Vondrell McGee Hooks Longhorns Top Tailback Job

Texas junior Vondrell McGee has held off Fozzy Whittaker and will be the top running back for the No. 2 Longhorns to start the season.

Whittaker, who has battled injuries throughout his Texas career, is a little "dinged up" right now, according to coach Mack Brown, which paved the way for McGee to assume the No.1 tailback spot.

"Vondrell's had an outstanding camp," Brown said. "He's been really good, he's tough, he's 205 pounds probably, he's in really good shape, he's catching the ball and he's just a warrior. We're excited about watching him play. He's tough as nails."

The Longhorns had a three-man race for the top running back spot with short-yardage specialist Cody Johnson, McGee and Whittaker leading the way. All three rotated last season with McGee and Johnson making the biggest statistical contributions in a pass-first offense.

While quarterback Colt McCoy is the Longhorns leading rusher from a season ago, with 561 yards and 11 touchdowns on 136 carries, McGee led the running backs in rushing with 376 yards on 88 carries. Johnson led the Longhorns with 12 rushing touchdowns, while Whittaker gained just 284 yards on 64 carries in an injury-plagued campaign.

The No.1 tailback spot seemed to be a battle between McGee and Whittaker throughout camp and two-a-days, but Johnson is in contention for the backup role. It's conceivable that all three running backs will see considerable time unless one pulls far away from the pack.

"I deal with personnel as much as anything I do during the ballgame," Brown said. "If Vondrell is making yards, he'll get a bunch of [carries]. If he's not, we're going to change it up and put somebody else in there because I really believe that you change the tempo of something that's not working. If we're up under the center every time and it's working, we'll stay up under there until they make us quit. We have a thing, RSP, repeat successful plays, and we're going to keep doing what we do until they stop it, and if they stop it, there should be something good off of it."

With just over a week to go before the Longhorns open up their season against UL-Monroe, there are still several starting jobs up for grabs.

James Kirkendoll and Brandon Collins along with Malcolm Williams and John Chiles are all still competing at the receiver spots, while David Snow is competing for a starting job at either right guard or left guard against Michael Huey and Charlie Tanner, respectively. Kheeston Randall and Ben Alexander are still going at it at nose tackle, while Emmanuel Acho and Keenan Robinson are neck-and-neck at strongside linebacker. And at right safety, Christian Scott and Blake Gideon are still competing.

Also Hunter Lawrence and Ryan Bailey are locked in a battle at place-kicker, while the competition at punter comes down to the varying styles of John Gold (traditional) and Justin Tucker (rugby).

"(Tucker) can punt with his right or his left leg, running right or running left," Brown said. "We'll just have to decide if we want the conventional punt or whether we want the rugby punt in the game at the time that we use it."

The backup quarterback job behind Heisman Trophy candidate McCoy seems to be one area of concern. True freshman Garrett Gilbert has stepped out of ahead of junior Sherrod Harris for the No. 2 spot, but naturally there are some growing pains coming out of high school into such a sophisticated offense.

"It's really difficult because (Gilbert) is playing with a second-team offensive line that struggled, and he's playing most of the time against a second-team defense, and there's not much drop-off from the first-team defense," Brown said Thursday. "He's seeing every blitz known to man, so it's a very difficult transition.

"What we will need to do from today on with Garrett is simplify it with him because we put in the entire package offensively against the entire package defensively, and all of a sudden he gets overloaded to a point that now you narrow down and say, `These are the packages that will be best for Garrett.' That's one of the best things that (offensive coordinator) Greg (Davis) and the offensive staff do. They do what they need to do to win, they feature the guys they need to feature, but we're going to have a package for Garrett that will be good for Garrett, and it may not be Colt's right now.

"We thought we got ahead of ourselves a little bit with Colt in his redshirt sophomore year, and we got him more than he was ready for with some inexperience up front and probably hurt him, and therefore hurt us because there were more turnovers than we should have had, and we won't make the same mistake with Garrett."