Texas Football: 3 starters that could enter the portal next offseason

The talk of the NCAA Transfer Portal and the Texas football program really took off this week. Texas saw eight players already announce their intentions to enter the transfer portal in the last 48 hours or so.

And it looks like more will be to come in the next few days as head coach Steve Sarkisian starts to wrap up his end-of-season meetings with the players. The end-of-season meetings are able to tell a lot of these Longhorns players where they stand with Sark and this staff heading into the 2023 offseason.

The good news for the Longhorns amid this big wave of transfers this week is that none of them were likely going to be starters in 2023. And all of them weren’t even Sark-era recruits.

Just because we haven’t seen any prospective or existing starters for the Longhorns enter the transfer portal as of yet doesn’t mean that we won’t see it at all, though. I do expect at least a handful of Longhorns starters to land in the portal by the end of the 2022 season later this month.

Xavier Worthy and the Texas football starters that could potentially explore the portal in 2023

Here’s a look at three Longhorns players among the starters that could still enter the portal heading into next offseason.

Casey Cain, WR

One of the least surprising of the Longhorns starters during the regular season that could enter the portal heading into next offseason is the former three-star recruit and redshirt freshman wide receiver Casey Cain.

In fact, it sounds like there is a real chance that Cain could enter the portal to find a destination where he will have a better chance at playing time in the near future.

The reason why Cain was a starter for the Longhorns in the first place this season was the season-ending knee injury that redshirt sophomore boundary wide receiver Isaiah Neyor suffered in the midst of fall camp. If not for the unfortunate knee injury that Neyor suffered before the regular season began, Cain likely would’ve remained in a second or third-string spot on the depth chart.

Moreover, Cain did start to see his snap counts dwindle a good bit following the Red River Rivalry win on Oct. 8 over the Oklahoma Sooners. Cain was getting a few dozen offensive snaps per game in the first six weeks of the season. That declined to around a dozen snaps per game during the back half of the season.

Drops and mediocre run blocking on the outside wound up causing the declining snap counts down the stretch this season. He had two bad drops around the middle of the regular season. And he was just the sixth-highest graded run blocker among wideouts this season for Texas.

I would imagine that if Cain does stick around on the Forty Acres in 2023, he would have a tough time finding his way on the two-deep coming out of camp.