Texas Football: 3 transfers that never lived up to the hype for Longhorns

The 45-day window for non-graduate students to enter the NCAA Transfer Portal closed earlier this week, meaning that most Texas football players that are still on campus are locked in for spring ball. There will still be some departures from Texas into the transfer portal after spring ball, but that will be another major window to watch a few months down the line.

So far this offseason, head coach Steve Sarkisian and the Longhorns have lost 15 players to the transfer portal. Of those 15 players, a dozen have already found new homes around Division I college football.

Texas has done well to avoid having too many major losses via the transfer portal so far this offseason. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Texas doesn’t have any seriously big portal departures in the 2023 class.

There are a few names that could be pointed out as notable portal losses that could’ve competed for starting jobs next year (i.e. Junior Angilau and Jamier Johnson). But the fact of the matter is that Texas did pretty well with player retention where it matters so far this offseason.

Recent Texas football transfers that never lived up to the billing in Austin

However, there are some portal departures for the Longhorns in the 2023 class that encompass some former blue-chip recruits that never lived up to the hype on the Forty Acres. Here’s a look at three of those players.

Prince Dorbah, EDGE

One of the first transfer departures of the offseason for the Longhorns was the former four-star recruit and redshirt sophomore outside linebacker/edge rusher Prince Dorbah. The Highland Park High School product was one of the highest-rated signees in former head coach Tom Herman’s 2020 recruiting class.

In fact, Dorbah was the third-highest-rated defensive recruit in the Longhorns 2020 class, behind defensive linemen Alfred Collins and Vernon Broughton.

Gabe Brooks of 247Sports projected Dorbah to be a future Day 3 pick in the NFL Draft when he did the high school evaluation for the four-star outside linebacker/edge rusher. Brooks described Dorbah as a “high ceiling pass rusher” with “dangerous” chase-down speed from the backside.

But Dorbah was not able to make the impact on this defense that was originally anticipated when he was tabbed as a blue-chip recruit coming out of high school. It took Dorbah until his third year in college to even get to a spot where he was on the two-deep more often than not.

In his first two seasons on the Forty Acres, Dorbah got just a dozen defensive snaps. With those dozen live-game reps, Dorbah raked in four combined tackles, no missed tackles, and three stops.

And while he did get more than 60 defensive snaps during the 2022 season, Dorbah still wasn’t making much of an impact on this defense. He did rake in a career-high seven combined tackles, one tackle for loss, no missed tackles, and five stops, which at least gave him some live-game experience under his belt.

Dorbah wound up entering the portal this offseason after spending three years at Texas. New head coach Kenny Dillingham and the Arizona State Sun Devils would land him out of the portal as part of their 2023 class.

It was probably a good move for Dorbah to enter the portal this offseason to find a spot where he could make more of an impact on a defense on a consistent basis. Arizona State is ushering in a new coaching staff which will provide that change of scenery that Dorbah needed this year.