Wednesday Update — OL Sitting Out, Single-Digit Numbers, Walk-ons Getting Schollies, WRs Impressing

Let’s lead off the with the good stuff—single-digit number news. We already knew that Henry Black and JaMycal Hasty had been assigned single-digit jerseys (which is a big thing in Rhule’s system because it’s voted on by other players, but now we have more!

In retrospect, four of the “new additions” to this aren’t all that new and shouldn’t have been surprising. Chris Miller, Grayland Arnold, John Lovett, and Ira Lewis all had single-digit numbers last year (the same numbers, in fact), and were likely to repeat. But it wasn’t certain, so congratulations to them for defending their jersey houses, so to speak.

The real new addition (so far) is senior transfer Jalen Hurd (formerly of Tennessee), who was reportedly signing as #5 at Meet the Bears. This, too, probably shouldn’t have been much of a surprise since all everyone has talked about since he got here is how much of a monster he is.

Now we all wait with bated breath for the remaining two numbers to be assigned. Wild guess—I think one will go to another wide receiver (maybe Jared Atkinson or Denzel Mims?) or defender (Derrek Thomas?), and one will go to a QB. I’m honestly kinda hoping that it will be Jalan McClendon so I can watch every Baylor board in existence melt down simultaneously.

Now in not-so-good news: we’re going to be down two offensive linemen after all on Saturday, and Clay Johnston sounds like he’s a maybe at this point.

But to finish off this sandwich of a post (good-bad-good news, you should try it), three former walk-ons received scholarships either yesterday or today:

• FB Kyle Boyd (your starting fullback, which is apparently a thing. I think it’s pronounced “full-back,” but I’m not sure).
• OL Christian Beard (maybe your starter at LG)
• WR Marques Jones (currently in the two-deep at WR behind Chris Platt)

I included the links to each player’s “announcement,” and you should definitely click on the one for Jones when you get a chance.

Beyond those pieces of news, there’s really not much out there that I’ve seen. We’re all still waiting to see how starts at QB on Saturday (my money is still on Charlie Brewer), and it sounds like a few injury situations are still up in the air. Rhule also mentioned that three different wide receivers (Atkinson, Tony Nicholson, and Pooh Stricklin) have all had good camps and/or improved significantly in recent weeks, so it sounds like what could be the strongest part of the team could be even stronger than we thought.