Leading up to the Longhorns' embarrassing loss to Florida in week 6, Texas' offense began to look better overall, but it's now obvious that it was just due to the inferior defenses that they were facing. A team like Texas, who was the No.1-ranked team in the nation entering the 2025 season, shouldn't be self-destructing when they play P4 teams.
Over the first five games of the season, there's only been one problem that consistently shows up throughout the entirety of each matchup: Bad offensive line play in both phases of the offense.
I'm not sure if it's bad coaching this season, or just simply underwhelming individual performances every game but something has to change along the offensive line. Trevor Goosby has looked fine at left tackle, but the interior trio has been incredibly disappointing each and every week. It's gotten to the point to where Steve Sarkisian is taking players from the offensive tackle room and kicking them inside.
Both Jaydon Chatman and true freshman Nick Brooks have spent time inside over the past couple of weeks, and Brooks got a good amount of snaps at left guard against Florida. As expected, he wasn't the best at offensive guard, but the team had to try something different. He fared just as well as Connor Stroh in pass protection, which is pretty bad, but Brooks looked extremely powerful in the run game.
C Cole Hutson has been "okay" but is wildly inconsistent from week to week in pass protection. He needs to stop lunging at defenders so often and show more patience. Hutson needs to just sit back and rely on his technique throughout the game instead of trying to just out-power everyone.
D.J. Campbell is excellent when pulling and moving in space, so he's an asset in the run game, but like everyone else, pass blocking has been an area of concern.
Though each of these guys have been good as run blockers individually, it means nothing if they can't work together in Sarkisian's run schemes. There has been consistent problems with combo blocks on inside/outside zone plays over the past few weeks, as well as in the power game with players not gapping down fast enough to cover a puller.
The problems that have been occurring each week are simple, fundamental things that should be incredibly fixable, yet nothing has changed. If the team doesn't find a way to fix it fast, seeing this team lose 4-5 games is totally realistic.