Texas transfer linebacker Rasheem Biles is already turning heads in camp, giving Steve Sarkisian another disruptive weapon for the Longhorns defense.
Texas football may have found the next nightmare opposing offenses will have to account for every Saturday.
Transfer linebacker Rasheem Biles arrived in Austin with a strong resume from Pitt, but Steve Sarkisian sounds even more impressed by what he’s seeing now. The Texas coach didn’t bother dressing up his assessment of the new Longhorns defender.
“He’s a problem,” Sarkisian said.
That’s exactly what Texas hoped it was getting.
Biles piled up 183 career tackles and 10.5 sacks at Pitt, then exploded during the 2025 season with a career-best 100 tackles and two interceptions.
Those numbers made him one of the most coveted linebackers in the transfer portal, and Texas defensive coordinator Will Muschamp wasted little time trying to get Biles to Austin.
Well, almost.
Biles joked that Muschamp’s initial recruiting pitch went to the wrong phone number.
“If he had the right number, I would have been at Texas sooner,” Biles said.
Now that communication issue has been solved, Biles is making plenty of noise on the field.
Sarkisian compared the linebacker’s disruptive practice presence to star edge rusher Colin Simmons, who became so dominant early in his Texas career that his pass rush could occasionally wreck the structure of practice.
Simmons has since learned when to throttle things down enough to allow the offense to finish reps.
Biles is apparently creating some of those same headaches.
“He can do it on special teams,” Sarkisian said. “He does it a lot of different ways.”
That versatility could make Biles enormously important for Muschamp’s defense. Texas doesn’t simply need someone who can rack up tackles between the hashes.
Biles gives the Longhorns another defender capable of attacking quarterbacks, chasing plays sideline to sideline and creating disruption before an offense can get comfortable.
Sarkisian also sees value in the daily punishment Biles can inflict on his own teammates.
“I want Rasheem to make it hard on our guards and to make it hard on our backs every day,” Sarkisian said, explaining that the competition should make Texas stronger on both sides of the ball.
That’s the bigger story here.
With Simmons terrorizing offensive tackles off the edge and Biles attacking from the second level, Texas could have two defenders capable of wrecking protection schemes in completely different ways.
The Longhorns didn’t bring Biles in simply to plug a hole, they brought in another problem. And judging from Sarkisian’s reaction, that problem is already getting bigger.
