Texas Football: 3 most painful recruiting misses for Tom Herman

A lot of times, it is really difficult to look back on individual recruiting cycles and say that a team missed out on any one particular offensive lineman. But there were two that can easily be pointed out from the 2017 recruiting cycle that would’ve been huge for the Longhorns to nab, and who are two of the best at their position in the entire country heading into the 2020 season.

The first of those two is former four-star recruit and Texas Tech Red Raiders rising senior offensive guard/center Jack Anderson. Texas did offer the former four-star Frisco, TX, native, who would pick to take his talents to Lubbock to link up with former head coach Kliff Kingsbury.

Anderson is getting a lot of projections early on as a potential first round pick in the 2021 NFL Draft.

However, the true biggest miss that the Longhorns might’ve had throughout the entirety of the 2017 recruiting cycle is the 6-foot-7 and 315 pound (at least coming out of high school) five-star offensive tackle Walker Little. This Episcopal High School product and Bellaire, TX, native ranked as the nation’s No. 9 2017 high school prospect, No. 3 offensive tackle, and No. 1 prospect out of Texas.

Little is likely to be a top 10 (if not top five) pick in the 2021 NFL Draft. He is one of the best offensive tackles in the entire country, and he’s been ultra-reliable for head coach David Shaw and the Stanford Cardinal since signing with them back in early 2017.

A weird factoid is that the final coach visit for Little before announcing his original commitment to Stanford was from Herman on Dec. 7, 2016.