Texas head coach Tom Herman met with the media on Monday, October 22nd ahead of the Longhorns’ road contest against Oklahoma State in Stillwater on Saturday night. Herman addressed a variety of topics, none of which were hotter than the status of quarterback Sam Ehlinger, who injured his shoulder in the opening series against Baylor eight days ago.
The Longhorns are ranked #6 in the Associated Press Poll, their highest ranking since September, 2010.
A recap of the key points of Herman’s Monday media availability can be found below.
- With the bye week taking place last weekend, the team did not practice on Friday or Saturday. This was a welcomed break that also allowed the coached to hit the recruiting trail and visit commits and targets. Practice resumed on Sunday.
- While Herman reiterated again today that Sam Ehlinger is “on schedule” in recovering from his shoulder sprain, the staff is being very cautious and intentional with respect to his return to normal workouts. His repetitions and participation are being closely monitored and, in many cases, limited. Ehlinger threw a Nerf football and made 15 throws with a regular football on Sunday. Herman expected Ehlinger to throw 25 or 30 times with a regular football at Monday’s practice.
- Ehlinger’s status for Oklahoma State won’t be known until Thursday, most likely. According to Herman, if Ehlinger is “healthy and he’s himself,” then he will start in Stillwater.
- Injuries updates, other than Ehlinger – LB Jeffrey McCulloch will practice tomorrow (Tuesday). McCulloch suffered a strained neck from a car accident last week. DB Josh Thompson suffered a hyper extended knee last week in practice but is expected to return to practice in a limited capacity tomorrow.
- On true freshman running back Keaontay Ingram who receives more and more carries each week, and if he can be a “20 carries per game” running back…. Herman said they will continue to rely on him. He mentioned the skill and talent of all three running backs, but said if the team needs to “hand him [ingram] the ball 22 times to win, then we’ll hand it to him 22 times.” Furthermore Herman discussed Ingram being a young back that has already taken a lot of wear and tear and said he will improve physically once he spends more time with S&C Coach Yancy McKnight.
- When asked if there is a psychological drop off in the locker room among the players because of Ehlinger’s injury, Herman says there is zero that he feels. Says his players are confident regardless of who is under center. “…Based off what Shane Buechele has done in his career here, there’s nobody that doubts that we can win games with him and win big games with him.”
- The three biggest threats Oklahoma State poses are their defense, running back Justice Hill, and playing a night game in Stillwater on ABC.
- On the Longhorns moving up in the polls, despite the bye week: “The only thing that matters is what hardware have we taken home and where are we ranked at the end of the season.”
- On D’Shawn Jamison, Herman says the next step is to get him completely trustworthy in the team’s base offense.
- Herman was asked about the games of the weekend, in particular the Oregon loss at Washington State, and the Ohio State loss at Purdue, and if those serve as learning tools for his players when traveling on the road. His response: “We have got plenty of those, we were in Washington, DC not just whatever it was, seven weeks ago, so I don’t think this team needs any secondary kind of learning tools, I think we have learned it firsthand, we were in Manhattan, Kansas — we won the game, certainly, but that was a dog fight and so they’re well aware of that championships are won on the road. There’s never been a championship team that’s gone 0-fer on the road. It doesn’t exist.”
- Herman keeps the message consistent with his players regarding social media and the team’s ranking and the talk of the College Football Playoff. He says whether a person chooses to listen or not is a very “unique” human condition. Thinks his guys have done a good job of choosing not to listen.
- When Shane Buechele is taking reps with the first team, Cameron Rising is taking reps with the two’s.
- Herman says the team needs to do a better job defensively on 3rd downs and needs to do a better job of moving on the offensive line.
