The Recruiting Class of 2019 (#3) - Where are they now?

TexasFight86

TexasFight86

250+ Posts
Re-organized, removed xfrs:

1 Starter out of 26.
9 Portals
4 permanent losses on medical, opted out
3 on IR

Out of 26, 10 are on the active depth chart.
Four 4 stars, but only 1 starter, and the rest are 3 star level.

This is how those outside of Austin get the perception Texas is always talented with 4/5 stars. But look at the loss of talent or potential.

Literally half the class is gone, only 1 starter. Look at the O line and LB losses. WHY do so many guys portal?

Not on the team
Bru McCoy Ath -- Gone - Portal (USC suspended?)
Jake Smith WR -- Gone - Portal (USC)
Tyler Owens S -- Gone - Portal (?)
Kenyatta Watson II CB -- Gone - Portal (Georgia Tech)
Javonne Shepherd OT -- Gone - Portal (Butler CC)
Caleb Johnson LB -- Gone - Portal (UCLA - standout)
Kennedy Lewis WR -- Gone - Portal (UTSA)
Willie Tyler OT -- Gone - Portal (Syracuse)
Juwan Mitchell LB -- Gone - Portal (Tennessee)
De'Gabriel Floyd LB -- Gone - medical
Peter Mpagi DE -- Gone - medical
Derrian Brown RB -- Gone - medical
Marques Caldwell CB - Not on current 4-deep - was on early ‘21

Injured
Jordan Whittington WR - IR
Brayden Liebrock TE - IR
Jacoby Jones DE - IR

Active
Marcus Washington WR - Starter (4)
David Gbenda LB - Backup LB
Chris Adimora S - Backup LB (4)
Roschon Johnson RB - Backup RB (4)
Myron Warren DE - 4th team NT (4)
Marcus Tillman Jr. LB - 4th Team WLB
T'Vondre Sweat DT - Backup DT
Jared Wiley TE - Backup TE
Tyler Johnson OT -- Opted out 2020 (on the roster 2021)
Isaiah Hookfin OT -- Medical out 2020 (on the roster 2021)
 
Last edited:
TexasFight86 said:
Ranked in order of recruiting ranking
2 - 5 star
15 - 4 stars

1 Starter out of 26.
Lost all 4 O linemen.
Lost 3 LBs.
9 Portals at least
5-6 permanent losses on medical, opted out

Out of 26, 9 are on the active depth chart (bold).
Four 4 stars, but only 1 starter, and the rest are 3 star level.

This is how those outside of Austin get the perception Texas is always talented with 4/5 stars. But look at the loss of talent or potential.

Literally half the class is gone, only 1 starter. Look at the O line and LB losses. WHY do so many guys portal?
  • Bru McCoy Ath -- Gone - Portal (USC suspended?)
Click to expand...
Tyler Owens is on the team.
 
TexasFight86 said:
Ranked in order of recruiting ranking
2 - 5 star
15 - 4 stars

1 Starter out of 26.
Lost all 4 O linemen.
Lost 3 LBs.
9 Portals at least
5-6 permanent losses on medical, opted out

Out of 26, 9 are on the active depth chart (bold).
Four 4 stars, but only 1 starter, and the rest are 3 star level.

This is how those outside of Austin get the perception Texas is always talented with 4/5 stars. But look at the loss of talent or potential.

Literally half the class is gone, only 1 starter. Look at the O line and LB losses. WHY do so many guys portal?
  • Bru McCoy Ath -- Gone - Portal (USC suspended?)
Click to expand...
Great post. Thanks for the time and research. I agree the number to portal from this class is astounding. I think there were multiple factors including Covid, Staff turnover, etc.

Lots of insight here into our current challenges on the field.
 
Great stuff. Two observations. 20% of the recruits were offensive lineman and have disappeared for whatever reason. Tell me they were not good enough to play anyway, but that is on bad recruiting, or poor development. I don't know the numbers, but it seems that all of the way back to the end of the Brown era we have seen a washout of 4 and 5 star offensive lineman. There are a lot of factors that make for good lineman and good coach recruiting looks past the stars. They have not done their job here. This trend has got to stop.

My other observation may get a lot of disagreement, but I think Jake Smith would be a big asset to this team right now. I have always been very high on this kid.
 
Agree on Jake, Hookfin is on team still. He will probably be a starter next year on OL.

Tyler supposedly quit team a few weeks ago, going portal.

Braun was frustrating, he only had 1 year of eligibility so probably shouldn't be on this list. However, he went from First Team ACC to having a terrible year here. Coaching matters...

Juwan wouldn't play in this D, plus was a total cancer who was never in position to make a play. Huge miss on the eval with him by Herm's staff.
 
Just one fan's opinions--so don't get your panties in a twist...

Headcases: Bru McCoy, Javonne Shepherd

Injured: J Whitt, Floyd, Liebrock, Brown, Hookfin, Jones, Mpagi (some of these will be back and will probably be good -- J Whitt, Liebrock, Hookfin, ...)

Excessively Fat and Slow: Big Willie

Didn't like the program/coaches much and/or left to a place where they would probably start: Jake Smith, Kenyatta Watson, Johnson, Lewis

Angry young man: Mitchell

Relatively slow developer, but could still contribute a lot: Caldwell, Warren
 
Lewis was the grades risk who had to sit a year while he went to community college with the promise of keeping his scholarship. He obviously didn't follow through.
 
Insightful post indeed.

Let's take a look at the turnover on the offensive coaching side of the equation.

HEAD COACH
Charlie Strong (2014 - 2016) with a record of 16-21
Tom Herman (2017 - 2020) with a record of 32-18
Steve Sarkisian (2021 - present) with a record of 4-5 as of now.

Three Head Coaches in the past five years with a combined record of 52-44.

OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR/OFFENSIVE LINE COACHES
Shawn Watson
Jay Norvell
Sterlin Gilbert
Joe Wickline
Tim Beck
Mike Yurcich
Derek Warehime
Matt Mattox
Herb Hand
Kyle Flood

I may have missed one here or there, but I count at least five offensive line coaches in seven years. In his last year, Herman created such instability in the program that 5* QB Quinn Ewers, an original Texas commit, de-committed. Texas then whiffed on the Brockermeyer brothers, excellent O-line recruits.

So, in addition to the turnover in the class itself, the Texas coaching staff has had repeated turnover in the key offensive coordinator/offensive line positions. Not a good recipe for developing the O-line.
 
El Torito said:
Insightful post indeed.

Let's take a look at the turnover on the offensive coaching side of the equation.

HEAD COACH
Charlie Strong (2014 - 2016) with a record of 16-21
Tom Herman (2017 - 2020) with a record of 32-18
Steve Sarkisian (2021 - present) with a record of 4-5 as of now.

Three Head Coaches in the past five years with a combined record of 52-44.

OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR/OFFENSIVE LINE COACHES
Shawn Watson
Jay Norvell
Sterlin Gilbert
Joe Wickline
Tim Beck
Mike Yurcich
Derek Warehime
Matt Mattox
Herb Hand
Kyle Flood

I may have missed one here or there, but I count at least five offensive line coaches in seven years. In his last year, Herman created such instability in the program that 5* QB Quinn Ewers, an original Texas commit, de-committed. Texas then whiffed on the Brockermeyer brothers, excellent O-line recruits.

So, in addition to the turnover in the class itself, the Texas coaching staff has had repeated turnover in the key offensive coordinator/offensive line positions. Not a good recipe for developing the O-line.
Click to expand...

Completely agree, and it shows the issue with unity and continuity isn't on the players. We just don't have a "system" to promote any sort of pipeline to any OL recruits. We kind of take random fliers on guys who are either big or played a lot in scheme-dependent high schools (Katy), and plug them in wherever. The kid feels honored to get an offer from Texas, but the really good ones head to Bama, tOSU, etc. Because they know exactly what the aforementioned list shows: Texas isn't going to keep around its coaches long enough to help me.

It's downright painful watching SEC and B1G games where the OL actually gets a push. So much wasted potential here.

It's also why we kind of need to let it blow up and start over. If going 3-9 next year means that we actually develop some young OL guys, with the promise of improvement to 6-6 the following year and even better after that, then that's what we need to roll with. Kerstetter and Okafor returning for an extra year kind of doomed us from a planning standpoint. And spoiled us into thinking that the OL would be better this year than last. What a crock.

I stopped creating threads like this one a couple years ago because it was too sobering. Now I think we need to learn from mistakes and forge ahead. We're not canceling the football season any time soon, so we might as well let some disasters happen with the hope that we learn from it and eventually have enough of a scheme and plan to get some good kids in here (like the kind ISU touts with their culture and what-not) and let them build it from the ground up.
 
Horns11 said:
Completely agree, and it shows the issue with unity and continuity isn't on the players. We just don't have a "system" to promote any sort of pipeline to any OL recruits. We kind of take random fliers on guys who are either big or played a lot in scheme-dependent high schools (Katy), and plug them in wherever. The kid feels honored to get an offer from Texas, but the really good ones head to Bama, tOSU, etc. Because they know exactly what the aforementioned list shows: Texas isn't going to keep around its coaches long enough to help me.

It's downright painful watching SEC and B1G games where the OL actually gets a push. So much wasted potential here.

It's also why we kind of need to let it blow up and start over. If going 3-9 next year means that we actually develop some young OL guys, with the promise of improvement to 6-6 the following year and even better after that, then that's what we need to roll with. Kerstetter and Okafor returning for an extra year kind of doomed us from a planning standpoint. And spoiled us into thinking that the OL would be better this year than last. What a crock.

I stopped creating threads like this one a couple years ago because it was too sobering. Now I think we need to learn from mistakes and forge ahead. We're not canceling the football season any time soon, so we might as well let some disasters happen with the hope that we learn from it and eventually have enough of a scheme and plan to get some good kids in here (like the kind ISU touts with their culture and what-not) and let them build it from the ground up.
Click to expand...
I completely agree with these posts talking about turnover (coaches and players) being the main reason why we're not as good as we thought we should be. A lot of us thought that Sark would come in and make us immediately good. I remember some forecasts of 11-2, with even a few NC comments here and there. The situation we're in is one of the strongest arguments for letting Sark have a few years to get something going.
 
De'Gabriel Floyd is the one that hurts the most for me. That guy looked like he was gonna be something special. And for the love of baby Jesus we could use a stout LB.
 
There is always going to be movement in the coaching ranks. We often talk of the "Saban Tree" or the "Urban Tree" where successful programs foster a winning tradition and culture that other programs want to bring in-house. Heck, that was a factor in the Sarkisian hire - bring in a battle tested coach with a championship pedigree. I still believe that Sarkisian can get the job done.

But the blue chip recruit press clippings disguised an on-going rot at Texas dating back to Mack's decline based in large part on coaching instability that undermined the program. Charlie Strong was was a monumentally inept supervisor who shuffled through almost twenty botched assistant coach hires before getting pink-slipped. Herman was an upgrade over Strong (the bar was low) but he failed to live up to the MENSA/offensive wizard reputation that came with him because he made the mistake of bringing almost all his Cougar High assistant coaches with him. By 2020, the image Sam Ehlinger left alone to sing the Eyes in a Cotton Bowl loss to the Sooners is seared in everyone's memory. Herman had lost the team, lost the donors, and lost the fans. He had fired Orlando, demoted Beck, shuffled Ash in, and hired Yurcich, and cycled through several other coaches. Herb Hand never delivered on the recruiting trail or in the trenches. No continuity.

Over the past five years, we have witnessed an unhealthy coaching carousel of instability hovering over unmotivated, underdeveloped, head cases who have underperformed or portaled out. These are the cold hard facts. That is what Sark inherited. :hookem:
 
So here is the only question that matters going forward. I looked at the young O linemen on the roster and was surprised at how many there were. Who can give an assessment of what is the potential of this young group? Any chance of a turnaround with these guys?
 
Chinstrap said:
So here is the only question that matters going forward. I looked at the young O linemen on the roster and was surprised at how many there were. Who can give an assessment of what is the potential of this young group? Any chance of a turnaround with these guys?
Click to expand...

Kind of like I said in my other post, I stopped doing this because it was too sobering :smokin:

I think it'll take Sark/Flood a massive shift in their thinking process to come up with even a starting unit, let alone improvement over time.

Here's my ranking of who we need to keep happy:
1. Majors - he plays a demanding position and had the yips earlier this season with snap count. But he's solid and could be in the NFL one day.
2. Karic - has been awful this year but is pretty much the only young tackle that we can build upon.
3. Conner - he was basically a 4-year starter in a demanding system at a great HS program. He probably has more experience playing than literally every other underclassman on the roster, notwithstanding his limited play this year. I think if they find the right spot for him, he could be great. Like Blalock great.

Next level:
Hookfin - was the one with the most "look how smart he plays" accolades in summer practices.
Garth/Parr - tied because I think they just need a chance to show something.
Merril - I was excited watching his Hudl but I don't know if I've seen anything since like the 8th game of his senior year of HS.
T. Johnson - they haven't trusted him enough with any responsibilities yet, but if they did, the results on the field probably wouldn't be any different right now.

Don't let the door...
Literally every upperclassman. But especially two junior starters who seem to flail at everything on every play.
 
Wow, that is very eye opening. Signing day top 10 classes mean nothing if they don't stay.

The great teams don't have attrition like this. IN fact I'd argue there is not much team identity at all if you have this kind of attrition.

But this is kind of a chicken or the egg kind of thing:
-In order to become a great team, you need to keep good players on the team.
-also, In the order to keep good kids from leaving you need to be good team.

Its going tot take time to turn this ship around.
 
Horns11 said:
Kind of like I said in my other post, I stopped doing this because it was too sobering :smokin:

I think it'll take Sark/Flood a massive shift in their thinking process to come up with even a starting unit, let alone improvement over time.

Here's my ranking of who we need to keep happy:
1. Majors - he plays a demanding position and had the yips earlier this season with snap count. But he's solid and could be in the NFL one day.
2. Karic - has been awful this year but is pretty much the only young tackle that we can build upon.
3. Conner - he was basically a 4-year starter in a demanding system at a great HS program. He probably has more experience playing than literally every other underclassman on the roster, notwithstanding his limited play this year. I think if they find the right spot for him, he could be great. Like Blalock great.

Next level:
Hookfin - was the one with the most "look how smart he plays" accolades in summer practices.
Garth/Parr - tied because I think they just need a chance to show something.
Merril - I was excited watching his Hudl but I don't know if I've seen anything since like the 8th game of his senior year of HS.
T. Johnson - they haven't trusted him enough with any responsibilities yet, but if they did, the results on the field probably wouldn't be any different right now.

Don't let the door...
Literally every upperclassman. But especially two junior starters who seem to flail at everything on every play.
Click to expand...
My opinion:

Majors—has been decent to pretty good, and he’s very young. Not where he needs to be yet. But promising.
Kerstetter—he’s pretty good. Wish we had 5 of him. A Senior.
Angilau—improved a lot from the last few years. Can run block.
Karic—hate to say I think I was wrong about him. He simply cannot handle a speed rusher on the edge—and it’s killed us. A real liability thus far.
Imade—we really need an upgrade.
Okafor—see Imade
 
You’d be surprise at the amount of attrition at all schools. I’ve done the exercise before with other schools and it is kind of part of the deal. This UT class is worse. You have to augment with JUCO.
 
If just one 2019 signee is still starting, that’s unbelievable. You’d think a top five class would be a game changer.

I remember how we sweated over signing some of those guys, like Javonne Shepherd, and then zip, nada, nothing. He’ll Probably wind up starting for OU or Aggy for two years.
 
271902885_10158338134210778_7089339362911249639_n.jpg
 
EDT said:
271902885_10158338134210778_7089339362911249639_n.jpg
Click to expand...
Please pass on this young man, Sark.
I wish him the best- but like others before him; these guys don’t seem to have the mental toughness to overcome their star status they had in HS and blame everything but themselves.
Sad, because I feel if they took ownership they could regain themselves.
 
NRHorn said:
Please pass on this young man, Sark.
I wish him the best- but like others before him; these guys don’t seem to have the mental toughness to overcome their star status they had in HS and blame everything but themselves.
Sad, because I feel if they took ownership they could regain themselves.
Click to expand...

I kind of give him a bit of a pass on this. I recall his dad played a huge part in confounding the situation. When you're 18 parents play a huge role and he went against their will coming to Texas. Then daddy convinced him to go back to USC and it seems like he probably never wanted to be there. Hopefully wherever he lands he can be himself and succeed.
 
I don’t like Aggie, but this is not a dig at them. They will experience something similar to this.
How many just don’t pan out, portal, homesick, unjured.
Aggie doesn’t know this yet as they usually get mediocre recruits who play.
these FR, who are “bringing their talents for the next 3 years” to Colleyville are in for a shock when they are riding the pine for the first of those 3 years.
Look at Bama?
The new real recruiting period is after the National Championship game and does not include HS seniors.
 
A significant number 18-24-year-old athletic males in the US have only two things on their mind - money and women. Any promise that increases the chances of either gets the prize.
 
Yeah, only difference between them and me at that age was I would add beer, but then money played a role in that.
 
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