Nick Krueger's Week 1 Texas Wrap-Up

I hope everyone had a great Labor Day Weekend and I'm sure most everybody in the state of Texas is happy to get back to high school football as well. I started my 2018 season by checking out Fort Bend-Travis against Missouri City-Hightower on Thursday night, which ended with a thrilling overtime finish and took a look at 2020 five-star running back Zachary Evans on Friday night as North Shore picked up a tidy season-opening win at Katy. I was back home in time to check out the Week 1 slate of college games from around the state, so all-in-all, it was a pretty good welcome-back to the season for yours truly.

Evans was clearly the biggest name that I was out to see last week, but I was also hoping that his game would be a blow-for-blow battle with Katy four-star 2019 running back Deondrick Glass. Things didn’t really work out that way as Katy didn’t have the perimeter weapons to force North Shore to do anything other than stack the box to stop Glass. He ran tough and it was good to see him planting, driving and making some jump cuts now that he is playing without the knee brace that weighed him down last season while recovering from a meniscus injury. Glass released a Top 10 in the summer, but picked up subsequent offers from LSU and Virginia Tech prior to the season.

On the North Shore side, I was interested to see what I missed about 2020 offensive tackle Damieon George after he picked up a number of top offers but I was lukewarm on him after watching his game against Westfield last season. Even though Katy is small on defense, and he did struggle with some quicker guys that could get underneath him on inside moves, he was often the quicker one getting into his set and blocking edge-rushers from the outside. He’s a mammoth prospect that showed well for himself and is going to be a monster next year.

Week 1 Updates: Deondrick Glass | Damieon George | Christian Hood | Felix Etugbo

Texas Tech fans have been on me about taking another look at Keeyon Stewart, and he did well in the game. He was a bit bigger than I expected him to be physically, but I wouldn’t say that he was a major influencer on defense, even though Katy didn’t throw a ton. 2020 linebacker Corey Flagg’s recruitment probably hasn’t gone further because he's probably not the ideal height for most, but it’s tough to argue with the quality of his play. He is a quick closer and a big hitter in the middle. He reminds me a lot of 2018 Carthage linebacker Mykel Gates, who was one of the best in the state last year and played bigger than his size, but that didn’t seem to help his recruitment enough. Flagg at least has a few early FBS offers in his back pocket already. Also, 2021 quarterback/athlete Dematrius Davis probably didn’t finish with eye-popping numbers, but he’s as elusive as it gets. Ajani Carter looks the part of a promising receiver prospect, but had a couple of bad drops in the game.

From Thursday night’s action, despite Travis being loaded with talent, the guy that I was most interested in was Hightower’s Isaiah Essissima, who is committing this week. He was assigned to high four-star receiver and Oklahoma commit Arjei Henderson for most of the night, and save for giving up a big play on a deep touchdown pass late in the game, did an admirable job working against him. On top of that, Essissima scored an offensive touchdown, a two-point conversion and had a handful of other receptions that made up for Henderson’s score. His recruitment picked up in a big way this spring, but he showed that those offers were well-deserved.

I was disappointed to see 2020 Texas A&M offensive tackle commit Smart Chibuzo in a knee brace and not playing in the game, he was a guy I was looking forward to getting an in-person look at. Arkansas linebacker commit Zach Zimos had a really strong game. I think that the Razorbacks are going to be very happy with his assertiveness and versatility as a defender. Even though he’s a former defensive back, he’s a very cunning and hard-nosed run-stopper. 2020 wide receiver Parker Washington was the focal point of Travis’ offense early on and had a big touchdown reception in the third quarter. He’s a player that I continue to believe has big things ahead of him from a recruiting standpoint, even though he only holds a single offer from Indiana to this point.

Oklahoma fans were no doubt happy to see a season-opening win against FAU with the added bonus of it coming over jettisoned 2017 quarterback signee Chris Robison. I actually thought that Robison played pretty well under the circumstances, in the sense that he seemed to be making good decisions in what was a pretty unique situation, but his throws were just a touch off here-and-there. If he would have hit on a few of those downfield tosses earlier in the game, things could have been a little more interesting for a while.

Southeast recruiting analyst Woody Wommack and I were talking about the impact that former national top prospect Byron Cowart had in the final defensive stands in Maryland’s win over Texas. I saw the backlash from fans over the performance of Sam Ehlinger, but I don’t think that over the course of the game he was singularly as much to blame as a couple of other factors. For one, I didn’t like what I saw from the Longhorns’ three-down defensive front – there just wasn’t enough havoc created up front without adding another rusher and too often they were all blocked down into each other.

The debut of Alan Bowman for Texas Tech probably came and went the way most would have expected given the situation. A freshman thrust into a big season-opener against a hungry Ole Miss side isn’t ideal. Even though I didn’t get the feeling that the moment was too big for him, he still missed some open looks that he won’t later on with some more experience. I thought the running game did a good job of helping Tech maintain some tempo, but whether McClane Carter makes it back for next week against Lamar or Bowman gets another shot in a more favorable scenario, it will be important for the ground game to keep building off of Week 1.