Former Texas football DE target Myles Garrett nearly picked Ohio St over A&M

A former big-time target of the 2014 Texas football recruiting class, Myles Garrett, nearly picked to commit to Tom Herman, Urban Meyer, and Ohio State.

Rewind the clock to the 2014 recruiting cycle, back when the Texas football program was making the transition from the legendary Mack Brown to the former Louisville Cardinals head coach Charlie Strong to run the team. Strong came onto the Forty Acres with a lot of promise for where the program could be going headed into the mid-2010’s. But nothing really went as planned for Strong during his three years on the Forty Acres.

It all started with some misses on the recruiting trail back during the 2014 cycle, when the Longhorns were making the coaching transition from Brown to Strong. And while it’s never easy to to results strong on the recruiting trail in the midst of a head coaching change, it was something that could’ve come back to bite Strong down the road.

In the 2014 Texas recruiting class, that headlining commitment was missing by the time National Signing Day arrived. The highest ranked signee in the Longhorns 2014 recruiting class was the four-star William J. Brennan strong-side defensive end Derrick Roberson, shortly followed by four-star Denton-Guyer four-star dual-threat quarterback (eventually converted to wide receiver) Jerrod Heard.

Texas didn’t sign a single top 60 ranked high school prospect in the nation (by 247Sports Composite rankings) in their 2014 class. One of the premier prospects that was a target for the Longhorns during the 2014 recruiting cycle that got away to a rival school that did hurt was the elite five-star Martin weak-side defensive end Myles Garrett, who committed to the Texas A&M Aggies to play in the SEC West.

Coming out of Martin High School in Arlington, TX, the 6-foot-4 and 240 pound standout defensive end ranked as the nation’s No. 2 2014 high school prospect, and the top overall weak-side defensive end and prospect out of Texas (247Sports Composite). Garrett held offers from more than a dozen schools, with the bulk of the attention coming from top blue blood programs.

Ironically enough, one of the finalists (outside of the Longhorns and Aggies) to land Garrett was current Texas head coach Tom Herman and the Ohio State Buckeyes. Herman had one of the final coaching visits with Garrett prior to his commitment late in 2013 to Texas A&M.

https://twitter.com/FOXSportsCLE/status/1317137224777965569

And according to an interview from Garrett with Fox Sports back on Oct. 16, if Garrett hadn’t committed to Texas A&M, his next choice up was to take his talents to join former Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer and the Buckeyes. And one of the main assistants that was recruiting Garrett at the time was Herman.

Meanwhile, Garrett was being recruited by the likes of Chris Rumph and Bryan Chambers from the Longhorns coaching staff at the time. All of the talent that Ohio State signed with the likes of Meyer and Herman, among others, in their 2013 and 2014 classes nearly drew Garrett to take his talents to Columbus.

Garrett was a stud on the field at Texas A&M, under their former head coach Kevin Sumlin. He’s had a controversial run of events with the Cleveland Browns in the last couple of years in the NFL. But he was a top producer at both the college and NFL levels, registering 141 career total tackles at Texas A&M to go along with 47.0 tackles for loss, 31.0 sacks, one pick, five pass breakups, seven forced fumbles, and one fumble recovery.