Texas adds sixth OL to goal-line package

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When senior Texas Longhorns running back Hollywood Smothers ambled into the end zone on Saturday to score the team’s second touchdown in its 21-point fourth quarter, he ran through a huge hole courtesy of sophomore offensive tackle Jordan Coleman, wearing No. 99 and into the game as a sixth offensive lineman in head coach Steve Sarkisian’s goal-line package.

“I think Jordan’s athleticism on the edge, his ability to move people in short area, are all things that led to giving him that opportunity to be part of that package,” Sarkisian said on Thursday.

At 6’5, 356 pounds, Coleman is a massive human with strength and movement ability belied by his ranking outside the top 50 tackles nationally in the 2025 recruiting class. And his goal-line rep against 6’6, 253-pound fifth-year defensive end Kenyatta Jackson Jr., a productive and extremely experienced player, is a thing of beauty.

Firing off the ball, Coleman has the flexibility to immediately win the leverage battle by getting under Jackson’s pads, and rolls through his hips to deliver a powerful punch, capitalizing on the force of his initial contact by driving his feet and flashing his athleticism in quickly walling Jackson off to allow Smothers easy access to the end zone.

Coleman’s insertion into the four goal-line plays that produced the final two touchdowns for the Horns to complete their comeback marked a change in strategy for Sarkisian, who had moved away from jumbo goal-line packages in the last several years and saw a concurrent rise in game-changing failures trying to secure the hardest yards in football.

On Saturday, though, the Texas play caller didn’t overthink things. He just ran right at the Buckeyes front until the Longhorns found paydirt.

“The six O-lineman, it was more just going to goal line, something that we haven’t been in in a while, and we lost a little faith in, and that’s probably as much on us as coaches as it was on the players,” Sarkisian said. “But evaluating last season and and really the last two years of where we could improve as a program, we had to get back to that style of football, and we’ve had really good success there over the years.”

Some goal-line packages in the past included defensive tackles like T’Vondre Sweat and Byron Murphy — who can forget Sweat catching a touchdown pass in the 2023 Big 12 Championship game and striking a Heisman pose in the end zone? Or Murphy, the one-time running back, scoring rushing and receiving touchdowns that season?

Now Texas is back in a similar look with sophomore tight end Emaree Winston serving as a fullback. Winston doesn’t have the pure mass of Sweat or Murphy, but he does have a prototypical fullback build and mindset.

Early in Sarkisian’s tenure, when Texas was still trying to build roster depth at the skill positions, the offense also frequently employed an extra offensive lineman as a jumbo tight end, including Andrej Karic playing well over 100 snaps in that role in 2022 and Malik Agbo taking over for a similar snap count in 2023.

“We always try to find a role for guys that we think can can have an impact, whether it’s for one play or 10 or 50, whatever it looks like,” Sarkisian said.

So don’t be surprised to see Coleman back on the field wearing that No. 99 jersey and road grading opponents into the end zone.

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