AUSTIN — The kid ran into everything.
Twelve years before he enrolled at Texas and started pummeling wide receivers and running backs and every other moving object on the practice field, Quandre Diggs wreaked the same kind of havoc in Major Applewhite's apartment.
Back then, Applewhite was playing quarterback for the Longhorns and shared a place with cornerback Quentin Jammer. Diggs, Jammer's younger brother, became a frequent visitor. And his favorite activity as a grade-schooler was racing around the furniture and knocking things over.
“He had no fear,” Applewhite said.
Saturday night against Rice, Diggs and UT will begin a season in which they're banking heavily on the courage of youth.
Of the 65 active players listed on the Longhorns' opening-week depth chart, 25 have never played a college down before. Seventeen are true freshmen, and four — Diggs, wide receivers Jaxon Shipley and John Harris and center Dominic Espinosa — are expected to start.
Add that inexperience to the nine sophomore starters who haven't exactly built up a long track record, and the Longhorns are left with what head coach Mack Brown calls his youngest team since 1998.
And just like in Applewhite's apartment in those early days of Brown's UT tenure, the kids aren't concerned about the ramifications of running wild, but the grown-ups are.
“The scariest thing about youth is the unknown,” said Applewhite, the Longhorns' assistant head coach and co-offensive coordinator. “The good thing is sometimes they're a little naive.”
Unlike last season, when UT's veterans buckled while trying to follow a Bowl Championship Series title game appearance the previous January, this year's potential stars know no such pressure.
Soon, the Longhorns could be counting on guys who had no part in the 2010 meltdown: players such as freshman running backs Malcolm Brown and Joe Bergeron, and freshmen defensive linemen Desmond Jackson and Cedric Reed.
Even though Mack Brown said he knows the risks of tying a team's hopes to unproven talent, he's clearly buying into the hype himself. This week, the coach who for years had shown an affinity for quoting championship-era Darrell Royal decided to instead channel early Jackie Sherrill.
“If people are going to get us,” Brown said, “they better get us fast.”
That's the kind of thing Sherrill said when he was building Texas A&M's program from scratch in the 1980s. UT's rebuilding effort won't need to be nearly as extreme, but the attitude of starting over is similar.
Yes, UT will receive production this season from upperclassmen who remember what it was like to come up three minutes short of a national title at the Rose Bowl. But those older players are far outnumbered by a new generation that already is wresting control of the team's attitude.
Diggs, a 5-foot-10 cornerback from Angleton, has fast become a folk hero for his scrimmage exploits. Veteran linemen's eyes light up when the names of Jackson or Greg Daniels are mentioned at defensive tackle. Malcolm Brown and Bergeron apparently gave coaches no choice but to give them immediate playing time behind starting tailback Fozzy Whittaker.
And then there is Shipley, another younger brother of a former UT standout. The 6-foot-1, 190-pound receiver from Brownwood will wear the same No. 8 jersey as record-setting wideout Jordan Shipley did with the Longhorns. And because they look so eerily similar when making cuts and snagging balls out of the air, Mack Brown said it might be a problem.
“We may get turned in to the NCAA,” Brown said. “They'll think Jordan's back.”
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