Texas Football: 5 most imperative Longhorns players for 2023 season

5. Xavier Worthy, WR

If Texas is going to be able to reach its potential this fall, it’s going to need a massive campaign out of the former Freshman All-American and junior standout wide receiver Xavier Worthy. The third-year wideout is just too dangerous and scheme-versatile to not have a big bounce-back campaign for the Longhorns.

Worthy did apparently play the second half of last season with a broken hand, which probably is a big reason why he had roughly a half-dozen drops in the last few games of the campaign. I should note that in the final five games of last season, Worthy posted six drops.

Otherwise, he has just four drops with well over 100 receptions throughout the rest of the last two seasons.

There is one stat I found that really sums up how important Worthy was in the last two years for the Longhorns, and how crucial he will be for this team again this fall. Worthy is the only receiver in the Big 12 in the last two seasons to register more than 1,700 receiving yards and 20+ touchdown catches (per Sports Reference).

I fully expect Sark and the Longhorns to weaponize Worthy all over the field. Even with some of the struggles that Worthy faced in the receiving game down the stretch last season, he was still one of the most productive and dangerous wideouts in the conference on targets behind the line of scrimmage all the way up to the intermediate part of the field.

He registered more than 125 receiving yards and one touchdown at each level of the field last season.

And if redshirt sophomore quarterback Quinn Ewers can find that deep ball connection with Worthy that was so special a couple of years ago, the junior wideout is going to be one of the best and most productive skill players in the entire country in 2023.

Another factor to note heading into the fall is that Worthy will have more space to operate in this offense given the plethora of weapons at the skill positions for the Longhorns this year. Having other skill weapons in the fold such as Mitchell, Isaiah Neyor, Sanders, Jordan Whittington, etc., will open up a ton of space for Worthy to do damage after the catch.