Texas Football: More young DB talent gone with Xavion Alford transfer

Yet another depth loss surfaced for the Texas football program in the middle of this week, with freshman safety Xavion Alford landing in the portal.

More bad news for the defensive backfield for the Texas football program just ahead of their bowl game next week as freshman safety Xavion Alford intends to transfer. Fourth-year Texas head coach Tom Herman lost a lot of talent to the NCAA Transfer Portal, and among the program’s early entrants into the 2021 NFL Draft, in recent weeks.

Just in the last week alone, Texas lost the likes of talented freshman dual-threat quarterback and former four-star recruit Ja’Quinden Jackson and the fellow former four-star recruit Alford to the transfer portal. Jackson already landed with head coach Kyle Whittingham and the Utah Utes out of the PAC-12 within the last seven days.

And now Alford is headed off of the Forty Acres and he joins a lengthy list of secondary losses for this staff, namely first-year defensive coordinator/safeties coach Chris Ash. A few of the other secondary losses of late for the Longhorns includes junior standout safety Caden Sterns, senior safety Chris Brown, and sophomore cornerback Kenyatta Watson II.

As one of the key parts of the defensive backfield portion of the Longhorns 2020 recruiting class, Alford is a notable loss for Ash and Herman heading into next offseason. He played in two games for Texas this fall, registering four solo tackles in the process.

Alford is a former highly coveted four-star safety recruit that hailed out of Shadow Creek High School in Pearland, TX. He ranked as the nation’s No. 139 2020 high school prospect, No. 8 safety, and No. 22 prospect out of Texas (247Sports Composite). And the Top247 ranked him as the nation’s No. 172 high school prospect, No. 15 safety, and No. 29 prospect out of Texas.

He wound up committing and signing with Texas over offers from a whopping more than 40 other schools. The other highlighting schools on his offer sheet included the Texas A&M Aggies, Alabama Crimson Tide, Florida Gators, Georgia Bulldogs, LSU Tigers, Michigan Wolverines, Nebraska Cornhuskers, Oklahoma Sooners, Oregon Ducks, Tennessee Volunteers, and USC Trojans.

Texas finished up the 2020 regular season with a record of 6-3 (5-3 Big 12), with their last outing resulting in a dominating win over the Kansas State Wildcats on the road back on Dec. 5 by the final score of 69-31. Next up for the Longhorns will be an Alamo Bowl showdown with the Colorado Buffaloes on Dec. 29.