2 FOR TEXAS
Longhorns are loaded at running back
At last check, Chris Warren III no longer weighed in excess of 250 pounds.
It seems as if the smoldering summer heat has caused Texas’ beefy running back to melt away this preseason. Slightly, anyway. These days Warren says he’s checking in at 247 pounds, down about 8 pounds from the beefed-up physique he carried in the spring, but hardly the frame of a pintsized scatback.
Arguably the most intriguing nonstarter on UT’s roster, Warren is still big and terrifying to tackle, and he’s healthy after bringing a hamstring injury into his second fall camp.
“It healed up pretty quickly,” Warren said Fri-
day. “I’ve been good for quite some time.”
With a little more than a week to go before the season opener against Notre Dame, Warren’s lot on the team appears to be cloudy. Positioned second on the depth chart behind D’Onta Foreman, Warren could fit into a complementary role in which he gets, say, 15 to 18 carries per game or as an understudy tasked with giving Foreman an occasional reprieve.
In time, it’ll all shake out. After all, if Foreman hadn’t sustained a wrist injury late last year, Warren would have remained on the sideline and not been summoned onto the field against Texas Tech (276 yards, four touchdowns) and Baylor (106 yards).
Yet it’s not only Foreman with whom Warren is competing for carries. Among the talents lower on the depth chart are versatile sophomore Kirk Johnson, who returned to practice this week after missing an undisclosed amount of time, and promising four-star recruit Kyle Porter of Class 6A state champion Katy.
All five of the team’s scholarship backs — redshirt freshman Tristian Houston is the fifth — exceed 200 pounds, with Warren and Foreman (240 pounds) heading the stable. Yet health concerns have already arisen. Foreman, Warren and Johnson have had to sit out preseason practices with various ailments.
Running backs coach Anthony Johnson, himself once an injury-riddled back for the Longhorns, said, “I don’t have a guy in my room who has started for a full season and played through a full season.” For that reason, Johnson wants to temper expectations and has told his players that despite external praise of the backs as the best position group on the team, “nobody has proven that, in my opinion.”
Recognizing the need to preserve their bodies, Warren said if he were in charge, he’d use a rotation with three or four backs getting 15 carries apiece. Added together, that’s 60 touches a game, a number Texas never reached in 2015 but approached against Oklahoma (58) and West Virginia (54).
“Just to keep the pounding on the backs throughout the season to a minimum,” said Warren, who tore his ACL during his junior season at Rockwall. “There’s no reason to take unnecessary hits.
“If we split carries like I think we should, I think we can get three to four backs up to about 700 yards.”
For what it’s worth, Foreman was asked about a rotation, and his response lacked Warren’s enthusiasm.
“Whatever the coaches want,” Foreman said.