The Pate State / The Notebook

Pate's Biggest Question For Top-10 Texas Isn't the Quarterback. It's the Line In Front of Him.

📝 The Notebook

Pate's Biggest Question For Top-10 Texas Isn't the Quarterback. It's the Line In Front of Him.

The Pate State Staff on why Pate keeps circling back to the trenches when everyone else is talking about hope, promise, and Arch Manning.

The Pate State Staff · Published AUG 10, 2026

ANALYSISProduced with Pate State AI · reviewed by The Pate State editorial teamStandards

📝 The ESPN Show

TS

The Pate State StaffAUG 10, 2026

Pate went through the top 10 team by team looking for one question apiece. For Texas, he didn't pick the quarterback room, the schedule, or the hype. He picked the offensive line, and he backed it up with numbers instead of vibes.

Texas enters the season buried in preseason hype, the kind that comes with being a trendy pick to finally break through. Pate isn't fighting that. He's just not ignoring what happened up front last year, specifically in pass protection and the ground game, both of which lagged well behind the program's ceiling.

The Case

Pate was careful to frame this the right way before he ever got to the stat sheet. He's used this line on more than one team this preseason, and it applies here too. “Remember the rule that Mima always taught us. Questions are not weaknesses. Questions are questions. Weaknesses are weaknesses.” That distinction matters. Pate isn't saying Texas has a bad line. He's saying nobody should assume the line problem from a year ago just evaporates because the hype cycle demands it.

Then came the numbers. “61st in the country in sacks allowed per game.”

“61st in the country in sacks allowed per game.”— Josh Pate

For a preseason top-five program, that's the kind of stat that gets buried under highlight reels and recruiting rankings. Pate didn't let it get buried. He followed it immediately with the run game figure. “They were 90th in overall rushing yards per game last year.”

Here's the mechanism worth isolating. A line that can't consistently protect the pocket and can't consistently move a defense off the ball isn't failing at one job, it's failing at the job that sets up every other job on the offense. Protection buys the quarterback rhythm. Push up front buys play-action and manageable third downs. When both numbers sit in the bottom half of the country, the quarterback's ceiling gets capped no matter how gifted he is. Pate pointed straight at the closest evidence, a physical mismatch against Georgia that exposed exactly that gap. Texas recruited well and developed well at the position, by his account, but the program chose continuity over an overhaul. They liked what they had. That's a bet, not a certainty.

Credit where it's due on the other side of that bet: Pate isn't dismissing the hope. He said as much himself, that the promise is real and he's bought into plenty of it. The program didn't sit on its hands either. It kept its guys, trusted its developmental track, and is banking on year-over-year growth rather than a transfer portal reset. That's a defensible plan. It's just not a finished product yet, and Pate's question is whether one more offseason closes the gap against the teams Texas actually has to beat.

The Honest Complication

Here's what cuts against Pate's worry. Offensive line play is often the single most improvable unit in the sport year to year, especially when continuity is the plan rather than the accident. A group that returns starters, adds a full offseason of strength development, and gets another year in the same scheme frequently jumps multiple tiers without a single new face. If that happens at Texas, this question resolves itself by October and Pate's stat sheet becomes last year's business. Pate's own framework cuts both ways here. A question isn't a weakness, and questions get answered in both directions.

The Close

Texas doesn't have to prove it can outscore anybody in August. It has to prove its front five can hold up when someone lines up across from them and refuses to move. Pate flagged the exact proving ground without saying it outright: watch how that offensive line performs the moment Texas travels into a hostile, physical environment against a team built to win in the trenches. That tape will answer Pate's question long before the committee ever does.

💬 Discuss this on the Porch →

Watch the Full Episode

Biggest Questions For Top 10 Teams - Josh Pate's College Football Show

Articles are drafted from Josh Pate's College Football Show under the site's editorial standards and monitored by the editorial team — corrections are timestamped, never silent.

Up Next — Keep ScrollingPate's Real Texas Story Isn't Cam Coleman — It's the Defense Nobody's WatchingWhile the internet argued over a viral practice catch, Pate said the Longhorns' actual difference-maker this fall is a defensive front that could carry the team if the offense ever has an off day.

CONTINUED FROM THE NOTEBOOK

Pate's Real Texas Story Isn't Cam Coleman — It's the Defense Nobody's Watching

While the internet argued over a viral practice catch, Pate said the Longhorns' actual difference-maker this fall is a defensive front that could carry the team if the offense ever has an off day.

ANALYSISProduced with Pate State AI · reviewed by The Pate State editorial teamStandards

📝 The Notebook

TS

The Pate State StaffAUG 10, 2026

Everybody in college football spent the weekend staring at the same fifteen seconds of Texas practice tape. Pate spent his time somewhere else entirely.

The claim he landed on is specific and it cuts against the grain of what every timeline was saying: Texas's defensive line, not its quarterback and not its viral wideout, is the most underrated unit heading into the season.

Here's what a reader needs to know walking in. Arch Manning threw a tipped ball on the practice field that Cam Coleman turned into what Pate called the internet's alien footage — a one-handed, off-platform grab that lit up college football social media over the weekend. The reaction split three ways: awe, hospital-ball concern trolling, and a chunk of people fixating on Manning's spiral instead of the catch itself.

Pate wasn't interested in relitigating the throw. As he put it on the show: “I don't think there are like 10 other humans on the planet that I'm aware of that could make that play, make that catch, independent of whether he's ever going to do it in a game.” That's the whole verdict on Coleman. Then Pate pivoted, and this is where the actual argument starts.

The case for the defensive line

Ryan Wingo is still on this roster and barely came up this offseason because Coleman ate the oxygen. Fine, Pate said, that's not even his real complaint. His real complaint is that a defensive front loaded with returning production and portal additions is getting zero attention while the sport argues about a practice-field trick catch.

The names matter here because this isn't a hunch built on last year's box score. Justice Terry and Lance Jackson pair with a name the sport already knew about in Colin Simmons, and that's before factoring in the interior depth and a linebacker addition in Biles. Stack those pieces and you get a front that doesn't need the passing game to bail it out every Saturday.

“The point I'm trying to make is this defensive line could be hellacious. And no one's talking about defense.”

“The point I'm trying to make is this defensive line could be hellacious. And no one's talking about defense.”— Josh Pate

That's the sentence the whole segment hinges on, and it's a direct shot at how the discourse has been built all offseason — offense, portal running backs, Arch Manning's mechanics, repeat.

The payoff line is what separates this from a passing observation. Pate framed it as a hedge against variance, the exact way a Film Room breakdown would isolate the one situation that decides a season: “This is a team that can win a game in several different ways. That's what I believe about them.” Translation for anyone who doesn't speak scheme — if Manning has a cold half, if the run game stalls behind a shaky snap count, this Texas team still has a path to win the game up front on defense. That's not a nice-to-have. That's the margin between ten wins and a trip to Indianapolis.

The honest complication

Here's the part that keeps this from being a lock. Pate said it himself in the same breath — Texas has a considerably tougher schedule than the other team he compared it to, Miami, whose secondary he also singled out as a hidden strength this fall. A defensive line that dominates fall camp reps against its own offensive line hasn't proven anything yet against a schedule that will include multiple defenses and offensive lines built to test exactly this theory. Fall camp flashes are real, but they're not verified until the pads come off against someone else's colors. Pate's case is built on personnel and returning talent, which is a fair foundation — but personnel doesn't always survive contact with October.

There's also the obvious counter sitting in plain sight: if the offense really is as good as the Cam Coleman catch suggests, the defensive-line insurance policy never gets cashed. Pate isn't arguing Texas needs saving. He's arguing the safety net is stronger than anyone's given it credit for, and that's a different, more interesting claim than the one everyone else made about a practice catch.

The kicker here is simple. The sport fell in love with fifteen seconds of highlight tape this weekend and missed the group of players who might actually decide whether Texas is playing in January. Go watch the segment where Pate breaks down the Longhorns' front seven names one by one, then go back and watch the Cam Coleman catch again — this time counting how many people in the replay are actually rushing the passer.

Keep Reading: Pate Hands Out His First 10 In Years — And The Math Behind It Is Brutal →