Nick Krueger's Week 2 Texas Wrap-Up

Keeping with the theme to start the season of weather delays messing everything up all the time, this week’s wrap-up comes out on Tuesday. The second of the two games that I was at last weekend was Saturday’s Dallas matchup between Carter and Kimball, so my schedule had been pushed back a bit. In Friday night’s game, I watched Plano-Prestonwood Christian Academy host Greater Atlanta Christian – which brought the five-star brother pair of Myles and Christopher Hinton, but Myles was held out with a shoulder injury and rain played a factor in the flow of that matchup as well. Still, there were enough big moments in both games to put together a reel of highlights from the action, so here we go…

I’ve seen plenty of Rivals250 Oklahoma tight end commit Austin Stogner in camp atmospheres and this past weekend I was hoping to see him be a top player against one of the toughest teams on PCA’s schedule, but he was held without a catch. In fact, there was one particularly nervous moment where he tried to make a one while sliding out of bounds and it looked as though one of his legs got caught and bent beneath him, but he was able to jog off the field and return later in the game. Tough to say how much the rain factored into PCA’s willingness to throw the ball downfield in his direction, but outside of a couple attempts to do so at the end of the game, passes were rarely thrown his way.

Stogner was probably more effective on the defensive side of the ball working against five-star lineman Christopher Hinton, who was playing on both sides of the ball all evening. I was told before the game that part of his ranking was his potential as an offensive lineman despite his desire to play on the defensive line for Michigan. He’s certainly built more like an offensive tackle than a defensive end, but at times he really struggled blocking Stogner, who understandably isn’t the technician on defense that he is on offense. Hinton was more productive on the defensive line, but junior tackle Javan Bouton was also able to anchor down and keep him from getting too much penetration a fair amount as well.

Another reason Stogner wasn’t a major factor in the passing game is because PCA often swung the ball out on screens and slants to three-star Baylor commit Solomon Turner. Turner won the defensive back MVP at the Dallas event of the Rivals 3 Stripe Camp Series presented by adidas in the spring, and played well enough on defense, but had a long touchdown reception early and was really the go-to player on offense for the Lions. As a single-high safety he wasn’t really a heavy influencer, but GAC’s passing game wasn’t particularly effective either, so he did have a role in GAC only scoring a single touchdown.

Virdel Edwards told me after the game that his Top 3 is down to Colorado, Iowa State and Texas Tech, and it seems as though he is likely to commit sooner than later. It sounds as though the smart money is on the Cyclones, but we’ll see when he ultimately chooses to make that call. He was particularly impressive late in the game, defending against passes that came directly his way as well as coming up to make tackles on wide receiver screens. He had one bad moment where he was bailed out by a drop late in the game that could have set GAC up to take the lead, but he made a ton of plays on his own to lead the PCA defense.

I can’t say that a big swing in their recruitments are coming, but two unheralded players that I liked on Kimball were 2019 prospects Jamel McWilliams and Jamel Ibraheem. McWilliams is an athlete handling quarterback duties for Kimball, but was a tough and efficient runner that didn’t wear down over the course of the game. Ibraheem is a linebacker playing defensive end, and even though Carter’s offensive line wasn’t great, he got the better of guys bigger than him to make a number of plays behind the line of scrimmage.

Finally, another player that I don’t expect will register much on the radar in a recruiting sense, but emerged as one of the cool sub-stories in the game for Carter was sophomore wide receiver Redd Walker (featured in the Top 10 video). He’s a pretty unassuming player that measures-in at 5-9 and 150 pounds, but made a couple of catches in traffic and big touchdown reception for a Carter passing offense that didn’t have a lot of creativity to it. That said, 2019 wide receiver Cedric Hayes is a guy I would pick out that could have a legit shot as a slot receiver somewhere, but Carter's roster isn’t otherwise likely to generate much interest from programs outside of 2020 Rivals100 defensive tackle Branard Wright, who had his moments, but needs more talent around him on the line.

›› The hit that P.J. Locke made with just over four minutes to go in third quarter of the Texas vs. Tulsa game has easily been the biggest ‘wow’ moment I’ve seen so far this season. For him to make the decision to go for that kind of hit and launch himself when lesser such plays have led to targeting ejections, that was a pretty bold move. Meanwhile, he might consider giving Brie Bella some tips on how to suicide dive at an opponent the right way after her pair of failed attempts in her first match back in a few years last week on WWE RAW.

On a side note, it was the first real opportunity for some of the younger guys from the vaunted 2018 class that Texas signed get some meaningful reps. Brennan Eagles had a nice long reception early on, Joshua Moore had a couple in the second half. Keaontay Ingram looked very comfortable with the pace of the college game and is going to give a big boost to the ground attack. Add that to what the Longhorns were already getting from B.J. Foster and Caden Sterns in the secondary – who each had a first half interception – and that’s pretty exciting to see for UT fans, even if the first two results this season haven’t been quite as convincing as was hoped.

›› As many people love to point out, we don’t get all of our player evaluations right all the time. When I began covering Texas for Rivals.com Laviska Shenault was a four-star prospect. At the time, after seeing him at a few events and in a couple of games in person, I wasn’t so sure about that ranking and he ultimately finished as a three-star. He wasn’t a great route-runner, he didn’t separate from defenders, and there was one time he couldn’t remember the questions he was being asked mid-answer in an interview to the point that we couldn’t use it for content. As it turns out, none of that stuff mattered and he’s been Colorado’s go-to offensive superstar through two weeks. Mark that down as a ‘That’s on me coach.’

›› I didn’t get the chance to watch quite as many games this week as last since I was at a game myself on Saturday, but I was a little surprised that the South Carolina and Georgia game wasn’t closer than it was. I thought after the pick-six to start the game that the tone was set for the Gamecocks to check out of things early, but even after battling back by the end of the first half, Georgia’s skill players were just too much. If anyone was counting on the new players in big roles that UGA has on defense to be some kind of Achilles’ heel, I think they may have put that notion to bed.