Transfer LB Tony Fields picks West Virginia over Texas football

There was a sizable miss for the Texas football program out of the transfer portal earlier this week with LB Tony Fields II picking West Virginia over them.

Potentially the biggest target that remained for head coach Tom Herman and the Texas football program in the NCAA Transfer Portal heading into fall/training camp just passed on landing on the Forty Acres early this week. Texas was heavily pursuing the former Arizona Wildcats graduate transfer rising senior linebacker Tony Fields II out of the portal later in the 2020 offseason.

And Fields just announced his commitment decision on his Twitter timeline on Aug. 10, that he would be picking the Longhorns Big 12 foe West Virginia Mountaineers over Texas and the Minnesota Golden Gophers. The final three were down to Texas, West Virginia, and Minnesota, each of which he had some relationship with someone on the coaching staff.

At one point last week, it looked like Texas was pretty heavily favored to get the commitment of Fields out of the transfer portal. But West Virginia obviously made a big late push to get him to Morgantown instead of Texas or Minnesota.

At either of these three landing spots, Fields was likely going to get the opportunity to make an early impact out of the gates. That is if all three programs wind up getting a shot to play in some form of a college football season in the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

What the Longhorns are missing out on by not getting the 6-foot-1 and 220 pound Fields to the Forty Acres is a versatile linebacker with a lot of proven production from his time with head coach Kevin Sumlin and the Arizona football program. He registered 287 career total tackles, 17.0 tackles for loss, 8.5 sacks, two interceptions, four pass deflections, and one forced fumble, in his three year college career to date.

The former three-star recruit Fields did join the social media movement earlier this week with the #WeWantToPlay trend. It looks like he’s on the side of the players that want to play this fall. That makes sense since he’s entering the final year of his eligibility for his college career.

Texas is likely to have some projected starting group of linebackers that includes DeMarvion Overshown, Juwan Mitchell, Ayodele Adeoye, and Joseph Ossai. There’s a ton of talent at linebacker for the Longhorns, but not a whole lot of proven returning production outside of Ossai.