Remembering Cedric Benson
The loudest collision I have ever heard in DKR?
Texas cornerback Bryant Westbrook decleated Notre Dame running back Randy Kinder in 1996. As my dad said at the time, it sounded like a shotgun went off inside the house. And then everybody got quiet to assess the damage.
The second loudest?
Defensive end Tony Brackens knocked a Texas Tech kicker into another world temporarily.
But actually, I remember another one as being louder.
Yet the collision I am remembering today wasn’t just a single one. It seemingly happened multiple times in the same game. What’s more, the game itself didn’t even involve the Longhorns.
Yet it featured two all-time Longhorn greats.
Cedric Benson and Midland Lee defeated Austin Westlake in the 2000 5A state Championship at DKR. I was there for the game.
Benson and Westlake safety Huston Street, a future Longhorn national champion in baseball and multi-year MLB pitcher, hit each other so hard, so frequently that day, that I thought one of them would have to come off the field eventually.
They never did.
Both played so hard, with such reckless abandon for their bodies. I remember thinking both of them had something special about them because they were both rising up to the moment of the state championship as only the elite competitors do.
Why am I telling you this story now?
It was two years ago today that Cedric Benson lost his life in a motorcycle accident.
Unfortunately, I feel Benson gets lost somewhat in Longhorn lore because he was kind of sandwiched historically between two of the very best to ever wear burnt Orange – Ricky Williams and Jamaal Charles. Williams won the Heisman and Charles was as fast as any running back since Eric Dickerson.
But Benson remains one of the most complete, dominating running backs I’ve ever seen play. And he did it in high school just like in college.
He was rugged, he did the little things right, and he had an innate sense for how to get extra yards. You could always count on him. He was a special player.
We lost a great one two years ago today.
Regarding the current quarterbacks
Quarterback Hudson Card taking the vast majority of snaps with the 1s yesterday caught many by surprise.
But it shouldn’t have.
While both Card and Casey Thompson had issues in Saturday’s scrimmage, it was Thompson who turned the ball over twice and Card who engineered the best scoring drive of the drive of the day.
Cover photo by Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images
