Texas Football: 3 most painful recruiting misses for Tom Herman

The past few Texas football recruiting classes didn’t have much to complain about, but head coach Tom Herman did miss big time on a handful of prospects.

Since he first arrived on the Forty Acres, former Houston Cougars head coach Tom Herman has mostly found a large amount of success on the recruiting trail. Each full recruiting cycle he’s had to piece together a class for Texas, Herman has snagged the top ranked group in the Big 12. And for his first two full recruiting cycles with this football program, Herman had top three ranked signing classes in the nation.

Even for the 2020 signing class, Texas locked in a top 10 ranking in the nation on National Signing Day back in February. Texas could be well on its way to lock in another top 10 ranked recruiting class in the nation for the 2021 recruiting cycle. According to the 247Sports Team Composite Rankings, the 2021 Texas recruiting class currently ranks at No. 14 in the nation.

Texas was just bumped out of the top 12 in the national class rankings by the Michigan Wolverines and Notre Dame Fighting Irish amid recent early May commitments. Notre Dame landed Texas target and four-star Bloomingdale cornerback Philip Riley, and Michigan snagged three four-star commits in the last 45 days alone.

There’s still a lot of time left for Herman to reel in a top 10 ranked class in the nation before National Signing Day 2021.

Looking back at previous results for Herman on the recruiting trail, there are a number of misses that are hard to swallow for this fan base. But not every team is always going to hit perfect on every prospect they offer, it’s just not possible. It is still important (especially at this point in time), to learn from past scouting and recruiting mistakes to piece together future classes.

Here’s a look into the three most painful recruiting misses to look back on for the head coach of the Texas Longhorns football program Tom Herman since taking over in December 2016.