Jayden Cofield and James Hansen line up at the same position on the Texas Tech football team, but stand about as far apart as possible on the experience spectrum.

Cofield is a year out of high school and a redshirt freshman with the Red Raiders. Hansen's a sixth-year senior who served a two-year Mormon mission after high school, which makes him ... 26.

"I'm an old guy on the team," he said. "I'm probably the oldest one on the team."

Their age difference aside, Cofield and Hansen are trying to accomplish the same thing, being part of the solution to one of Texas Tech's biggest questions: How solid can the Red Raiders be at defensive tackle after the departure of two longtime starters?

The absence of Jaylon Hutchings and Tony Bradford, starters in 57 and 38 Tech games, respectively, hit home again this week. First came news of the Chicago Bears signing Hutchings. Then Bradford showed up at Tuesday's Tech practice, no longer in football attire, chatting on the sideline with an official, a reporter and assorted others.

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Texas Tech football hoping for strength in numbers at defensive tackle

Joey McGuire and his Tech coaches have said for months they believe they have seven playable defensive tackles. Upperclassmen returnees Quincy Ledet and Dooda Banks were the listed starters coming out of spring.

Then there's De'Braylon Carroll and Hansen, veteran transfers from Rice and Nevada, respectively, and young returnees Trevon McAlpine from Saraland, Alabama, Braylon Rigsby from the East Texas town of Woodville and Cofield from Manor.

They might be plentiful in number, but none has a proven, long-term track record at the power-conference level.

"As a unit, I told them, 'We've got to go prove it,' " defensive line coach Zarnell Fitch said. "I call them paper tigers."

Hansen, a 6-foot-2, 315-pound graduate of Fontana (Calif.) Kaiser, spent one year at Riverside City College, then two apiece at Utah State and Nevada. He started all 12 games last season. The pool of available defensive tackles in Reno, he said, isn't what he walked into in Lubbock.

"It's incredible," he said. "Normally in the G5, it's maybe one or two deep, but here you have so many guys. And I think it's not so much about the talent; but it's about going out and getting after it. I can look on the roster and you can see all these names and you can feel like we have all this depth, but there's still so much more that we have to prove as a room."

Hansen has had to play catch-up this summer. He joined the Red Raiders in January, then missed spring football with a calf strain.

"What helped James Hansen," Fitch said, "is that he's a smart kid and an older kid, so even though he was out he's still trying to get as much knowledge and taking those mental reps. I think as time goes, he's going to definitely be able to help us. He's helping us now in different groups that we run here."

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Texas Tech football defensive tackle Jayden Cofield aiming to add to Manor's recent legacy

Cofield has caught eyes the first two weeks of preseason practice. Last week, McGuire said he told Fitch that if the Red Raiders had a game that day, Cofield would be a starter.

"I feel like I play with great effort, just running to the ball," said Cofield, a 6-foot-2, 310-pound redshirt freshman. "That's really what's given me an opportunity to get on the field this early is playing as hard as I can every play."

The Red Raiders signed Cofield out of Manor, a high school that can put together quite a who's who of recent alumni athletes. Tahj Brooks, Tech's Doak Walker Award semifinalist, is one Manor alum. So are Tyler Guyton, the Dallas Cowboys' first-round draft pick out of Oklahoma, and Toronto Raptors guard Jamal Shead, who last season with Houston was a consensus all-American and winner of the Naismith national defensive player of the year award.

"We want to be just like them," said Cofield, who's known Brooks since early childhood. "Where Tahj and them are, that's where we want to be. But we want to be above them as well. We want to do things greater than they've done, for our community."

His position coach said Cofield is going about it the right way, alluding to what Cofield picked up last year from Hutchings and Bradford.

"He's been a great team player," Fitch said. "I think what's fun about Cofield right now, he's approaching it not as a redshirt freshman. He's approaching it as an older guy. I think that has a lot to do with the two older guys that were here that left.

"I think he really honed to those guys and is trying to take those steps to help us win ballgames."

This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Jayden Cofield, James Hansen parts in Texas Tech football DTs puzzle