3 Texas transfers who were selected in the 2024 NFL Draft

The results for Texas football in the 2024 NFL Draft show that this program is back to an elite level of talent evaluation and player development. Texas and head coach Steve Sarkisian had a program record of 11 players selected in the 2024 draft (since the NFL moved to the seven-round draft format in 1994).

Texas football has multiple transfers drafted in 2024

Only the Michigan Wolverines had more total players selected in the 2024 NFL Draft (13) than Texas. The Longhorns also had the most players selected in the draft's first six rounds of any school.

All 11 Longhorns players invited to the 2024 NFL Combine were selected in the first six rounds of the draft.

Of the 11 Longhorns players selected in the draft, 8 were originally recruited to Texas. That left three players the Longhorns had drafted as former transfers.

The variety between high school and portal recruits drafted for the Longhorns this year is a good example of how Sarkisian has built this program in the last few years. He's focused on quality over quantity with his portal recruiting strategy in his last three years at Texas, which reflected in the fact that multiple transfers were selected in the draft's first five rounds.

Here are three players who transferred to Texas that were selected in the 2024 draft.

Texas's only defensive back selected in the 2024 draft was redshirt junior cornerback Ryan Watts. The Pittsburgh Steelers picked Watts with the 195th overall pick in the sixth round of the draft.

Watts is expected to transition from playing corner to safety in the NFL. He's got the length at 6-foot-3 and ability to contest space that makes him a good fit to be a versatile safety at the next level.

The fourth-year cornerback spent the first two years of his collegiate career at Ohio State. Watts transferred to Texas during the 2022 offseason, where he started at boundary corner for the Longhorns for two seasons.

In many ways, Watts' career at Texas was a good parallel to the trajectory of the entire secondary in the last couple of years. Watts had his fair share of ups and downs as a corner in pass coverage. But he was still an integral part of this defense as a pretty reliable starter at boundary corner who played well over 1,000 defensive snaps in the last two seasons.