David Pollack thinks the gap between Jeremiah Smith and Cam Coleman is smaller than most people want to admit.
That’s the message the former Georgia star and college football analyst pushed on X, where he backed the Texas target as a receiver ready to explode in 2026. Pollack wrote that “The separation between Jeremiah Smith and Cam Coleman is a lot closer than you think.
Cam about to go ham on all College Football this Fall! 🍿” and paired it with a practice catch that has already made the rounds online.
The timing matters because Smith has become the default answer in a lot of preseason debates. The Ohio State wideout is widely viewed as not just the best receiver in the sport, but maybe the best player overall. Pollack, though, is putting Coleman right in that conversation.
Coleman has never lacked for talent. The issue has been turning that talent into consistent production.
Even so, his track record has been strong enough to keep him in the spotlight since high school. In the 2024 recruiting class, all three major recruiting services had him in the national top 10, and he was ranked as the second or third best receiver in the country, behind Smith and sometimes Alabama’s Ryan Coleman-Williams.
He landed at Auburn and showed real flashes as a freshman in 2024, finishing with 37 catches for 598 yards and eight touchdowns. In 2025, his role grew, but Auburn’s passing game struggled badly, with the Tigers finishing 15th in the 16-team SEC in passing yardage. Coleman still posted 56 receptions for 708 yards and five touchdowns, numbers that only begin to hint at what he can do when the offense is clicking.
Now he’s at Texas, and the fit looks far more promising. The Longhorns had three receivers top 500 yards last season, even with Arch Manning’s uneven year, and only Ryan Wingo is back from that group. Wingo and Coleman give Texas a duo with real punch, and the No. 4-ranked Longhorns are being viewed as a major national title threat in 2026.
The expectations for Coleman are already loud. The SEC media picked him as a first-team all-conference preseason selection, while Wingo - who returns after posting 834 receiving yards - landed on the third team. Ryan Coleman-Williams was also named a first-team preseason pick.
If Coleman is going to make Pollack look wise, the runway is there. Texas is counting on a bounce-back season from Manning, and Coleman has the stage to back up the kind of viral flashes that have already fueled the hype.
There’s also an early measuring-stick game on the schedule: a Week 2 showdown with Ohio State. That’s a chance for Coleman to go head-to-head with Smith and make an immediate case that he belongs in the same breath.
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What Warren said now adds another layer to a season Longhorns fans already remember as messy and hard to explain. His criticism suggested there was more happening inside the program than the public ever fully saw, which is exactly the kind of lingering detail that keeps the 2017 conversation from really going away. [Read more 🡒]
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The bigger picture is what happens after this season, when the Longhorns could lose their top two backs to the NFL Draft and force the next man up into a much larger role. Terry is the clearest candidate to step into that opening, and the path to a future depth chart is already taking shape around him, even before Texas gets to see how the rest of the young talent settles in. [Read more 🡒]