Texas Football: ST deeper in 2022 class with K Will Stone’s commitment

Special teams have started to come to the forefront of late for new head coach Steve Sarkisian and the 2022 Texas football recruiting class. Texas started off the month of June with the initial addition to the 2022 class being the unranked (but highly regarded in the sphere of special teams scouting) Williams Field (AZ) long snapper Lance St. Louis.

Next up among the special teams additions for the Longhorns 2022 class came early this week in the form of the unranked (but also highly regarded in the special teams sphere) Regents School (TX) kicker Will Stone. The 6-foot and 175-pound local product is a native of Austin, TX, and only had two offers prior to committing to Texas.

Stone snagged an offer from the Michigan State Spartans out of the Big Ten on June 8. And he had an official visit shortly after with Sparty on June 12. But it was the June 14 scholarship offer that seemed to lock in the commitment of Stone to the hometown Longhorns.

Special teams gets strength in the 2022 Texas football recruiting class with K Will Stone

The commitment of Stone to the Longhorns was announced on his Twitter timeline on the morning of June 15. Stone is the first kicker commit for the Longhorns since they nabbed Cameron Dicker with the 2018 signing class.

In the 2022 national kicker rankings thanks to the Kohl’s Kicking Camps, Stone ranked as the No. 15 kicker in this recruiting cycle. That slots him right between the 4.5 and 5-star kicker prospects in this 2022 class in his position group.

Stone also ranked at No. 33 in the country among punters for the 2022 recruiting cycle from Kohl’s Kicking Camps, which truly shows off the versatility that he brings to the table. He has the versatility to help the Texas special teams unit that they didn’t get in years past out of kickers/punters like Dicker and Ryan Bujcevski, among others.

Kohl’s Kicking Camps tabs Stone as a versatile prospect with a “promising” future that could be both an impact player in the kicking and punting game. That could be big for Texas given the increased emphasis put on special teams in the 2022 class.

This is also the second kicker in a row that the Longhorns got a commitment out of that is right out of their own backyard. Dicker is an Austin native and a product of Lake Travis High School.

Texas is now up to 11 commits in their 2022 class, with the highest-rated being the four-star Junipero Serra pro-style quarterback Maalik Murphy. According to the 247Sports Team Composite Rankings, the 2022 Texas recruiting class now ranks at No. 7 in the nation and in the top spot in the Big 12 ahead of the Oklahoma Sooners.