Bad Take Tuesday: Texas should run more 10 personnel, a lot more

If there was ever a time for Texas to use 10 personnel, it was in either of the recent matchups versus Washington. The Longhorns trailed in the 2022 Alamo Bowl and got the ball back on their own 16 with 31 seconds left and no timeouts, needing to drive the length of the field to tie. An incompletion, a sack, and another incompletion led to a desperate heave by Quinn Ewers that was hauled in by Casey Cain as time expired, 41 yards short of where Texas needed to be.

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Similarly, in the 2024 Sugar Bowl, the Longhorns needed to go 69 yards to have a chance to win the game with an extra point. The Longhorns got to within 12 yards of the end zone, but a last second pass from Ewers to Adonai Mitchell flew past the intended receiver and ended Texas’ season.

In both instances, Texas head coach relied on 11 personnel that featured either Mitchell or Cain plus Xavier Worthy and Jordan Whittington at receiver and Ja’Tavion Sanders at tight end. That decision stems from a commitment by Steve Sarkisian to keep the tight end on the field in order to force defenses to account for an extra gap in the run game or handle a mismatch created by players like Sanders or Gunnar Helm.

Those two situations produced 40-yard gains, but maybe Texas could have reached where it wanted to be with an extra wideout on the field.

That’s where Bad Take Tuesday has an idea: Sarkisian should use more 10 personnel on offense. Also, it shouldn’t be limited to late-game situations. Rather, it should become a part of the offense just like other seldom used packages like 20 and 22 personnel.

For years, dating back to the start of the 2017 season, fans have often wondered why the Longhorns never seem to go four- or five-wide. Those questions were misinformed. Texas often went four-wide and still uses five-wide sets, it’s just via 11 personnel with one running back and one tight end on the field.

The next question that logically followed was, why not just go 10 personnel with four WRs, or, in extreme circumstances, use 00 personnel with five receivers on the field? Texas recruits wideout as well as any team in the country save for Ohio State.

And since Sterlin Gilbert left after the 2016 season, the number of times Texas has deployed four wide receivers on the field can probably be counted with both hands with fingers to spare.

Most people’s understanding of 10 personnel involves looking back at two different styles of offense the Longhorns often saw in the Big 12. Mike Leach won 84 games and five bowls at Texas Tech utilizing the purest form of the Air Raid offense. The Red Raiders elected to move their offense via the pass in every scenario. Short yardage was often picked up via short passes as opposed to inside runs, and so Leach’s offense deployed as many receivers as it could to place the needed skill sets around quality quarterbacks like Kliff Kingsbury, Graham Harrell, Taylor Potts, and BJ Symons. When Kingsbury took over as head coach, Patrick Mahomes continued that legacy.

There were occasions when Leach utilized either the run game or the tight end, but his offenses regularly had four to five wideouts on the field and he used it to bring Texas Tech to its historical peak.

Art Briles also used four wide receivers as part of his Veer & Shoot offense. Even in situations where the Bears were in 10 personnel, Baylor had quarterbacks like Robert Griffin III who could exploit the “extra gap” usually created by the tight end. His athleticism took advantage of the extreme splits in the offense, as did the Baylor running game, when opposing defenses could not figure out how to stop the Bears in the early 2010s.

The names at receiver in these systems are some of the best in Big 12 history: Michael Crabtree, Wes Welker, KD Cannon, Corey Coleman, Kendall Wright. They thrived in savvy use of 10 personnel and even 00 personnel to terrorize defenses as the spread offense era reached its zenith.

This isn’t to say Ryan Wingo is the 2025 version of Crabtree, nor that DeAndre Moore is the second coming of Cannon. But why not put a formation on the field that features Wingo, Moore, and Emmett Mosley, plus someone out of Parker Livingstone, Aaron Butler, Ryan Niblett, Daylan McCutcheon, Kaliq Lockett, Jaime Ffrench, or even Michael Terry III? Especially with Arch Manning‘s projected prowess at throwing to all three levels of the field?

Logical pushback against 10 personnel has merit. Texas didn’t go get Jack Endries out of the portal for him to sit on the sidelines in important situations, nor did Jeff Banks recruits players like Jordan Washington or Nick Townsend to see them standing by Sarkisian.

And the structural argument exists, too: it’s harder to run the football without a tight end than it is with one. An attached tight end creates the C-gap, and five gaps is more than four.

But considering the talent accumulated in the wide receiver room, why not start putting four on the field at a time? Even if it’s used in bits and spurts this year, it’ll set the foundation for future use. The idea of all four members of Texas’ 2025 wide receiver class on the field at the same time should strike fear into the hearts of opposing defensive coordinators. Even if you run a dime package against Texas, do you have enough defensive speed to not only slow down the pass-catchers but also do so before Manning makes his decision? Are your pass-rushers getting past players like Trevor Goosby, Brandon Baker, and the players in the tackle pipeline?

This isn’t a call to go full on Kingsbury and pass, pass, and pass some more. Even Leach knew there was value in running the football on occasion. Woody Marks rushed for 583 yards under Leach in 2022 at Mississippi State, and Max Borghi hit for over 800 yards at Washington State in 2019.

Sarkisian likes to say the more effective looks they can give opposing defenses, the more opponents have to prepare for. Sarkisian’s offense has evolved plenty since he was at Washington, and it’s even evolved since he was breaking records calling the Alabama offense.

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The next evolution can be one he’s pushed against for much of his career at Texas. There are trade-offs, but they’re worth it considering who the Longhorns can deploy in a potential 10 personnel look.