Texas Football: Top 5 early Longhorns prospects for 2021 NFL Draft

2. Caden Sterns, Safety

A bona fide skill set for fellow five-star safety recruit and rising junior Caden Sterns is already getting touted as one worthy of a first round pick in the 2021 NFL Draft. It depends on who you talk to, but there’s some that are even going to be consider Sterns as a possible top 10 pick in next year’s draft.

The Cibolo-Steele High School product came out of the gates firing with a huge true freshman season. He registered 62.0 total tackles, 3.0 tackles for loss, 1.0 sacks, four interceptions, and four pass deflections, during his true freshman campaign. But he didn’t follow that up with too solid of a sophomore season.

Coming into the 2019 season, the expectations for Sterns were sky-high. He was a preseason All-American selection from Phil Steele and Athlon Sports. Sterns would wind up finishing up sophomore season with 59.0 total tackles, 4.0 tackles for loss, 1.0 sacks, and one pass deflection.

He didn’t get a single interception since about the midway point of the 2018 regular season. He started to get injury issues in the latter portion of his freshman season. And they persisted throughout the 2019 offseason and on into last season. But apparently Sterns is healthy and ready to go whenever the coming season actually begins.