3 Texas football players that could enter the portal after the Alamo Bowl

The day of the Alamo Bowl has arrived for head coach Steve Sarkisian and No. 20 ranked Texas football as this team looks to end the 2022 campaign on a high note against first-year head coach Kalen DeBoer and the No. 12 ranked Washington Huskies.

This will be an important postseason outing for multiple reasons for Sark and the Longhorns. But one of the biggest reasons why this bowl game is so significant is that Texas has quite a few younger players that needed the extra practice reps the last few weeks. And it would be good to see some of the starters among the underclassmen head into the offseason with some confidence and momentum (i.e. redshirt freshman quarterback Quinn Ewers).

Upon the conclusion of the Alamo Bowl on the night of Dec. 29, the focus will turn to the offseason. Namely, there will be a lot of attention placed on the attrition and overall movement that the Longhorns will face in the NCAA Transfer Portal.

Texas has already signed two portal players in the 2023 transfer class. The two additions thus far by way of the portal are the former Stanford Cardinal senior punter Ryan Sanborn and Wake Forest Demon Deacons redshirt sophomore cornerback Gavin Holmes.

It’s also worth noting that the Longhorns have lost roughly a dozen players to the portal already. And we expect more attrition following the conclusion of the bowl game.

Xavier Worthy and the Texas football players on transfer watch after the Alamo Bowl

Here’s a look at three Longhorns players on portal watch once the Alamo Bowl is wrapped up.

https://twitter.com/JPrestonSports/status/1336530308833947649

Casey Cain, WR

A player that was presumed to be on transfer watch for the Longhorns for the last few weeks is the former three-star Louisiana wide receiver recruit and redshirt freshman Casey Cain. For the first half of the regular season, Cain was a regular among the starters at wideout.

But a combination of bad drops and an overall lack of meaningful impacts on games limited the role that Cain played for the Longhorns down the stretch.

In the back half of the regular season, Cain started getting passed over for some of the live-game reps at boundary receiver. Texas started to mix in the likes of freshman wide receiver Savion Red and senior Tarique Milton more often down the stretch in place of Cain.

That led to some buzz that Cain could be among the Texas wideouts that decides to test the waters in the portal entering the offseason. And while some of that buzz died down in the last couple of weeks, the possibility still remains that Cain could look at some other options in the portal.

Another factor that makes me think that Cain could still consider the portal following the conclusion of the Alamo Bowl is that he isn’t one of the names we’ve heard very often among the wideouts stepping up in bowl practice. We’ve heard a lot more about the likes of Red and fellow true freshman Brenen Thompson.