Written by Jeff Howe, sip247 staff reporter
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"Jefferson already embracing being an upperclassman"
AUSTIN Since the day he set foot on the Texas campus Malik Jefferson has been in a leadership position.
Viewed as the face of the program given that his commitment was the first that proved Charlie Strong could recruit at an elite level on the Forty Acres, Jefferson has struggled at times during his first two years to find his fit as a leader.
That's not the case as he heads into his junior season, even as Tom Herman has taken over the program after Jefferson's two seasons playing under Strong yielded consecutive 5-7 records.
As he sat inside the Moncrief Complex taking questions from the media following the team's season-ending 31-9 loss to TCU, Jefferson stopped twiddling a pair of gold hoop earrings in his hands long enough to think about what's next.
The next time Jefferson steps on the field for a game, which will be when Texas opens the 2017 season at home next Sept. 2, he'll be a junior. With that said, the process of playing and carrying himself like an upperclassman started early for the Butkus Award semifinalist.
"It started today, honestly," Jefferson said after the loss to the Horned Frogs.
Herman has only had one team meeting with his new squad. The fall semester coming to a close and the Longhorns not being bowl eligible means Herman's work won't begin in terms of building toward 2017 with his players until the players return for the start of the spring semester in January.
In the meantime, Jefferson and other leaders in the locker room have time to think about what they're going to do to help the program get out of the vicious cycle the Longhorns find themselves.
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Jefferson said several times following the loss to TCU that regardless of what were to happen to Strong (he was fired the following morning following a 16-21 record in three seasons on the job), improvement in the win column won't happen until the players take it upon themselves to change things.
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After a slow start to his sophomore season that included being benched in the second half of a loss to Kansas State and having to come off of the bench against Baylor, Jefferson finished strong. He recorded 22 tackles, five tackles for loss and 3.5 sacks over the last four games in which he played (he missed the Kansas game due to injury and missed all but one series in the West Virginia game), showing that he's already started to take it upon himself to change things through his actions.
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"We said in the locker room that this can't happen again," Jefferson said. "I know we've said that multiple times already, we said that last year. But it's really in our hands."
