Kirk Herbstreit has faith in Washington O-line against strong Texas front

The College Football Playoff semifinals are almost here at last, and on this Saturday morning’s edition of SportsCenter, Kirk Herbstreit broke down the game within the game between Texas and Washington.

The longtime College GameDay host got some extra reps in on the SportsCenter hour beforehand, joining to discuss why he thinks the Washington offensive line will play with a chip on their shoulder. Of course, that’s because the world already knows about the threats the Texas defense poses.

“Well, everybody’s going to talk about the line of scrimmage, you know, on both sides of the ball,” said Herbstreit of the matchup. “I think the biggest area is Texas’ defensive line and how physical they are on the inside with (Byron) Murphy and (T’vondre) Sweat.”

Sweat and Murphy are beasts in their own right with 16 combined tackles for loss and seven combined sacks. However, Herbstreit notes that the entire DL group is deep for Steve Sarkisian. And they have a rotation of eight guys on that defensive line that they’re able to rotate, he added.

Despite such elite personnel and depth on the other side of the line, Kirk Herbstreit still has faith in this Washington offensive line to answer the bell and prove doubters wrong, just as they have all season long.

“But I was just listening to some of the interviews, these Washington offensive linemen, I think they’re done with having to deal with questions about their own physicality. So, if I were gonna be excited about anything in this game — and there’s Michael Penix, there’s the receivers, the Texas secondary — I can’t wait to watch what happens with Washington’s offensive line against that big strong front from Texas.”

The expectation is the bigger and nastier dudes will be wearing the burnt orange. However, Kirk Herbstreit knows those people-movers in purple will bring en edge as well.

“Everybody’s assuming that’s a massive advantage for Texas. I think Dillon Johnson, who runs the football to give them balance, and that offensive line, I know they’ll accept the challenge. We’ll just have to see which way it goes.”

Obviously, Washington isn’t the type of team that typically wants to smash the ball down its opponent’s throat through the run game, but remaining efficient on those rush attempts will be crucial for the Huskies. They just can’t afford to get behind the chains to set up obvious passing situations, when that Texas pass rush can pin its ears back and really give the UW O-line all they can handle.