OU-Texas battle brewing for WR

Junior to Watch: Otis McDaniel

School: San Antonio (Texas) Taft

Position: Wide receiver

Size and speed: McDaniel is 6-foot-1, 175 pounds and has been timed at 4.46 in the 40-yard dash. He has a 34-inch vertical leap, 250-pound bench-press and a 350-pound squat. He’s also going to be a full qualifier with a 2.7 grade-point average.

Honors: McDaniel earned all-district honors as a junior and a sophomore.

Statistics: On a team that runs the ball a majority of the time, McDaniel racked up 424 yards receiving and had five touchdown receptions. He did average 17.7 yards a catch, though. He also rushed 13 times for 171 yards and had 294 yards on 10 kickoff returns.

Favorite Schools: McDaniel lists Oklahoma as his leader and the Sooners have offered a scholarship. Texas is also starting to show him some interest and some tape was recently shipped up to Austin.

Skinny: It’s becoming clearer and clearer that the Class of 2004 in the state of Texas is starting to look like the year of the receiver. With so many talented names floating around out there, there has been one prospect that has sort of flown in under the radar – but not anymore.

Recruiting fans, meet San Antonio (Texas) Taft receiver Otis McDaniel.

McDaniel is a 6-foot-1, 175-pound ball of dynamite that can explode away from defenders with his great athletic ability and is quickly rising up the charts in the minds of college coaches.

“I have the feeling once the word gets out on him, he’ll have more offers than he can handle,” Taft coach Lee Bridges said.

“I think he’s not just a solid D-I player but a guy that could be one of the nation’s top receivers, period. When people found out that Oklahoma offered him last week, the other schools have just started to come out of the woodwork.”

That’s often how it goes in recruiting – it’s tough to keep a top-flight player under the radar for too long.

“I can’t say enough good things about Otis,” Bridges said.

“He’s just a pure athlete. He’s got good hands and came in here as a running back. He’s worked hard and learned the routes and the little things like catching the ball with his hands. We definitely plan to get the ball to him a lot more this season.”

That’s why some coaches might have overlooked McDaniel in their early evaluations. Looking at his stat sheet, it’s not going to blow you away. But that’s mainly because Taft has been a run first team. Bridges said that because of McDaniel, that’s likely to change somewhat this upcoming season.

“We have to find a way to get him the ball more,” Bridges said. “We’re going to throw it to him more, we’ll run some inside stuff to him and get the ball in his hands on reverses. Heck, he averaged about 20 yards on reverses alone for us. We need to use him better.”

McDaniel is also a great track athlete. He busted off a 10.48 second time in the 100 meters this past weekend in a meet and has triple jumped 45 feet.

“He’s a consistent and real 4.4 guy,” Bridges said. “We got him at 4.46 twice here in the past few months – once before Christmas and two weeks ago in testing. He loves track and that might be a factor in his recruiting, but he also loves football. He’s just so big, strong and fast. He’s an amazing athlete.”

Bridges said Oklahoma is the leader early on for McDaniel but other teams are sure to enter the fray.

“I was up at a coaches convention in Austin and talked with some of the Texas coaches about Otis,” Bridges said.

“They only had one of his tapes when we were running the ball on every play. They didn’t even see him catch the ball and they wanted to see what he was all about. I’m sure that’s going to be true with a lot of other schools, too.”