Calvin Bundage Has a Ways to Go Which Should Terrify the Rest of the Big 12

Since debuting in Week 1 of last season as a true freshman, Calvin Bundage has earned a reputation as a hard-hitter human battering ram. The true sophomore has a nose for contact and a mean streak on the field.

Watch him on this play below. He starts on the left side of the screen and once he sees the play developing (or maybe even before), he covers more ground than anyone on the field and sends Sam Ehlinger’s would-be protector flying backward to the ground.

That blocker is 6-foot-4, 250-pound junior Chris Warren III, one of the biggest running backs in the country. And he’s got two inches and roughly 45 pounds on the sophomore. This is why we love Bundage. He could knock the letters off the back of your jersey and he tries to every time.

Here he beats offensive tackle Denzel Okafor and turns a second-and-short into a, “oh my God, he’s coming!”

As the 1a — or 1b, I’m not sure — starter at Star linebacker, Bundage co-headlines a group that Glenn Spencer called his best on defense before the season. And with his partner Kenneth Edison-McGruder now having missed three of the Cowboys’ seven games, Bundage has had to be the No. 1 guy.

Spencer was asked about how Bundage looked in his increased role after a Texas game in which he had just five total tackles but disrupted Texas’ offense in a variety of ways (see GIFs above).

“Good and bad,” said Spencer. “Calvin, when he gets dialed into the right place, he can pull the trigger. He’s got tremendous short-area quickness.

“Just maturity. He needs to play more ball to get everything down better but usually he’s a point of attack kind of guy and he does good.”

That’s the scary part if you’re coaching one of nine other Big 12 schools. He’s just a sophomore and he’s going to get better. This is the face of someone who just realized what he was getting into.