Strength in Numbers, and a different contact sport, fuels Kenny Baker's approach to Texas' defensive line in 2025

If you’re a consistent reader of Inside Texas, you may have heard of this analogy before: the idea that Texas’ 2025 defensive line, specifically their tackles, resembles that of a defensive line in hockey.

[Sign up for Inside Texas TODAY and get the BEST Longhorns coverage!]

In hockey, players typically stay on the ice for around 45–60 seconds total, the sport being so physically demanding that constant changes are required. Even the best defensive players in the league rarely eclipse the two-minute mark. Every hockey team carries six defensemen who play in three total lines, with each player possessing a different identity.

Over the last two seasons, the Texas defensive tackle room has featured a 3–4 player rotation with two stars dominating playing time. It was closer to a baseball outfield than a hockey defense. Because of that, Texas was able to flash stardom at the position, but often that came at a detriment to those players’ bodies.

“As the season progressed, I thought we wore down a little bit,” defensive line coach Kenny Baker said. “Last year at times I thought we played pretty damn good, but I didn’t think we had, week in and week out, the ability to close people out, the ability to put people to bed.”

Now, thanks to the addition of five transfers and the best defensive tackle group in the class of 2025, Baker possesses a rotation of closer to seven players who are fit and able to produce at any point in the game. When Baker was approached with the idea of this group operating in the style of the Canadian pastime, he instantly clung to that identity.

“I believe in it. I believe in that. The way we play, you can’t play 60–70 snaps a game and do it at an elite level,” Baker said. “Your top guy, as long as he’s fresh in the third, fourth quarter, but you give him around 40 plays a game, and you divvy up the rest of those snaps amongst maybe a second or third group, and I think you’re gonna be that much better.”

Against Ohio State last year, Baker’s top guy, Alfred Collins, was only able to play 29 snaps—just under half the reps the defense played. In Texas’ regular-season game against Georgia, Collins eclipsed the 50-snap mark, playing over 70% of the team’s snaps. By the end of the year, the All-American was flat-out gassed.

Now, in 2025, Baker has two transfer nose tackles, two high-level pass rushers, two bruisers on the third line, and an elite freshman in Justus Terry, who will be playing snaps at defensive end in base sets when opponents show 12 personnel.

“You need your best guys out there, but in order for them to be out there, you gotta get their ass there. That means depth, that means rotation,finding guys that do different things,” Baker said. “As long as I’m here at the University of Texas, I want to have strength in numbers.”

Baker expanded on the idea of players playing their roles in rotation, noting how matchup-specific the game can be. Terry, alongside Ohio State transfer Hero Kanu, likely won’t be on the first two lines, but their flexibility allows them to become matchup nightmares. When a guard has seen a 340+ pound defensive tackle for five straight reps and then is tasked with marking the more agile and rushing-oriented defensive end a play later, it leads to mistakes from even the top players in the sport.

Baker has also pushed to make Purdue transfer Cole Brevard more flexible during his time in Austin.

“Cole viewed himself as a nose… or a nose,” Baker joked about Brevard entering the team. “If all you do is play zero nose, maybe a little less than half the teams in the league will look at you. But now, if you’re playing the zero nose, you’re playing the three-technique, you’re playing the 2-I, 4-I—okay, now you make yourself a little bit more marketable and valuable to that next level.”

Brevard is an expected first-line player, but that didn’t come from his pedigree in the past. Baker had to make him earn that spot, and his ability to be more than just a nose tackle is what makes him a valuable piece of this Texas defensive line.

[Want to be the most informed Texas Longhorns football fan? Order the 2025 edition of Thinking Texas Football today!]

Baker will be throwing out plenty of different combinations—whether it be three defensive linemen or just one on the field at a time—when the Longhorns head to Columbus to play Ohio State in Week One. Once seen as a weakness of this Texas team in the early offseason, Baker has proven his coaching and recruiting chops with what he has done to this group in just seven months since the Longhorns last faced the Bucks.