After having 11 players selected in the 2024 NFL Draft, Steve Sarkisian and the Texas Longhorns are reloading rather than rebuilding heading the program’s first season as a member of the SEC.
To fill the departures of several starters from last season’s 12-win team, Texas added 11 players from the NCAA transfer portal. That nearly equals their total of 12 transfer additions over the last two acquisition cycles combined.
Sarkisian has noted that the additions from the transfer portal aren’t an exact science, especially considering the relatively short time that players and coaches have to get to know each other.
“It’s not like when you recruit a high school player that you’ve been getting to know for a period of years,” said Sarkisian during spring practice. “When you’re recruiting a player from the portal, sometimes you only really have a few days or a week to get to know them as best you can and talk to people who know the player.”
With this year’s crop of transfers including multiple players who are expected to start or have a major impact on the Longhorns’ success in 2024, let’s take a look back at the top impact transfers who’ve arrived on the Forty Acres since the advent of the transfer portal in October 2018.
Undeniably, the most high-profile transfer addition for the Longhorns in the transfer portal era has been quarterback Quinn Ewers. The No. 1 overall prospect in the Top247 for 2021, Ewers initially committed to Texas before decommitting and choosing Ohio State.
However, after redshirting as a freshman, Ewers returned home to the Lone Star State and chose to play for Sarkisian and the Horns in 2022, where he earned the starting quarterback job and made 10 starts as a redshirt freshman, throwing for 2,177 yards with 15 touchdowns and just six interceptions.
Ewers would continue to hold the starting role in 2023 and now enters 2024 as a third-year starter under Sarkisian.
