AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Scan the rosters of Texas and Arizona State ahead of the Peach Bowl and the usual names pop out.

Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers and Thorpe Award winner Jahdae Barron. Arizona State All-American running back Cam Skattebo.

Another Longhorn who draws a lot of attention from Sun Devils coach Kenny Dillingham is Texas senior tight end Gunnar Helm, who has been catching everything thrown his way and even hurdling over defenders in a breakout season.

Helm’s 55 catches for 688 yards are both Texas tight end records as the No. 5-seeded Longhorns head into a New Years Day Peach Bowl matchup against No. 4-seed Arizona State in the College Football Playoff quarterfinals. He also has six touchdowns.

“He’s dynamic,” Dillingham said. “He’s not a tight end that clumsy and catches it and falls. He catches it and extends completions, which is something you never like to see when you’re going (against) a tight end … You don’t want them to catch it and run.”

In the transfer portal era of college football, Helm is a rare case of relatively unheralded recruit who stayed patient, stayed put and developed in to a first-team all-Southeastern Conference player this season.

“I think somebody this predicted me to have nine receptions this year,” Helm after he caught six passes for 77 yards and a touchdown in a 38-24 first-round win over Clemson.

“We’ve just got a great connection, and (he) just always is open it seems like,” Ewers said.

Rated a 3-star recruit out of Edgewood, Colorado, some recruiting analysts had him as the lowest-ranked player in the Texas class that came to campus in coach Steve Sarkisian’s first year in 2021. Helm had initially committed to former coach Tom Herman but stuck with Texas through the coaching change and a 5-7 season.

“I didn’t really have a choice,” Helm said earlier this season.

Also signed in that class was high school All-American Ja’Tavion Sanders, who over the 2022 and 2023 seasons would catch 99 passes and set the school’s single season and career pass catching records for tight ends. Helm caught 19 passes those two seasons.

The field finally opened up for Helm when Sanders turned pro after Texas made the playoff last season and was drafted by the Carolina Panthers.

Helm’s breakout game came in a 31-12 win at Michigan when he had seven catches for 98 yards and a touchdown. Against Clemson, Helm caught a touchdown pass in the second quarter. He was wide open in the end zone but had to leap high to cradle the ball and still toe-tap his feet in the end zone to stay inbounds.

His size (6-foot-5, 250 pounds), athleticism and versatility as a blocker have Helm projected as an early round draft pick in the NFL.

“We all know the path, his journey, the development that he’s had in our program. I’m super proud of him,” Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said. “(Ewers) can place balls in certain spots where he knows maybe if Gunnar doesn’t catch it, it’s probably incomplete … They’ve been together for three years now, and I think there’s a lot of trust there.”

This football season, The Texas Longhorns have had one of the best secondaries in the country, leading it to the SEC championship game and College Football Playoff. While there are several stars in the defensive backfield, All-Americans Michael Taaffe and Jahdae Barron make sure that everyone is on the same page.

While giving up the most yards of the season in the First Round Playoff game against Clemson, Texas got the win but still isn’t satisfied.

Clemson quarterback Cade Klubnik threw for 336 yards and the Tigers’ offense put up 412 total yards. Even though the Longhorns won 38-24, Taaffe and Barron wasted no time getting back to work.

“It’s the whole thing that Coach Saban always says,” Taaffe said. When you play a game not up to your standard but you still win, some immature players look at that like it’s a win. We can’t learn from it because we won, so let’s just keep moving on.”

Texas has been able to turn losses into lessons twice this season, and while they didn’t lose to Clemson, they still have a lot of work to do to be fully prepared for Arizona State. Back to practice after taking a break for Christmas, Barron was itching to get back out onto the field the second the clock hit 0:00 after beating Clemson.

“But this group that we have is so mature that Jahdae’s on the phone with me at 10 pm after the game,” Taaffe said. “He’s like ‘dude. I just watched it. We need to get better. We need to start tomorrow as early as 8 am and start getting better.’”

Taaffe, Barron and fellow Austin native Andrew Mukuba have led the Texas secondary, working tirelessly with defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski in the offseason to improve all aspects of their game.

Many doubted Texas’ ability to stop the run with the departure of T’Vondre Sweat and Byron Murphy II. But Kwiatkowski was prepared, ready to make the changes needed to keep the Texas defense elite.

“So schematically we went to more of a post-style defense going into the season. We lost T’Vondre Sweat and Byron Murphy and we had (Alfred Collins) and (Vernon Broughton) coming back. We weren’t sure how we were going to be able to play the run with two high safeties with lighter boxes, so that was the main catalyst to that switch. And then from the secondary standpoint playing with a middle closed we were able to play tighter coverage, play with more outside leverage on a lot of the route combinations that we’re seeing,” Kwiatkowski said.

“And then credit to those guys. They took their growth and learning to a new level. As much as we like to tell them to stay off social media and not listen to outside noise, they hear it, and so they knew they had to get better. And starting in January all the way to camp to now, they’ve attacked that challenge.”

Now, the Longhorn defense will have at least one more challenge ahead of them as they will head back to Atlanta to face Arizona State in the College Football Playoff quarterfinal on New Year’s Day at 12:00 PM.

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“Texas has been a cornerstone of PEAK6’s growth for over a decade,” said PEAK6 Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Matt Hulsizer, who continued, “With the majority of our talented workforce now based in Texas and Austin emerging as our largest office, moving our headquarters was an important decision to be closer to our team. We’re excited for the next chapter of PEAK6 that will be written from our new headquarters.”

Austin’s unique blend of creativity, technology and culture provides the ideal environment for PEAK6. The city’s highly educated workforce, business climate, and strong entrepreneurial spirit have enabled us to attract top talent and drive innovation.

About PEAK6

PEAK6 uses technology to find a better way of doing things. The company’s first tech-based solution was developed in 1997 to optimize options trading, and over the past two decades, the same formula has been used across a range of industries, asset classes, and business stages to consistently deliver superior results. Today, PEAK6 seeks transformational opportunities to provide capital and strategic support to entrepreneurs and forward-thinking businesses.

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