Steve Sarkisian confirms the bad injury news for Texas

During a Monday media availability, Texas Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian confirmed that junior wide receiver Isaiah Neyor and redshirt senior offensive lineman Junior Angilau both suffered season-ending ACL tears in Saturday’s scrimmage.

The injuries to Neyor and Angilau were both non contact.

“Football is the game and that’s why you’ve got to continue to build depth so you have other guys to step up and play,” Sarkisian said. “I hate it for them. I feel for those guys who both had really good offseasons to get ready for the season. My prayers go out to them and them getting better and getting healthy and coming back stronger than ever. For us now it’s next man up and we’ve got to make sure that we’ve got those pieces in place, which I think we’ve done a good job of in recruiting to ensure that we can do that, we ‘ve got plenty of time, we’ll be okay on that front.”

Three other players also suffered injuries — senior running back Roshon Johnson, freshman offensive lineman Cole Hutson, and junior nickel back Jahdae Barron. Sarkisian believes that all three players have a chance to return for the season opener against Louisiana-Monroe on Sept. 3.

“No different than probably a lot of other teams that about this time at camp — we started to get nicked up,” Sarkisian said. “Unfortunately, we had a couple season ending, but like I said, the next guy’s got to be able to step up and go and unfortunately, we lost a couple other guys for a few days, maybe a week or two, but they’ll get themselves back.”

With Angilau also receiving snaps as the backup center behind junior Jake Majors, Sarkisian said that Hutson, freshman Connor Robertson, and redshirt sophomore Logan Parr are all candidates to serve as the backup to Majors with Angilau out for the season.

“I still feel comfortable about Cole Hutson being able to play center,” Sarkisian said. “I still feel pretty good about Connor Robertson being able to play center and Logan Parr has center experience. We came into camp very deep at that position intentionally, so I don’t think we’re in dire straits anywhere, but what it does, again, it puts our young players in a position to see who can step up and who can fill those spots as they present themselves.”

Hutson was expected to step in for Angilau after starting during the Orange-White game at right guard. While Hutson is out, expect freshman DJ Campbell to receive some reps with the first team — Parr is the only backup interior lineman with any game experience on offense.

And with Barron missing some time, redshirt freshman walk-on Michael Taaffe could step into Barron’s place after working with the second-team defense during the spring.

Sarkisian also provided an update on suspended sophomore wide receiver Agiye Hall following his Thursday arrest — “This was not something that was based off of one incident, this is something that was a body of work that I felt like I need to help the young man and that’s what we’re going to do,” Sarkisian said.