Horns Up! Texas Longhorns Land Malik Jefferson and DeAndre McNeal
By Jerry Levi
The song goes, ‘The stars at night, are big and bright…Deep in the heart of Texas.” The stars in this case are of the recruiting variety. As in 5 and 4 star recruits committing to Coach Charlie Strong and the Texas Longhorns. Nowhere was that more present than on Friday when Texas landed a couple of ESPN 300 recruits from the same high school in OLB Malik Jefferson and DeAndre McNeal.
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So who are they? In Jefferson, the Longhorns get a 5 star rated Outside Linebacker that in some circles is the best rated linebacker in the nation. ESPN has Jefferson in their 300 list at 35 and 3rd at OLB and Rivals.com has the LB listed at 22 nationally and #1 at his position. If you watch the video below, the Mesquite Poteet senior, listed at 6’3″, 220 lbs, is phenomenal at his position. Malik Jefferson, a national Butkus Award winner (given to the best high school linebacker), already looks like a Junior on the field and no doubt will play a hand in the Longhorn ascension back into the national scene.
Jefferson had narrowed his list to Texas A&M, UCLA, and Texas and most would say it was his Poteet High School teammate DeAndre McNeal’s decision to go to Texas just minutes before as an inevitable sign to where Malik would go.
In DeAndre McNeal Texas gets a 4 star raw talent at Wide Receiver. As seen in the video below, McNeal is versatile, fast in the open field, and hard to bring down. Add him to 3 other ESPN 300 athletes that Texas has committed, and the Longhorns will be stacked going into 2015. However, one can’t look past the fact that in order to get Malik Jefferson, the Horns will most likely look at the first domino that fell in DeAndre McNeal. And word on the grapevine is that the next prize on Charlie Strong’s recruiting coup is 5 star Daylon Mack, who uncommitted from Texas A&M a few days ago and has TCU and LSU on his short list but visits Austin in January. Mack is listed on ESPN 300 at #15.
Both McNeal and Jefferson said ‘Trust’ as the motivating factor in their decision. Trust in the direction that Coach Charlie Strong is steering the Texas Longhorns football program. Things seemed shaky at the beginning of the season as Texas started 3-5 and were on the verge of scrapping the 2014 season as just the beginning of Charlie Strong’s ‘house cleaning’ in Austin at the promise of things getting better for the future. Trouble was that 3-5 at Texas just wasn’t going to cut it. 3 out of the next 4 games saw the Longhorns show their mettle and the reason why Charlie Strong was hired. The cream that was supposed to rise in the 2nd and 3rd year as far as long term viability in Strong and the results of the cleaning house showed itself in convincing victories over Texas Tech and a then 23rd ranked West Virginia, leading Texas to a 6-6 record and bowl bound. If Charlie Strong has shown anything in the way the beginning of the off season has gone so far, it’s that he’s a tremendous recruiter of 4 and 5 star talent. Closing Daylon Mack from the clutches of Texas A&M would only confirm that. Time will tell in the near future just what Strong does with that talent and Texas fans won’t be hard pressed to draw comparisons to the previous regime. It’ll be all in the hardware…