Texas football ‘trending away’ from 5-Star OT Josh Conerly Jr.

There will be a lot of emerging storylines to follow concerning the 2022 Texas football recruiting class following the big season-opening win over the No. 23 ranked Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns over the weekend. The win over the long holiday weekend for new head coach Steve Sarkisian could do wonders for the 2022 and 2023 classes soon.

But it’s not all good news for Sark and the Longhorns in the 2022 class following the big win over Louisiana and upstart head coach Billy Napier this week. Texas is still not where they want to be with all of the top prospects of the 2022 class.

One of note in that regard is the elite five-star Rainier Beach (WA) offensive tackle Josh Conerly Jr. Texas started to make a big run at the west coast product Conerly in the past few months to try and fill a need at the offensive tackle position in the 2022 class.

Texas is not moving in the right direction with Conerly right now, though. According to a report from Mike Roach of Horns247 (paid content) on Sep. 6, Conerly is now starting to “trend away” from Texas following the key season-opening win over Louisiana.

This report notes that the planned official visit that Conerly was going to take with Texas could no longer be on the table. It now looks as if the Oregon Ducks, Washington Huskies, and Michigan Wolverines, are the three remaining schools in contention for Conerly.

The narrative surrounding Conerly is now that the two west coast schools could hold the edge since he wants to stay close to home. The Seattle, WA, native looks like he would go to Michigan at this point were he to leave the west coast.

Texas football moving in the wrong direction with 5-Star OT Josh Conerly Jr.

This is bad news for new Texas offensive line coach/offensive coordinator Kyle Flood. While Texas was not really headed in the right direction with Conerly for a couple of months now, he was a key target to try and get some top-end talent at a position of need in the 2022 class.

With Conerly now likely headed elsewhere, there’s a key trio of offensive tackle prospects for Texas to turn to in the 2022 class this fall. And two of those three offensive tackle prospects are currently committed to Oregon, with five-star Summer Creek product Kelvin Banks and three-star Duncanville product Cameron Williams.

The other one to watch was a prospect that was on campus over the weekend for the win over Louisiana in four-star Atascocita offensive tackle Kam Dewberry.

Moreover, Conerly was one of the highest-rated remaining uncommitted prospects that the Longhorns 2022 class was targeting down the stretch just a few months ahead of the Early Signing Period. He ranks as the nation’s No. 20 2022 high school prospect, No. 3 offensive tackle, and the top overall prospect out of Washington (247Sports Composite).

Texas is now up to 20 commits in the 2022 class following a huge stretch of defensive line blue-chip pledges landed last week. But offensive line remains an area of emphasis in the 2022 class with only interior offensive linemen committed as of the night of Sep. 6.