Texas Football: Ranking the 5 best defensive backs since 2000

It might not be by now with other programs like the LSU Tigers and Alabama Crimson Tide commanding that title, but Texas football was once the “DBU”.

Texas football is built on defense now, with a good portion of the seven wins the team racked up in 2017 coming from strong efforts on that side of the ball. That goes back to the Charlie Strong era for which the defense carried this team at times. Given the level of defensive talent that the Longhorns recruit on a consistent basis, that’s not really a surprise.

Over the past 18 years, the Horns have seen a ton of talent roll through campus in Austin in general. However, the Texas secondary was very solid throughout a good portion of that span of time. Texas has gone from competing for, and even winning, national titles all the way to trying to get a blue blood program out of a rut currently.

Through all of that, the secondary is still one of the deepest parts of the entire roster. Texas head football coach Tom Herman hauled in the third best recruiting class in the nation for the 2018 cycle. The two best signees in that 2018 recruiting class were a pair of highly-touted five-star safeties.

And, this defensive backfield has sent a ton of skilled cornerbacks and safeties to the next level since the turn of the century. That trend continued all the way up through the 2018 NFL Draft, in which the Minnesota Vikings got a steal by nabbing cornerback Holton Hill as an undrafted free agent.

Here’s a look at a ranking of the five best defensive backs for the Texas Longhorns since the turn of the century in 2000.