5 early top Texas football prospects to watch for 2023 NFL Draft
Bijan Robinson, RB
The clear-cut top 2023 draft prospect for the Longhorns is the rising junior star running back and former elite five-star recruit Bijan Robinson. Texas doesn’t have a brighter star that will be draft-eligible next year than Bijan.
There’s an argument that Texas has a first-rounder at the skill positions in the rising sophomore star wide receiver Xavier Worthy. But Worthy won’t be eligible until the 2024 draft.
Moreover, most early draft projections for the 2023 class have Bijan going as an early-to-mid first-round pick. He’s also often considered the best running back prospect in the 2023 draft class.
What will make or break Bijan as an early first-round draft pick is how much teams at the next level will value a game-breaker at the running back position. Running backs obviously aren’t valued in the first round in the modern-day as much as they were a decade or two ago.
Yet, it’s impossible to ignore the insanely potent skill set that Bijan brings to the table. He’s a real threat in the receiving game and a clear top-end rusher in this class.
Bijan really checks all the boxes in terms of breakaway speed, cutting ability, and downhill running. He ranked among the top three running backs in the FBS last season, with more than 80 missed tackles forced on run plays. Bijan also ranked in the top five in the FBS last season with roughly 770 rushing yards after initial contact.
Those numbers just prove that Bijan possesses the dynamic skill set at the running back position necessary to stand out as an impact player right away at the next level. He’s able to gash opposing defenses in a number of different ways.
And it’s easy to forget that Bijan hasn’t even played in two full seasons in college yet. He still has room to improve this fall, which is really scary to think about.
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I have a hard time seeing Bijan falling out of the first round given how he seems to be head and shoulders above the rest of the running backs in this draft class. And he’s already drawing lofty comparisons with the likes of the New York Giants star Saquon Barkley and the Indianapolis Colts breakout superstar Jonathan Taylor.