Texas Football: 5-Star TE target Duce Robinson is back where he started

One of the bigger recruitments that Texas football fought right through the whistle in the 2023 class was for the elite five-star Pinnacle tight end Duce Robinson. Head coach Steve Sarkisian and special teams coordinator/tight ends coach Jeff Banks made Robinson a top priority at the tight end position until the closing stages of this recruitment.

Sark, Banks, and the Longhorns were one of the teams making a late run in the race to land a commitment from Robinson last fall. Texas made up a lot of ground in this recruitment last fall, especially after a successful official visit that Robinson made to Austin for the TCU game in mid-November.

Another school that made a big late run at Robinson last fall was the Georgia Bulldogs. Head coach Kirby Smart and Georgia even once looked like the favorite in the race to land a commitment from Robinson last fall.

But Georgia ultimately fell back among the top schools in this recruitment this spring.

The school that now looks like the frontrunner in this recruitment is the USC Trojans.

Former 5-Star Texas football TE target Duce Robinson going where we thought he was a year ago

And this is a story that, as On3’s Chad Simmons put well in a piece updating Robinson’s status this week, has essentially come “full circle”. Simmons notes that USC is now the favorite in the race to land a commitment from Robinson this spring.

The writing on the wall is essentially now pointing to Robinson ending up in USC’s 2023 class before the start of the summer. It sounds like proximity to home and the explosiveness of the USC offense were the biggest factors that kept head coach Lincoln Riley and the Trojans in the driver’s seat in this recruitment in the last few months.

This isn’t a huge shift, though, from where this recruitment was at last spring and summer. Robinson was thought to be a pretty heavy USC lean as recently as last summer. But the aforementioned pushes from Texas and Georgia along with the Alabama Crimson Tide and Clemson Tigers (among a couple of other schools) caused some chaos in this recruitment.

USC was able to stick this one out, and it looks like it will be one of the biggest wins of the 2023 recruiting cycle for Riley and the Trojans’ staff.

This recruitment is also more proof that Sark and the Longhorns staff are literally willing to fight through the whistle with the right targets on the trail. Some of these recruitments through the whistle will pay off better than others, but the fact of the matter is that this type of elite prospect is worth the effort.

Texas wound up signing two tight end recruits in the 2023 class via the high school ranks in three-star Isidore Newman product Will Randle and three-star Mater Dei product Spencer Shannon. According to the 247Sports Team Composite Rankings, the 2023 Texas recruiting class ranks at No. 3 in the nation and in the top spot in the Big 12.