfway through fall camp

Texas football and head coach Steve Sarkisian will open up the 2023 regular season in less than two weeks. You can feel the excitement on the Forty Acres right now after Texas completed its second and final scrimmage of fall camp this weekend.

With fewer than two weeks of training camp remaining, we’re starting to see the two-deep depth chart come into focus. Key position battles on both sides of the ball for the Longhorns are getting decided after two productive fall scrimmages in the last two weekends.

Texas football players losing position battles with less than two weeks remaining of fall practice

It won’t be long until the Texas staff has the two-deep mostly set heading into the regular season. We’ve seen ample progress in the most significant position battles identified before fall practice.

At the outset of training camp, we pinpointed the interior offensive line, will linebacker, field cornerback, and EDGE as the position battles to watch (at least that had starting spots on the line). There are other backup battles still taking place in fall practice. But that could last throughout the season as young players step up.

With all this in mind, here’s a look at three players losing position battles past the halfway point of fall camp.

Cole Hutson, IOL

The interior offensive line was a hot-button topic heading into training camp for the Longhorns. Offensive line coach/offensive coordinator Kyle Flood needed to find the best five-man combination to trot out for the season opener against Rice on Sep. 2. Figuring out the interior offensive line was seemingly the key to unlocking the rest of the offensive line to reach its potential.

And it looks like Flood and the Longhorns are on the right track with getting the best five out there for the season opener, with junior guard Hayden Conner, senior center Jake Majors, and sophomore guard DJ Campbell getting the first-team IOL reps in the last two scrimmages.

Campbell, in particular, is worth noting because he’s winning the position battle at right guard over fellow sophomore interior offensive lineman Cole Hutson. Right guard and center first-team practice reps were contested heading into fall camp. Hutson and Campbell duked it out for the first-team reps at right guard.

Meanwhile, Hutson and second-year center Connor Robertson were looking to push Majors for the starting job at center.

With less than two weeks of training camp remaining, Hutson will likely be the utility guy (or sixth man) that can rotate along the interior offensive line. He can take live-game reps at either guard position or center this fall.

Hutson was the starter at right guard as a true freshman last season. But injuries allowed Campbell to get many live-game reps down the stretch. Campbell’s issue last fall was not talented-related. He just took longer to digest the offensive and blocking schemes since he was a summer enrollee, while Hutson enrolled during the spring to participate in spring camp.

If Hutson loses this position battle at right guard, that’s not necessarily bad. This means Flood and the Longhorns have more valuable depth and talent along the offensive line that could be useful in case of injuries or poor performance during the season.

This is the deepest group along the interior offensive line Flood had in his three years as Texas’ OL coach.