Texas' linebacker room boasts several quality candidates to fill leadership positions on defense

Many of Texas’ top players from the 2023 defense are now trying their hand at professional football. Whether it’s Big 12 defensive lineman of the year Byron Murphy, Outland Trophy winner T’Vondre Sweat, or standout linebacker Jaylan Ford, there are a lot of components from the Big 12 champion Longhorns hoping to hear their names called in the 2024 NFL Draft or at least hear their phone ring with an undrafted free agent offer.

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While Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian hopes for the best for that crew, they’re mostly on their own. Sarkisian’s current task is to figure out how he will mold his team for the 2024 season, the Longhorns’ first in the Southeastern Conference. In that process, he’ll be looking for leaders. On the Texas defense, he has plenty of candidates at the linebacker position.

The linebacker group, even with a new assistant coach in Johnny Nansen, boasts one of the strongest combinations of experience and talent in the whole program. The elder statesmen are David Gbenda and Morice Blackwell, two players Sarkisian identified as crucial to his efforts of building up the 2024 team with its own unique characteristics and avoiding the ever-present “rat poison” his mentor Nick Saban famously alluded to.

“Complacency is like the devil, man,” Sarkisian said Wednesday. “I cannot afford anybody in our building to feel like we’ve arrived because this is a new team. This team now has to develop their culture. This team now has to develop their strengths. This team, I have to identify their weaknesses and how we can improve upon those things.”

He may not have better candidates to help replace the void left by Ford and Sam linebacker Jett Bush than Gbenda and Blackwell, the only two linebackers Sarkisian named during his signing day press conference when speaking about team leadership.

With them are second-year standout Anthony Hill, Alabama transfer Kendrick Blackshire, and UTSA’s Trey Moore, who could factor at the Sam position.

Gbenda, the last remaining member of the Longhorns’ 2019 class on the roster, played in every game in 2023 with eight starts, even serving as a captain versus Kansas in 2023. He posted career-best numbers with 50 tackles, 3.5 tackles for loss, and 1.5 sacks. Several of those plays were highlighted by the official Texas X account.

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Blackwell posted 21 tackles with 3.0 for loss plus a fumble recovery. He was a part of Jeff Banks‘ special teams with just over half of his 397 total snaps coming on various units in the third phase, according to Pro Football Focus. When he wasn’t working on fourth down or kickoffs, he played a multifaceted role on Pete Kwiatkowski‘s defense.

Hill may be the least experienced of the regular linebacker contributors, but he may have the most asked of him on and off the field in 2024. Hill, a freshman All-American according to the FWAA and a true freshman All-American per On3, tallied 67 tackles with 8.0 for loss and 5.0 sacks during his debut season. Starting the year in a specialized role, Hill appeared in all 14 games but started most of the second half of the season at the Will linebacker positoin.

The trio of Blackwell, Gbenda, and Hill will have help in the form of Blackshire and Moore, two players with a number of tackles, games, and accolades to their name from respective time spent at Alabama and UTSA. They will be crucial in helping the defense, for sure, but also in making sure a young linebacker contingent featuring Derion Gullette, S’Maje Burrell, and Liona Lefau is ready for game action mentally and physically.

Their task will be the same as many others returning from the 2023 team, but the linebackers, as the link between the defensive front and the secondary, may have the most important role when it comes to bringing a defense that lost a lot of star power up to the Texas standard.

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“Now, it’s their responsibility to get that ingrained in these 30 new players,” Sarkisian said. “As much as it’s the coaches, man, it’s way more impactful when it comes from the leaders on the team. That’s always the challenge of empowering those guys, them taking responsibility of it, then growing this team into the team that we want to have as quickly as possible.”