Texas State tinkering with tight ends in spring practices

It’s the worst-kept secret of spring camp. Texas State head coach Jake Spavital wants to use his tight ends.

He was barely able to in 2020. Sophomores Micah Hilts and Tyler Huff each suffered season-ending injuries — Hilts a torn pectoral mucle and Huff a torn ACL — before the schedule even began, neither taking a snap last year. Other injuries, combined with COVID-19 protocols, thinned out the remainder of the position group through extended stretches of the year. In the team’s season opener against SMU on Sept. 5, Spavital said there were literally none available to put on the field.

Redshirt sophomore Jackson Lanam provided some stability to the position when he returned the next week. Lanam played in the next seven games and posted a breakout performance against South Alabama on Oct. 17, reeling in five passes for 48 yards and a touchdown. But two weeks later, the Corpus Christi native went down with a season-ending injury on the third drive of the first quarter, leaving the tight end cupboard bare again throughout the final four games of the year.

The lack of playable tight ends resulted in a shorthanded offense that leaned mostly on four-receiver personnel sets out of necessity. The Bobcats became predictable because they lacked versatility.

Spavital plans for that to change in 2021. And it starts with getting the tight ends back on the field.

“I like our tight end room,” Spavital said. “Those guys are big bodies that can help us out and make us more efficient in the run game, but also show a wrinkle that this offense has never seen before where you can get a little bit heavier but still use your spread principles. And that's what we're experimenting with.”

Through the team’s first seven practices of the spring, Spavital and offensive coordinator Jacob Peeler are getting weird with their playcalling, rolling out 12 personnel sets — formations featuring one running back and two tight ends. The trial runs are partially just for evaluation purposes, as Spavital wants to give each of his players a fair chance to earn snaps. 

But the experiments are also partially to see how multiple the Bobcats can get. Putting an extra tight end on the field forces defenses to make a difficult choice. Opponents can put an extra defender in the box, which might isolate a defensive back into a one-on-one matchup with wide receivers like juniors Marcell Barbee or Javen Banks, each of whom broke loose for 40-yard touchdowns last year. Or opponents can drop a defender back in coverage, risking a tight end getting a block in the second level on a run or releasing into a mismatch against an undersized linebacker.

“It helps our offense out tremendously because, like I said, it just brings a whole different element to the game where you can be very multiple in what you do,” Spavital said. “And we move them all over the field. You know, we're splitting them out at receiver and we're putting them in the backfield and ghost tight end alignments and we're attaching them on the ball and we're doing a lot of different presentations.”

The maroon and gold had its most efficient running season last year since 2015, averaging 4.2 yards per carry as a team. Texas State got even more bang for its buck when handing the ball off to one of its three core running backs in redshirt freshman Calvin Hill and sophomores Jahmyl Jeter and Brock Sturges, who combined for 5.4 yards per carry.

The Bobcats bring back four offensive linemen and have been focused on adding size in the offseason, both by bringing in beefy newcomers like 6-foot-3, 340-pound Maine transfer Liam Dobson and by bulking up players already on the roster, including the tight ends. Hilts, Lanam and sophomore Seth Caillouet have all been reported to be 30 pounds heavier than their listed weights.

The hope is that adding thicker tight ends along a more sizeable offensive line will create more gaps in the run game, giving the offense’s tailbacks new holes to burst through.

“Coach told us we can rush for 2,000, 2,000, 2,000 (yards),” Sturges said. “I mean, hey, if he says that, you know, I'm not gonna complain about it.”

“I think it's awesome,” running backs coach Nick Whitworth said. “They probably put on more weight than anybody. I mean, they're sitting 250, 260 (pounds) across the board. And so, you give the ability to put extra gaps on the field for the run game, the defense has to fit … Good tight ends make a lot of good things go, so we're excited. Running backs love to see the tight ends out there. “

But Spavital wants to feature the tight ends more in the passing game, too, which hasn’t been done consistently since Keenen Brown led the team with 51 catches for 577 yards and five touchdowns in 2018 — the year before Spavital arrived. Lanam showed flashes of being a receiving threat last season. So did Hilts in 2019, when he caught at least two passes in five different games, ending his freshman year with 13 receptions for 174 yards and one touchdown.

Hilts, who was a high school wide receiver in Colorado Springs, Colo., caught multiple touchdowns in live-ball settings during the team’s most recent practice on Tuesday.

“For the last three years, we've been pushed to be the blocking tight end,” Caillouet said. “And this year, they added a lot of pass game to the game. So that's one emphasis this year that I'm trying to like really focus on, catching, getting vertical up the field, lowering my pads, you know, being able to run through people.”

Each tight end has his own specialty. Hilts might be the most gifted receiver of the group, whereas someone like Huff, who played left guard at Saddleback College, is a better blocker. But the group is using the spring to become more multi-faceted. The less Spavital has to sub in different players at the position to call specific plays, the more it’ll keep defenses guessing what’s coming next.

It’s an added responsibility, though. It means the tight ends have to study the playbook about as much as the quarterbacks. But it could lead to a big payoff for the offense.

“I talk about the rule of 25%,” tight ends coach Brian Hamilton said. “When we're in the game, the ball needs to run 25% more yards than when we're in a 10 personnel set. If we're in protection, the quarterback needs 25% more time. When we catch a ball, we've got to have 25% more yards after contact than any other position group. I mean, they're 250, 260-pound monsters, you know? And you can see that with the way they're being attacked through their ankles this year, rather than up high. 

“So that's our job. Our job is to get as many of us on the field as possible. That's the mandate every day, is force them to put us on the field and then force them to put more of us on the field.”

Texas State’s practices scheduled for Thursday and Friday were canceled this week to allow players to recover from “minor injuries and illnesses,” the team said in a statement. The tight ends and the rest of the Bobcats will return to practice on Tuesday to prepare for the spring game taking place on April 24 at 11 a.m.