When it comes to Texas football recruiting, the wins haven’t outweighed the losses in recent weeks, with several key targets opting to commit elsewhere since the end of official visit season. The biggest gut punch to UT’s efforts came July 4th as top Texas target and five-star wide receiver Dakorien Moore — widely considered a Longhorns lean for most of 2024 — committed to Oregon. Moore had been expected by nearly everybody to end up in Texas’ 2025 class, and would have been the highest-ranked wide receiver to pick the Longhorns in the modern era, with a 247Sports Composite grade of .999, just two-thousandths of a spot ahead of B.J. Johnson in 2000, who graded .997.
The news is a gut punch to Texas, but in a vacuum, it could arguably be swept aside as. Wide receiver, after all, is the position UT needs to worry about least. After sending three wideouts to the NFL in this past spring’s draft, the majority of Texas pass catchers on the roster now are Sunday players, which should prompt the elite talent to follow. But this isn’t just a one-off. This is just the latest in a concerning trend we’re seeing since late June on the recruiting front across the board as Texas strikes out on its top targets, when conventional wisdom would say those days should be long gone given the trajectory of the program, recent NFL Draft success, its move to the SEC and NIL alignment.
Here, we take a look at what’s gone wrong and what can still go right for the glass half full crowd.