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When preseason camp for the Texas Longhorns starts on August 5, one of the most important position battles will officially commence at left guard with sixth-year senior Laurence Seymore and redshirt junior Andre Cojoe considered the favorites pending a favorable outcome from Cole Hutson’s just-filed eligibility lawsuit.
It’s a position that head coach Steve Sarkisian and offensive line coach Kyle Flood struggled to solve in 2025 and struggled to address in the NCAA transfer portal after the season, missing on several top targets before settling on Seymore, a Miami, Akron, and Western Kentucky transfer who needed to win an NCAA eligibility appeal to play another year of college football.
That delayed Seymore’s enrollment at Texas until June, putting pressure on the Florida product to quickly acclimate to the program ahead of preseason camp.
“So far so good,” according to Sarkisian, who spoke with the media at the THSCA convention on Sunday in Houston.
“Laurence has done really well. I’ve been impressed with him, and his body has changed already, which which is big for our style of summer conditioning and what that looks like — I think that he’s really responded well to that, and to the connectivity with the other offensive linemen and the fundamental work that we get to do,” Sarkisian said.
But although practice starts on the fifth, the competition won’t heat up in earnest until the fifth practice when the Longhorns put on full pads for the first time.
“Time will tell. With linemen, it’s difficult in the summertime — we’re in underwear — [to tell] what it’s really going to look like. We’ll find out a lot in training camp, especially when we get into the second week when we’re really in full pads and we’re getting going,” Sarkisian said.
The 6’2, 320-pound brings plenty of maturity — he’s been playing college football since enrolling at Miami in 2021 — and the most extensive playing time of his career resulted in second-team All-America and second-team All-Conference USA recognition last year at Western Kentucky thanks to his pass-blocking ability.
According to Pro Football Focus, Seymore graded out at 82.6 as a pass blocker, good enough to rank among the top 50 guards nationally after allowing only one sack among eight total pressures, including an excellent grade of 79.9 in 69 snaps against LSU in Week 13. Against the SEC defensive line, Seymore held his own in 52 pass-blocking snaps, allowing a single pressure.
A pass rep in another game earned the attention of SEC Network analyst Cole Cubelic, a former center at Auburn.
It’s an ability Seymore has been showcasing for a long time now.
Miami commit 2021 OL Laurence Seymore @xklvsive00 at the @FootballHotbed Underclassmen Showcase. Yikes@Andrew_Ivinspic.twitter.com/YV9MGF5yJ4
— Brandon Odoi (@Brandon_Odoi) June 23, 2018
In 2025, three Texas players received opportunities at left guard until Hutson was healthy enough for the staff to settle on the senior at left guard next to Connor Robertson at center, so Seymore’s pass-protection ability sets a higher floor in that area for the Horns this season compared to the start of last season.
But beyond transitioning back to a Power Four conference for the first time since playing 278 snaps over eight games in two seasons for Miami, Seymore needs to prove that he’s a capable run blocker, an area in which he was below average last year at Western Kentucky.
Overall height and length aren’t strengths for Seymore — he was listed at 6’1.5 out of Miami Central and at 6’2 in college, raising questions about whether he’s much taller than 6’0, a height at which few linemen can compete at the highest levels of college football. On the telecast of the LSU game, Seymore looked at least an inch shorter than his quarterback, Rodney Tisdale, who is also listed at 6’2.
Given the need for the Longhorns to improve dramatically in the running game, a task that can’t fall solely on the shoulders of transfer running backs Raleek Brown and Hollywood Smothers, the 54.6 run-blocking grade that Seymore achieved against LSU and the 63.9 overall run-blocking grade in 2025 probably isn’t going to be good enough when translated to the SEC across an entire season.
Further heightening those concerns is the pairing with Robertson at center — the 6’4, 312-pounder was only marginally better than Seymore across his 557 snaps and brings below-average athleticism to the position.
Against LSU, Seymore only had 17 run-blocking snaps as Western Kentucky called running plays on less than 30 percent of their snaps. Over those snaps, the Hilltoppers didn’t run outside zone and got no displacement from Seymore on inside zone without another offensive lineman lingering on the initial combo block. In gap schemes, Western Kentucky used Seymore less frequently to pull than it did pulling him on play-action passes. Finding work when pulling, climbing to the second level, or working in space in the screen game did not appear to be strengths for Seymore.
Seymore is technique and assignment in both aspects of the game, but his run blocking on inside zone tends to look similar to his pass blocking — he’s more likely to absorb contact than he is to come off the ball with enough power to win at the point of attack.
And the lack of any outside zone reps may be an indication that his lack of reach or the movement ability that often defines offensive linemen who are successful at his height is extremely concerning since Texas projects as a team that will major in that scheme again this season given Sarkisian’s preferences and the skill sets of Brown and Smothers.
So the best-case scenario for the Longhorns may actually be for the 6’6, 339-pound Cojoe to win the starting job a year after suffering a season-ending knee injury in preseason camp, an injury that ended his position battle with Brandon Baker at right tackle and left Flood without the ability to move the loser of that competition inside to left guard.
Still an unproven commodity after playing just 33 snaps over four games in 2024, Cojoe did prove himself good enough to push the battle for that right tackle role into preseason camp against a much more highly-touted recruit in Baker, thereby providing the best public indication of Cojoe’s trajectory.
As a floor-setting starter, Seymore would help the Longhorns avoid the type of mistakes that helped keep the team from making the playoff last year, but he would also likely put a troublingly low ceiling on the line’s upside for a team with national championship aspirations.
Given Hutson’s significant pass-blocking issues last season, an emergency injunction wouldn’t position him as a savior at left guard — as the season approaches, the portal misses could make Cojoe a much more important figure along the Texas offensive line than expected.
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