Who: Chris Jackson, Texas
Title: Passing game coordinator/wide receivers coach
Previous stop: Jacksonville Jaguars wide receivers coach (2022)
Why he's important: After a 2022 season that saw a modest improvement from 5-7 to 8-5, Steve Sarkisian returned nearly every piece of his offensive personnel. He knew he'd lose running backs Bijan Robinson and Roschon Johnson to the NFL, and in January he knew he'd need a wide receivers coach after Brennan Marion, one year into the job, took the offensive coordinator job at UNLV.
In filling that role, Sarkisian wanted a coach who was likely to stick around. The new coach would be the position group's third in as many seasons: Sarkisian retained Andre Coleman from the previous staff, then replaced him with Marion for 2022. "Has not been ideal, I'll say that," Sarkisian said back in March.
He also wanted a coach who could develop a room that could have as many as four players in NFL camps this time next year.
In Chris Jackson, he believes he got both.
"One was stability," Sarkisian explained on what drew him to Jackson. "Two was the experience of coaching at the NFL level -- what that looked like from a developmental standpoint for our players. I like his presence, I like this command. I think he shows a great deal of maturity but still has a lot of youth to the way he goes about his business."
Undrafted out of Washington State in 1998 (he was a teammate of Texas assistant head coach Jeff Banks), Jackson remained in professional football through 2014. He appeared in three NFL games as a Buccaneer, a Seahawk, a Titan, a Packer and a Dolphin, but built a Hall of Fame-level career in the Arena league.
Jackson did not jump into coaching until 2018, joining the Bears as a Bill Walsh diversity fellow and eventually rising to become assistant wide receivers coach. His appointment as the Jaguars' wide receivers coach in 2022 marked Jackson's first season as a lead position coach at the college or NFL levels.
At Texas, he helms a room that could be the best outside of Columbus, Ohio.
Xavier Worthy was a Freshman All-American in 2021, but regressed in 2022 (while still catching 60 balls for 760 yards and nine scores, all team highs). Playing through a broken hand in the second half of the season didn't help, but nether did an inability to link up with Quinn Ewers on vertical throws. See: the Oklahoma State, TCU and Washington losses, three games that could have turned if Worthy was better at tracking deep balls.
"We need to be more efficient throwing the football. I don't think I've made any bones about that since the end of last season," Sarkisian said. "Whether that's the deep ball, the intermediate balls, our third down numbers were not as good as we would like, our red area numbers were not as good as we would like. So we have to definitely sharpen up the passing game."
Elsewhere, slot receiver Jordan Whittington enjoyed his first healthy campaign in four seasons as a collegian in 2022 and could have tried his hand at the NFL after a 50-catch season, but opted to return for a fifth season.
Wyoming transfer Isaiah Neyor (44 catches for 878 yards and 12 touchdowns in 2021) likely would've been the second option, but was lost for the year to an ACL tear in training camp. He has returned to action this August.
Georgia transfer Adonai Mitchell has assumed the role on the outside Neyor was expected to have last season while Neyor works his way back to the lineup. True freshman Johntay Cook has also drawn repeated praise in camp.
Combined with a buzzed and trimmed down version of Ewers, Texas should improve on its 140.79 passing efficiency rating, good for 46th in the nation a year ago. The question is how much, and is it enough to carry the team to a long-awaited conference title?