Texas Football: 2023 class takes major step back losing RB Rueben Owens

A major detriment to the 2023 Texas football recruiting class was something that could be anticipated in the midst of this month of key unofficial visits for top targets in that cycle. But it doesn’t make it any easier that new head coach Steve Sarkisian and running backs coach Stan Drayton lost a commitment from the lone prospect in their 2023 class on the morning of June 17.

That lone commit that the Longhorns had in the 2023 class that re-opened his recruitment late this week is the five-star El Campo running back Rueben Owens. The announcement that Owens is decommitting from Texas came on his Twitter timeline on June 17.

This move is somewhat surprising, but it’s not like it came out of nowhere. A lot of these 2023 high school prospects are taking their first real set of impactful college visits this month, thus a lot of alterations to previous decisions made weren’t out of the question.

Owens had originally committed to Texas back on Feb. 25. But since that he’s had visits with the Alabama Crimson Tide and LSU Tigers officially (which came early this month).

2023 Texas football recruiting class starting from square one after losing Rueben Owens

This isn’t something to completely panic about for Longhorns fans, although it doesn’t help the direction of the 2023 class at the moment. No clear frontrunner has taken for Texas at this point (from what we know now at least) to get the commitment from Owens in the near future.

One report from 247Sports (paid content) on June 17 put forward the intentions of Owens to resume his summer plans to visit with the Oklahoma Sooners and running backs coach DeMarco Murray later this offseason. Oklahoma will still be a program to watch moving forward in the recruitment of Owens.

Texas had Owens on campus last weekend with all of the unofficial visitors from the 2023 recruiting cycle. It appeared that Texas had a firm commitment with Owens with how he was speaking out for that group and recruiting for the class as a whole. But that obviously changed very fast.

Texas and Oklahoma are two of the more than two dozen schools on Owens’ offer sheet. Some of the other notable schools on his offer sheet are the Alabama Crimson Tide, Auburn Tigers, Florida Gators, Florida State Seminoles, Georgia Bulldogs, LSU Tigers, Nebraska Cornhuskers, Baylor Bears, Oklahoma State Cowboys, Penn State Nittany Lions, Texas Tech Red Raiders, Texas A&M Aggies, and USC Trojans.

What Texas is also losing with the decommitment of Owens is the nation’s No. 24 2023 high school prospect, No. 2 running back, and No. 4 prospect out of Texas (247Sports Composite). And the Top247 ranks him as the nation’s No. 38 high school prospect, No. 2 running back, and No. 4 prospect out of Texas.