Texas Football: Andre Coleman Wants to Bring More Versatility to the Texas Receivers
In moving to a more traditional four-man front, the Longhorns decided add a second coach to the defensive line, seperating Oscar Giles to work with the defensive ends and bringing in Mark Hagen to coach the tackles.
Since the NCAA limits the number of on-field assistant coaches to 10, this meant the position would have to be taken from somewhere else on the staff. Texas elected to consolidate the position of wide receivers coach, hiring Anrde Coleman to handle duties that had previously been split up between Corby Meekins and Drew Merhinger.
Coleman embraces the idea of all receivers sharing the same meeting room and drills. He wants to diversity each of his pass-catchers' skill sets, which will come as a bit of a change to a group that fell into specialized positoins last year in the offense.
"We want to learn on a bigger scale," Coleman said. "We don't want to learn (the) x (position), right? We want to learn scheme, right? We want to learn big picture, which means you can play anywhere."
Guys like Joshua Moore and Marcus Washington could move between positions allowing the Longhorns to put stress on defenses by creating coverage mismatches.
Coleman went on to clarify that this doesn't mean someone like 6-foot, 200-pound Jake Smith is going to line up on the boundary and expect to get off press coverage or that 6-foot-4, 225-pound Brennan Eagles will be playing in the slot anytime soon, teaching a slot rout tree to an outside receiver and vice versa should make Texas more fluid and dynamic in the passing game.
The Longhorns also believe this could help players at the NFL level, where receivers are expected to be able to line up anywhere in a formation.
"A lot of these guys have aspirations of going to the next level, if you want to go to the next level, you're not gonna be actually going to be an "x" receiver
