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Texas recruiting notes 2019


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9 minutes ago, Fud said:

That's fair, although I think they worded that poorly. I think if you asked either Justin or Eric straight up if they're confident in Texas signing Shepherd, they'd say no 

Whatever my thoughts are regarding Nahlin over time, one thing I don't consider him is naive. He's hedging the Shepherd and Demas stuff in a way that implies optimism. When I follow the timeline of what was said negatively after the Demas visit, then he and FWK chatting, and then the posting changes, my view is that FWK implied something that makes IT think "well, maybe he's going to send the kid to Texas after all". Hey, no harm if that's what happened, but my view is that a scorpion is going to sting you ... because he's a scorpion. If FWK isn't a moneygrubbing shitbag with his hand out delivering players to the highest bidder, I guess I'm going to have to see that from him first before I'll believe it. I'm not a paid writer for a $9.95 site though, so it's different. They can't just declare war on guys like this without running the risk of it backfiring with the current staff. It's an interesting development to observe, though.

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7 hours ago, Leanderman said:

Just once, once I would like to see a report that a recruit had a terrible time on a visit.

who was that fat Poly that had probably the worst visit ever, ended up walking around downtown by himself?  Ofa Mohotanu or something like that.

 

Then there was that Running back from California that came in for a visit and started talking shit to Hodges Mitchell and they almost got into a fight so Mack sent him home.  

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The Stampede: Bru McCoy's chance to be immediately eligible?

The Bru McCoy saga is over. The five-star athlete out of Mater Dei (Calif.) spurned USC after enrolling early and arrived in Austin on Sunday. McCoy has moved in and is set to begin classes this week. What was once a dream is now a reality. McCoy is officially a Longhorn.

I promise we’ll go into more details in our post-signing day column about the twists and turns of this epic recruitment in our post-NSD column. Let me just say this — while USC was where his heart was, McCoy’s head was always with Texas. He wanted to be at UT regardless of what was reported by everyone else. There is a reason I put in my Crystal Ball pick for Texas in October and stuck with it through everything.

Hell, I even received some doubt on my reporting of this recruitment after McCoy entered the portal. Again, McCoy wanted to be at Texas. He just had to convince himself to actually get out of his comfort zone. And that was a big part of Tom Herman and Drew Mehringer’s pitch. You have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Trust me, McCoy is happy to be at Texas and ready to broaden his horizons.

Of course, there is one final hurdle for Texas and McCoy — gaining eligibility. All the LOI talk is completely irrelevant. McCoy must appeal as a straight transfer after entering the transfer portal. He attended class at USC and was a student athlete just like any other player on campus.

Let make this absolutely clear, McCoy did not turn in an LOI to USC before his commitment. He was never in a system college coaches have access to, and the Longhorns continued to recruit him hard leading up to his announcement. Get the LOI idea out of your head, crumble it up and throw it in the trash. It doesn’t matter.

McCoy and his family will have to submit their appeal to NCAA as a straight transfer. And yes, the wheels are moving on that. A pair of sources told me there was optimism McCoy would be approved for immediate eligibility. Another source told me there was a ‘high’ chance McCoy would be approved. Don’t expect a quick turnaround on a decision. I’m told the appeal process could take months.

While a resolution doesn’t appear to be in sight, McCoy will go through team workouts and participate in spring ball when that time comes. As an early enrollee, Texas will be able to figure out exactly how McCoy will fit into the offense as a true freshman if he is in fact cleared.

I’m told the Texas staff expects McCoy to be special at wide receiver and to play right away if eligible. While there has been linebacker talk, McCoy is in the offensive plans. Look for him to get time in the slot and on the outside during spring ball. Regardless of McCoy’s eligibility for this season, landing him was a statement for Herman and company. Texas has reestablished its national brand and is ready to compete for titles.

***

With just one weekend remaining until National Signing Day, the late period will likely come to a close with little fanfare. Still, Texas has an opportunity to cement back-to-back Top 3 recruiting classes as it hosts two major official visitors this weekend. The first one we’ll touch on is four-star JUCO linebacker Lakia Henry. Ole Miss knocked it out of the park on his OV over the weekend, and the Rebels appear to have the advantage. Henry wants to play in the SEC and sees Ole Miss as a great fit.

With that said, I haven’t lost a lot of optimism. Texas gets the final say, and the Longhorns have proven time and time again that they are more than capable of swinging recruitments late. Gary Johnson, who attended the same junior college, has been involved, and defensive coordinator Todd Orlando has built a great relationship with him. This will be Henry’s first time in Austin, so it’s an obvious opportunity to make a lasting impression heading into his signing day decision. For those wondering, there were some question marks about Henry’s academic standing. But I’m told everything is clear when it comes to Texas. He should have no issues if he sides with the Longhorns.

And of course there is the Javonne Shepherd saga. Shepherd has told reporters that he doesn’t know if he’s visiting this weekend. Right now, I’m saying it’s a bluff. We still expect Shepherd to make it to Austin for an OV and feel like the Longhorns can keep him in the fold. But I can’t stress enough that this recruitment has been a rollercoaster ride that makes you vomit in the trashcan after you get off the ride. Literally anything can happen. LITERALLY ANYTHING.

Alabama and Georgia hosted Shepherd for official visits over the weekend, but I still see Texas A&M as the primary threat. Texas is still evaluating some JUCO and grad transfer prospects, but those likely won’t be decided until after NSD.

***

While the focus has still been on the 2019 class, this weekend gave me an opportunity to spend time with some key underclassmen targets at Orlando Pylon 7v7. Out of all the recruits at the tournament, I spent the most time with elite Duncanville athlete Ja'Quinden Jackson. Jackson was actually on my flight — no, I didn’t follow him anywhere — and I covered almost all of his team’s games.

Right now, I get the feeling that Texas is still in the pole position for Jackson. The connection to UT assistant Ra’shaad Samples is obvious. As we’ve stated on numerous occasions, Samples is the son of Jackson’s high school head coach, Reginald Samples, and has been a mentor to him for years. Jackson views Samples as a big brother figure, and the two communicate on a consistent basis.

Jackson seems like a quiet kid, but he just has an extremely hard shell. Once you crack it, he’s one of the coolest kids you’ll ever meet. I say this because Jackson isn’t big on social media and isn’t really about the recruiting process. The four-star prospect won’t be at Texas junior day, Instead, expect him to come in for a more intimate visit with fewer recruits on campus.

By the way, Jackson has been growing close to former Texas wide receiver Lil'Jordan Humphrey, who has said nothing but positive things about the program. Humphrey is definitely helping Texas in this recruitment. Outside of Texas, Jackson likes schools like LSU, Alabama and Oklahoma State. LSU was a school he liked growing up, Alabama head coach Nick Saban wowed him by showing up at his school, and Oklahoma State has done a terrific job of recruiting him.

While Jackson isn’t a big social media recruit, he commands respect. Jackson has been playing with a lot of elite Dallas-area recruits since he was in elementary school. He has a big voice on the field and could help the Longhorns make a big impact in D-FW if they are able to reel him in. Aside from Zachary Evans, Jackson is the other prize in 2020. He is a freak athlete and can literally play whatever he wants.

Texas offensive coordinator Tim Beck has seen Jackson on multiple occasions, so there is intrigue there as a quarterback. Jackson actually grew up playing safety and running back, so there is familiarity with those positions. But at 6-3, 215 (updated height and weight), Jackson’s upside is likely at linebacker. Quite a few people I’ve spoken to believe Jackson would be a great rover at Texas, and I’m on that bandwagon.

Though if Jackson gets more serious about becoming a full-time quarterback, I could see him as a Cam Newton type. He has the arm talent. He just needs some mechanical work. Either way, Jackson is a special talent. Texas is in a great spot early on and absolutely has to close.

As far as a timeline goes, Jackson wants to commit at the Under Armour All-America game next January. He doesn’t really want to drag out the process, but that’s been his dream since he was in middle school, and he has the opportunity to accomplish it.

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1 hour ago, Burt Macklin said:

Lulz. Wheeler Was literally our worst defensive player most of the year. We don’t need another Wheeler on the defense. In fact, that’s exactly what we need to avoid by finding someone who can beat out Shark if he’s playing Mac. I can still see OSU running outside zone on him for 8 yards a pop over and over again.

also, half of us were not ready to bury Charles O last year. That’s total bullshit.

As of Sept 23rd.. Yes.. Then people started jumping onboard

https://www.surlyhorns.com/board/index.php?/topic/4864-charles-omenihu/&page=1

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1 minute ago, joeycovers said:

As of Sept 23rd.. Yes.. Then people started jumping onboard

https://www.surlyhorns.com/board/index.php?/topic/4864-charles-omenihu/&page=1

That was literally like one, maybe two posters. And to be fair, we’ve already established today that @DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt Isn’t always the most accurate.

On 9/23/2018 at 7:43 AM, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

What happened to this dude? How has he become a complete non-factor for this defense?

someone explain...

 

On 9/23/2018 at 8:15 AM, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

That’s kinda what I was assuming, but even still you would think that eventually he would find himself near a ball carrier and making a tackle. I can’t remember a time this year where his name was called...

I thought for sure with his size and strength he was setup for a breakout year on his way to the NFL. But it just seems like he has completely disappeared.

 

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5 minutes ago, joeycovers said:

As of Sept 23rd.. Yes.. Then people started jumping onboard

https://www.surlyhorns.com/board/index.php?/topic/4864-charles-omenihu/&page=1

People in this community change their mind at the drop of a hat. I'm pretty sure every player on the team sucked at some point in the month of September according to the football board.

The point is that in January 2018, people would not have been thrilled about seeing Charles O leave.

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1 hour ago, Burt Macklin said:

I agree with others that it’ll be easy for any fan base to rationalize a Shepherd take, but I’d prefer we not waste a spot on him and save it for 2020 where we can get an extra OL prospect that is more likely to be a good college player. 

My issue with Shepherd is that he doesn’t have just one red flag. He’s got flags over academics, character (punching a coach/getting suspended), work ethic, and weight (he was up to roughly 350 at some point in the last year). If he only had like one, maybe two of these red flags, I’d be more inclined to take a chance on him, but all those things combined make his bust rate extremely, extremely high.

As others have noted, add shady handler to the red flags list. Also add previous client of shady handler has already transferred out of the program in large part due to mental weakness.

The only thing I would add as a positive factor if we end up getting Sheppard is that so many of the mental evals have been spot on with this staff. One bad egg isn't going to spoil the whole batch. Perhaps getting Sheppard out of his comfort zone and away from the bad influences, maybe gets him to turn it around. Much more likely that he will pan out here than at aggy or any place that has low character coaches and a slew of low character, rent-a-players. 

That said, he won't make it to campus and will be an aggy until he hits the portal and ends up at Sam Houston.

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As of now, Shepherd is signaling in virtually every way possible that he is already a silent to aggy who left his public "commitment" to Texas in place for the show of a signing day flip. IF he visits us, I think that gives us a data point that maybe he is a confused teenager at least as much as someone who is (at the end of handler strings) playing us. The real tell will be the aggy super bowl party. The correlation between going to that party and future signing with aggy (for Shepherd, not necessarily the other recruits for '20 and '21) IMO approaches 0.999. One way or another, by Sunday night, I think we will have either pretty good confirmation or refutation of JS to aggy.

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9 hours ago, Leanderman said:

Just once, once I would like to see a report that a recruit had a terrible time on a visit.

Remember Ofa Mohetau.  

I never knew what happened on that deal.  Seems he was let out and was wandering around downtown Austin by himself. Always sounded fishy to me.

Maybe CTJ knows what happened on that visit. 

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3 hours ago, Burt Macklin said:

I agree with others that it’ll be easy for any fan base to rationalize a Shepherd take, but I’d prefer we not waste a spot on him and save it for 2020 where we can get an extra OL prospect that is more likely to be a good college player. 

My issue with Shepherd is that he doesn’t have just one red flag. He’s got flags over academics, character (punching a coach/getting suspended), work ethic, and weight (he was up to roughly 350 at some point in the last year). If he only had like one, maybe two of these red flags, I’d be more inclined to take a chance on him, but all those things combined make his bust rate extremely, extremely high.

Seems to me that punching a coach should make a recruit absolutely toxic.  

If I were a coach, "Don't punch coaches" would be one of my core values.  Good riddance to that guy.

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Bobby Burton: Monday

When I cut my teeth in recruiting - during the early- and mid-'90s - Texas A&M was throttling Texas in recruiting almost every year. David McWilliams and John Mackovic just couldn't keep up with a well-oiled Aggie recruiting machine. Then Mack Brown showed up and dominated A&M for the better part of the next 15 years. OU, meanwhile, got their fair share and supplemented Texas-grown talent by going to other states.

So why am I recounting all of this? In the state of Texas, there is usually a clear winner and a clear loser when it comes to recruiting. Either Texas wins and A&M loses, or vice versa. It's been that way since pretty much forever. And if you include OU in the equation, then maybe there have been two winners and one loser, or one winner and two losers. It's been the same outcome, each and every year.

Yet the current national recruiting rankings this year place Texas at 3, A&M at 4 and OU at 5. That's three top five classes in a single year. In the history of online team recruiting rankings, those three programs have never before finished in the top 5 together at the same time. In fact, the only time all three finished in the top 10 together was 2004, when OU finished 8th, Texas 9th and A&M 10th.

What's more, of those three teams, even two of them have never finished in the top 5 in the same year. Yet, all of a sudden, there are three in the top five. Is this a new trend where these three programs are all able to recruit at the elite level simultaneously? Perhaps it's a by-product of Texas recruiting nationally more like Oklahoma. Or perhaps it's a consequence of A&M going to the SEC, which lets three teams, not just one or two rule the roost. Or perhaps it's a lot of factors all coming together at once.

Is this year a trend or is it an anomaly? The truth is, we don't know yet. All I know is that I've never seen these three teams all have such great years in recruiting in the same year.

**

Bru McCoy is the highest rated out-of-state recruit that the Longhorns have landed since.... Chris Simms in 1999. McCoy is considered the No. 9 overall prospect in the country, according to the 247Sports Composite. Simms was ranked No. 1 that year.

**

Late last week, each 247Sports writer/reporter was granted access to create their own 5-star list of the 32 best players in the country. The rankings had no bearings on the rankings or the composite. Here are mine:

https://247sports.com/UserRanking/BobbyBurton-9201/UserPlayerRankings/

Four Longhorns landed in my ranking:

No. 19 - Jordan Whittington
No. 24 - Bru McCoy
No. 26 - De'Gabriel Floyd
No. 28 - Tyler Owens

**

Bru McCoy and De'Gabriel Floyd became friends during the recruiting process. In part, they did so because both were elite recruits in Southern California and in part because both liked USC. Remember, Floyd was actually committed to the Trojans way back as a junior before opening up his recruitment and eventually selecting the Longhorns. And McCoy grew up a devout USC fan. But I'm told another aspect that really bonded the two was their dedication to off-field training. Both of these guys love to work out, they love the process of getting better as athletes and as football players. In that way, they saw perhaps a kindred spirit in one another.

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10 minutes ago, satyanash said:

Bobby Burton: Monday

 

  Hide contents

...

Bru McCoy is the highest rated out-of-state recruit that the Longhorns have landed since.... Chris Simms in 1999. McCoy is considered the No. 9 overall prospect in the country, according to the 247Sports Composite. Simms was ranked No. 1 that year.

...

 

Jordan Hicks was rated higher

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13 hours ago, Laxtonto said:

I am not really seeing much left on the bone for the continuation of the 2019 recruiting class for us at this point.

Bru gave us one hell of a jolt, but I think the drive for 1000 is dead 

 

All that seems left is the inevitable drama of some type surrounding Shepherd to grind out a few pages and then we can pretty much put this class in the books.

 

Time to chill a bit till the summer and then roll to the 2020 thread.

Let’s not forget that we had several pages on the Shag.

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13 hours ago, Laxtonto said:

I am not really seeing much left on the bone for the continuation of the 2019 recruiting class for us at this point.

Bru gave us one hell of a jolt, but I think the drive for 1000 is dead 

 

All that seems left is the inevitable drama of some type surrounding Shepherd to grind out a few pages and then we can pretty much put this class in the books.

 

Time to chill a bit till the summer and then roll to the 2020 thread.

Quitters never win and winners never quit.

Edited by Bodacious Bevo
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2 hours ago, Bill Lumbergh said:

Yes... M is commonly used to denote thousand, so mm is commonly used for millions. 

 

2 hours ago, GTNY said:

M is the roman numeral for 1,000 so MM is a "thousand thousands"...

Just looked up the Latin: 1,000 = milia & 1,000,000 = decies centana milia ...(looks like "ten hundred thousand")

Spanish is: 1,000 = mil & 1,000,000 = millón

Italian: 1,000 = mille & 1,000,000 = milione

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9 hours ago, LCHorn said:

I predict Dele transfers either after the spring or following next season.  He's the one most likely to be supplanted by Floyd. 

Jesus, can we not immediately write off every freshman that redshirts and assume they are going to be a waste of a scholarship or an immediate transfer?

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