Texas Football: How big of loss was Princely Umanmielen Florida commit?

Just how much of a detriment was losing the commitment of 4-Star SDE Princely Umanmielen to the 2020 Texas football recruiting class?

The biggest loss that the 2020 Texas football recruiting class suffered on Feb. 5, National Signing Day, was four-star Manor strong-side defensive end Princely Umanmielen. At one time, Umanmielen was committed to the 2020 recruiting class for Texas. But he re-opened his recruitment in the midst of the 2019 regular season and never gave it back to Texas.

The Texas Longhorns football program had four big-time targets heading into National Signing Day for their 2020 recruiting class. One of them committed in the late hours of the night before National Signing Day, four-star Carthage wide receiver/athlete Kelvontay Dixon, but the other three waited until Feb. 5 to announce their pledge decisions.

But Umanmielen gave the Longhorns bad news on National Signing Day. He wound up passing up the Longhorns to give his commitment and signed National Letter of Intent to head coach Dan Mullen and the Florida Gators.

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The final set of 247Sports Crystal Ball Predictions did give an edge to the Baylor Bears over either the Gators or Longhorns. All of the expert Crystal Ball Predictions either went in favor of Baylor or “undecided”.

Baylor and Texas seemed like the two clear favorites to land the commitment of Umanmielen heading into National Signing Day. But maybe the commitment and signing of four-star Cedar Creek strong-side defensive end Alfred Collins to Texas forced Umanmielen to look elsewhere.

The good news in the midst of losing the commitment of Umanmielen to the Longhorns is that the announcement of his decommitment already hit pretty hard. Herman and recently hired defensive coordinator Chris Ash had to prepare for this for a while now. They made up for that by signing four-star Highland Park outside linebacker/edge rusher Prince Dorbah, four-star defensive tackle Vernon Broughton, and three-star defensive tackle Sawyer Goram-Welch.

Maybe the Longhorns found two gem three-star signees between Goram-Welch and three-star Lone Star outside linebacker Jaylan Ford. Goram-Welch was flipped from head coach Mike Gundy and the Oklahoma State Cowboys and Ford was taken from head coach Kyle Whittingham and the Utah Utes. The Longhorns did well to add depth in the front seven in this class by flipping both Goram-Welch and Ford. That helped soften the blow of losing Umanmielen.

Where losing Umanmielen will really hurt is among their stronger defensive ends. Texas will lose the stout defensive end combination of Ta’Quon Graham and Marqez Bimage following the 2020 season. Replacing them with the combination of Collins and Umanmielen would’ve been huge.

Princely stands at 6-foot-4 and 250 pounds, which is a bit shorter and lighter than Collins. But both are very sizable defensive ends that wouldn’t need to put on all that much weight before getting a significant role on the Forty Acres.

At least Umanmielen playing with Florida won’t mean that he’ll be lining up on the other side of the ball against the Longhorns year in and year out anytime soon. Landing with Florida has to be preferable to Baylor to Longhorns fans concerning the commitment of Umanmielen.

And National Signing Day went about as good as it possibly could for the Longhorns in the case of losing Umanmielen since they signed Collins. They lost one four-star strong-side defensive end in-state and replaced him with another who is more sizable and sat much better in the recruiting rankings.