A Solve For Defensive Tackle: Grow Your Own?

Texas fans and staff are finding out – along with every other fanbase and staff in the country – that it’s hard out there in the defensive tackle market.

Not only are high quality players scarce, but that scarcity produces predictably inflated price tags (thank you, Econ 101) at a position subject to one of the highest bust rates. That’s a particularly volatile combination. That means scarcity operates on both ends of the formula – they’re hard to find out in the wild and those you do sign have a strong likelihood of busting. Often for self-inflicted reasons. So you can solve your problem in a signing class and….still not solve your problem.

Anyone remember Charlie Strong’s Can’t Miss 2016 DT class? Uh, yeah. The only useful DT was a guy they recruited at DE (Roach).

Blah blah blah reasons blah blah we pay coaches a salary and it’s their job to fix it.

Cool, cool. I get it.

But NIL isn’t free agency. No universal salary cap so we can’t penalize dumb allocations. Texas is subject to the whims of its dumbest competitor(s). Not long ago, the Miami Hurricanes signed a DT for 900K. 650K over the next closest bid. Do you think that fans on the losing end of that recruitment still called out their staffs for “not getting serious about recruiting and don’t bore me with details, just solve it” posts?

It’s not just about what an Oregon or Ohio State will pay. Any individual program can stupidly overpay for anyone they value enough. Yes, that means TCU can theoretically outbid Texas for any player that blows up their skirt. They just can’t do it for five. But just one can hurt.

So pointing to Texas’ healthy aggregate NIL as the solution misunderstands the problem. This isn’t an efficient market.

The other dynamic to consider is the locker room. No one wants to Jimbo it up. 20 year old starters don’t understand market scarcity principles by position and they will be resentful that an unproven freshman is getting 2 or 3x their pay. Throw in the fact that this defensive tackle has about a 70% bust rate and will likely bust in particularly irritating ways in front of the team (not trying hard, lack of coachability, not going to school, being a knucklehead, eating themselves off of the team) adds another bit of chemistry-murdering spice.

In fact, classic DT knucklehead behavior is exacerbated by the very fact of overpaying them.

So what to do?

Sometimes when markets are distorted, you have to redefine a market. If you define recruiting in the space as only ready-made assembly line defensive tackles subject to wild bidding wars and a lot of locker room baggage, it’s a slog. Or can you try creating a few of them yourself? Maybe so. Can you identify traits, frame and upside that project to the position?

In fact, isn’t the work required to become a DT when you start out as an edge, tight end or running back is part of the mental bust proofing.

Over the last 25 years, Texas has a fairly illustrious and provable history of doing just this. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes by accident. I’m in favor of either, but doing it intentionally is always good.

Here are seven “grown your own” defensive tackles at Texas who have played at a very high level since 2000:

Marcus Tubbs – 3 star TE. 1st round

Maurice Gordon – 3 star RB. Free agent

Henry Melton – 4 star RB, 4th round

Lamarr Houston – 4 star RB/LB. 2nd round

Chris Whaley – 4 star RB, Free agent

Malcolm Roach – 3 star DE, Free agent

T’Vondre Sweat – 3 star DE, 2nd round

A majority of the above were 1st team All-Conference performers. Tubbs was a 1st rounder. Houston and Sweat were absolutely dominant in their final seasons. Roach and Whaley were physically talented high level starters. Gordon’s scalability to 2024 football is debatable, but he had 7.5 sacks and 16 tackles for loss as senior and he still illustrates the premise. Just scale size recs accordingly.

While we all covet Shaun Rogers, Rod Wright and Malcom Brown as highly regarded pure DT recruits or an underrated Byron Murphy steal, Texas has had as much high level success with projects and position switches while quite a few high 4 and 5 star defensive tackles busted rather spectacularly. You don’t remember most of them, which is kind of the point.

If the goal is stocking the roster with high level interior defenders, Texas may need to adopt a more holistic view in creating them.

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