The Longhorns are making some positional tweaks on defense to get their best players on the field in the best spots to succeed, along with making an outright position change.
According to a report from Inside Texas last week, the Texas Longhorns are making some defensive changes during winter conditioning in an effort to prepare players for the upcoming 15 spring practices and to eventually get the best 11 defenders on the field at the same time in the 2025 season.
But position changes may not be the best way to frame some of these moves, which are instead building on and expanding existing positional competencies through cross-training, with the exception of rising sophomore Ryan Niblett, who is moving to the nickel after an emergency move to running back in 2024 due to injuries at the position in preseason camp.
Jaylon Guilbeau from Star to outside corner
In an echo of Jahdae Barron’s move last offseason from nickel to outside corner, which Barron wouldn’t confirm publicly even during preseason camp, junior Jaylon Guilbeau is cross-training at outside cornerback to add experienced depth at a position that lacks it with Barron and Wake Forest transfer Gavin Holmes exhausting their eligibility.
Of the 691 snaps that Guilbeau played defensively in 2024, 532 were at slot corner and only 15 at wide corner, a position that the Port Arthur Memorial product hasn’t played much at the collegiate level.
So even though Barron made the same successful transition last year, a transition slowed by Barron sitting out most of the spring to recover from injuries sustained during the 2023 season, Guilbeau has much less experience outside because Barron played 55 snaps at outside corner in 2020 and 197 snaps there in 2021 before moving to nickel in 2022.
The expectations aren’t as high for Guilbeau as they were for Barron returning for his fifth season after two strong seasons at the Star position, and the transition will happen under new secondary coaches with Duane Akina replacing defensive passing game coordinator Terry Joseph and Mark Orphey replacing Blake Gideon, but working with the cornerbacks instead of the safeties.
There are also speed question marks with Guilbeau, whose testing at the All-American Bowl Combine five years ago wasn’t especially impressive, but the Texas strength and conditioning program certainly deserves the benefit of the doubt after producing such strong testing numbers at the skill positions over the last two NFL Combines — if the staff thinks Guilbeau has effective speed at outside corner, he has effective speed at outside corner.
And the confidence in Guilbeau making the transition was apparent with how Texas approached the winter NCAA transfer portal window by not pursuing a veteran cornerback to pair with that relatively inexperienced position group that includes rising junior Manny Muhammad as the starter on one side with rising redshirt sophomore Warren Roberson, rising sophomore Kobe Black, and rising redshirt freshman Wardell Mack competing for playing time in the rotation.
Roberson and Black both project as rotational contributors this season after Roberson played 299 snaps as a core special teams player, but only 26 snaps on defense, and Black saw some time in the rotation outside of blowouts while also playing on three special teams units.
The concern with Roberson is his reliability — while he did have four tackles on special teams, he also had two missed tackles and committed five penalties, the type of persistent mental mistakes that contributed to an extremely disappointing season for coordinator Jeff Banks’ special teams units.
Still, it was notable that Banks stuck with Roberson compared to the benching of tight end Amari Niblack, whose own mistakes cost him his spot on special teams and contributed to his transfer to Texas A&M during the winter portal window.
Of the three 2025 signees, Kade Phillips has the best chance of contributing early after a meteoric rise as a senior that saw the Fort Bend Hightower product finish the cycle as a consensus five-star prospect ranked No. 27 in the 247Sports Composite rankings.
For Guilbeau, the cross-training is a chance for him to stay on the field more consistently by increasing his versatility, something head coach Steve Sarkisian values highly in the secondary.
Jelani McDonald from safety to Star
Texas could afford to move Guilbeau to outside cornerback because of the competency of the rising junior McDonald, who showed flashes of his upside as a sophomore and is arguably the defense’s best candidate to become a breakout star in 2025.
When McDonald was a true freshman, the Longhorns experimented with him at a variety of different positions as the strength and conditioning staff got a feel for how his body developed, giving the Waco Connally product reps at linebacker, safety, cornerback, and nickel back. In other words, just about everywhere in the back seven.
McDonald mostly settled at safety last season, but he did displace Guilbeau at nickel for the Peach Bowl against Arizona State, playing 55 snaps in the slot and 10 in the box, a game in which he had three of his five missed tackles for the season and also allowed six receptions on seven targets, although those receptions only produced 26 yards with 14 coming on one play.
The 6’2, 205-pounder has the physical stature to set the edge against the run and the screen game, critical aspects of playing in the nickel that Barron excelled at in 2022 and 2023 and in coverage, McDonald only gave up a single touchdown against Vanderbilt on 21 targets.
So even though McDonald is still maximizing the potential that made him a top-100 prospect in the 2023 recruiting class after a late rise, all the tools are there for him to excel at nickel or at safety.
But whether or not the Longhorns can ultimately sustain the moves of Guilbeau outside and McDonald back down to nickel will depend to a certain degree on the recovery of rising junior Derek Williams, who suffered a season-ending knee injury against Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl and will start preseason camp less than 10 months removed from that injury.
The other potential safety options for Texas include rising sophomore Jordon Johnson-Rubell, who played 34 snaps in the box and slot as a true freshman and 43 snaps at free safety, and true freshman Jonah Williams, who is splitting time between baseball and football this spring, as well as rising redshirt freshman Xavier Filsaime, the former consensus five-star prospect who only played 25 snaps in 2024.
If Williams isn’t ready early in the season and the other players are slow to develop, it will be difficult for the Texas staff to play McDonald at Star instead of next to rising redshirt senior Michael Taaffe at safety.
Trey Moore from EDGE to linebacker
When the UTSA transfer made the decision to return for a fifth season in college and second season on the Forty Acres, the critical tension was the crunch for playing time with rising sophomore star Colin Simmons demanding more snaps on the edge after a sensational debut in 2024.
The other driving forces in cross-training Moore are his lack of height and length, extremely limiting factors when assessing his potential as an NFL prospect that were apparent when he arrived at Texas.
Listed at 6’3 by the Longhorns but at 6’2 out of high school, Moore has worked hard to develop his strength and is a strong edge rusher because of a high-level first step, but his upside at the next level is tied to his ability to play inside linebacker, whether it’s the 19 snaps he played in the box for the Roadrunners in 2023 or the 50 snaps he played at slot corner before heading north to Austin.
Texas did some of both with Moore in 2024, too — 29 snaps in the box and 34 at slot corner — but the incredible talent of Simmons is now putting increased pressure on the defensive staff to find ways to use both as Moore’s production was also on a positive trajectory late in the season after playing largely assignment-sound football without producing much in the way of counting stats early in the year.
There is some playing time available in the inside linebacker rotation since David Gbenda and Morice Blackwell exhausted their eligibility after combining to play 516 snaps last season. Rising junior Arkansas transfer Brad Spence will take a lot of those snaps and rising sophomore Ty’Anthony Smith also looks poised to factor into the rotation, but there’s also a lack of overall depth there with just six inside linebackers on the entire roster and one of those inside linebackers, early enrollee Jonathan Cunningham, was listed at 191 pounds when he signed in December.
Moore has enough football intelligence and skill to adjust well to the position, opening more snaps for the rise of Simmons as more of an every-down player on the edge, addressing the depth issue at inside linebacker, and preparing the UTSA transfer for the position his size may necessitate playing in the NFL.
Spence is actually an interesting comparison to Moore as an inside linebacker — the Razorbacks transfer played on the edge in high school at Klein Forest before developing into a dangerous blitzer in Fayetteville, highlighting some of the ways that Moore could be effective attacking downhill from different angles to create havoc on opposing offensive lines.
Ryan Niblett from offense to defense
The true position change on this list is the speedster from Aldine Eisenhower, who signed with Texas as a wide receiver in the 2023 recruiting class before the season-ending injuries sustained by running backs CJ Baxter and Christian Clark in preseason camp necessitated his move to the backfield.
The selflessness of Niblett’s move illustrated his buy-in to the program, a sacrifice that his teammates noticed and celebrated when Niblett scored on an eight-yard touchdown run against Louisana-Monroe in late September.
“He just did it without any questions and then just to see him go score after all this work he’s put in to learn the position in such a short amount of time, like, that’s the stuff we celebrate, because that’s someone who’s bought into the culture, someone who’s bought in and wants to be a part of this team. We celebrate stuff like that. So it was awesome to see him just score that touchdown and just let everybody know how excited he was,” former Texas center Jake Majors said of Niblett at the time.
But Niblett ultimately played just 33 snaps on offense, recording three catches for 24 yards and eight carries for 23 yards and the touchdown against the Warhawks as he never quite evolved into the feature change-of-pace role that Keilan Robinson filled in previous seasons and was outside the top group of wide receivers when he made the switch to running back.
On special teams, however, Niblett was a core contributor, playing 231 snaps with roles on kick coverage, punt return, and serving as a gunner on punt coverage, recording four tackles and two assists, according to Pro Football Focus, providing evidence of a skill set that could translate to defense.
The staff also has a clear desire to find a place for Niblett’s elite speed — he ran a 10.58 100-meter dash as a sophomore in high school and is one of the team’s fastest players.
The move to defense could invigorate Niblett’s career, which is currently stalled on offense, but does also have a bright future on special teams because the 5’10, 185-pounder has already proven his value in that phase even if he never finds a role on offense or defense.
