Texas Football: 5 biggest recruiting busts of the Charlie Strong era

While Texas football experienced a lot of struggles on the field in the last decade or so, the success on the recruiting trail never waned. Texas recruited well in the last few coaching regimes throughout the 2010s and early 2020s. The problem for Texas was developing all that talent in brought in via the recruiting trail to translate that into wins on the field.

And there was no bigger disparity for the last few coaching regimes for the Longhorns in terms of success on the recruiting trail and success in the win column than with former head coach Charlie Strong. From 2014-2016, Strong was able to bring in three straight top-20-ranked recruiting classes.

In fact, the final two recruiting classes that Strong signed during his time as the Texas head coach (2015 and 2016) ranked in the top 10 in the country (per 247Sports Team Composite Rankings).

Despite Strong being able to sign two recruiting classes that ranked in the top 10 in the nation during his time on the 40, he wasn’t able to finish a single season with a winning record. Strong and the Longhorns also reached bowl eligibility once during his three years leading the program.

Biggest Charlie Strong-era recruiting busts for Texas football

With all of this in mind, here’s a look at five of the biggest recruiting busts of the Strong era for the Longhorns.

Andrew Fitzgerald, DE

Recruiting Class: 2016 (No. 213 in 247Sports Composite)

One of the most hyped-up defensive end prospects that Strong and the Longhorns signed during his time at Texas was the highly touted four-star Flower Mound (TX) Marcus strong-side defensive end, Andrew Fitzgerald.

The lengthy and quick 6-foot-5 and 250-pound defensive end prospect out of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex looked like he could develop into one of the most disruptive pass rushers that Texas signed during Strong’s tenure on the 40. Unfortunately, though, injuries limited Fitzgerald’s ability to make an impact on the field for essentially his entire collegiate career.

Another unfortunate circumstance that came about due to the injury issues that Fitzgerald faced during his brief collegiate career on the Forty Acres was that he was forced to retire from football in 2018.

Fitzgerald only wound up being a Longhorn football player for two seasons, redshirting for one of them.