Texas Football: 3 bold predictions for Tom Herman for remainder of 2020

3) Texas football HC Herman bold predictions

Key player will land in the transfer portal before the offseason

Whether it be due to a lack of playing time, no real future opportunity, or just a poor fit at that moment with their current program, various big name players landing in the NCAA Transfer Portal in the middle of a season is commonplace nowadays. This season it is less common than the two years prior since the NCAA is granting all players this fall another year of eligibility in the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Heading into next offseason, more names are likely to start pouring into the transfer portal once again. And the transfer portal is something that had a big impact on the shaping of the Longhorns roster in each of the last three seasons.

As far as Herman and the Longhorns are concerned, the two areas that could be problematic and lead to losses in the transfer portal are potential coaching instability and mixed results in terms of success in the win column. Even after the Longhorns latest three-game winning streak, they have still fallen short of preseason expectations through seven games. The same could be said for their eight-win finish last season.

Now I’m not saying by any means that there are concrete rumors that any of the players I mention here are going to land in the transfer portal. These picks are purely speculation based on the aforementioned criteria as to why players can land in the transfer portal nowadays.

It does feel like the most sensical names to wind up in the transfer portal are junior running back Keaontay Ingram, senior tight end Cade Brewer (if he returns for one more year), junior defensive back Anthony Cooks, and redshirt sophomore wide receiver Al’Vonte Woodard.

The most interesting of those situations would arise with Ingram, since he’s seen much of his workload fall to the likes of freshman running back Bijan Robinson and sophomore Roschon Johnson. He would be an immediate impact name to show up in the portal if that hypothetically were to happen.