Texas Football: Horns making headway with 4-Star 2021 LSU DE decommit?

The 2021 Texas football recruiting class could pick up the pace soon if they focus on landing 4-Star 2021 WDE and LSU decommit Landyn Watson.

The 2021 Texas football recruiting class took just as many hits of late as 2020 did of late. Head Texas football coach Tom Herman came up with one of the more disappointing regular seasons in recent memory with this team. Texas finished with seven wins after beating the Texas Tech Red Raiders by the final score of 49-24 at home on Nov. 29.

In that big 25-point win over Texas Tech at home at Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium that kicked off on the morning of Black Friday, there was a host of key 2020 and 2021 recruits on campus for various visits. One key prospect to watch that was one campus on the Forty Acres this weekend is the 6-foot-3 four-star weak-side defensive end 2021 recruit Landyn Watson.

The Texas Longhorns football program could be shooting after a host of SEC decommits of late. With the Arkansas Razorbacks letting go of former head coach Chad Morris earlier this month, that opened up a number of new 2020 and 2021 recruiting targets for the Longhorns.

And Watson is an emerging key recruiting target for the 2021 class. He was once committed to head coach Ed Orgeron and the LSU Tigers football program. This four-star Hutto High School in-state product originally announced his commitment to LSU on July 29, on an unofficial visit to campus in Baton Rouge, but then opened up his recruitment on Nov. 26.

Texas actually isn’t one of the programs to offer Watson yet. Maybe with the re-opening of his recruitment, there is an opportunity for Herman and the Longhorns to make a lot of headway after this latest visit to the Forty Acres.

Of the 16 schools on his offer sheet, the highlights include the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, Oklahoma State Cowboys, Michigan State Spartans, Baylor Bears, TCU Horned Frogs, Virginia Tech Hokies, and Washington Huskies. His latest two offers came from Washington and the Purdue Boilermakers.

However, there are looks that seem to be coming from Texas and the Clemson Tigers.

Watson was pretty active on his Twitter page during his time on campus for the Texas-Texas Tech regular season finale on Black Friday. He Tweeted out that he would be coming to campus in the first place. And he Retweeted a few things from Texas commits, including four-star dual-threat quarterback Jalen Milroe and four-star athlete Billy Bowman.

Both Milroe and Bowman are committed to the Longhorns 2021 recruiting class.

Watson ranks as the nation’s No. 209 2020 high school prospect and the No. 14 weak-side defensive end. But the 247Sports Crystal Ball Predictions do still favor LSU to come away with the commitment of Watson once again.

This could be an interesting saga ahead for Watson and a handful of Big 12 schools. Watson was on campus in Lubbock for a visit last weekend. If Texas makes Watons’s recruitment a priority they should be able to get his interests over from Texas Tech in a hurry.

A visit is a good place to start between Herman and Watson. The defensive end position does have a lot of talent coming in for the Longhorns in the 2020 class, highlighted by four-star Highland Park edge rusher Prince Dorbah. But Watson might be able to add to that lineage in the 2021 Texas recruiting class.