Report: Texas RB Joe Bergeron to miss rest of spring practice

After rumors swirled about the future of Texas Longhorns senior running back Joe Bergeron's future with the team, Orangebloods reported on Saturday that the big back will miss the rest of the spring:

Breaking: Source says #Texas RB Joe Bergeron will miss remainder of spring practice. http://t.co/RS5ccraIPX #Longhorns

— Taylor Gaspar (@Taylor_Gaspar) April 6, 2014

There has been no official confirmation from the school, but if head coach Charlie Strong has a press conference this week, there's little doubt that the question will come up.

As the Dallas Morning News blog on the subject notes, Gaspar is reporting that the issue for Bergeron is academics. No doubt Bergeron's struggles in that regard were flagged during one of the coaching staff's weekly meetings with the academic support staff.

The good news here is that the vigilance of Strong and his staff caught Bergeron's issues before they turned into a potential eligibility situation such as faced by Daje Johnson, Kennedy Estelle, and Joe Bergeron last fall. And the like of similar decisions to hold those players out of practice (at least that have been reported on so far) indicates that those three players are in better academic standing at the moment, especially key in the case of Estelle, one of two healthy tackles at this time with playing experience.

The bad news is that the running back position is quite thin at the moment with senior Malcolm Brown and sophomore Jalen Overstreet the only pure backs on the roster. Perhaps Johnson will receive more time there to fill out the depth.

As such, the opportunity is there for Overstreet, who is now set to receive a significant workload in the spring game. If he can't show the coaches that he can be a productive running back the rest of the spring, will he make yet another position move?

For Bergeron, it's another setback after he had to crawl out of the doghouse last fall after issues protecting the football. The senior had four touchdowns and 362 rushing yards last season, but carried the ball only 16 times between the Kansas State and West Virginia games.