As players enter the transfer portal and numbers drop on the signed roster for the Texas Longhorns, fans are beginning to wonder where the depth is going to come from for this team.
It’s a completely warranted question. As IT glosses over the 43 players who played over 150 snaps for Texas in 2025, we can’t help but notice that 20 of those players have either graduated, entered their names into the draft, or entered the transfer portal.
Twenty-three remain, and Texas has added five players from the transfer portal who aren’t specialists. That makes 28, with some expected early enrollees that you can add onto that.
That’s quite a bit away from 43 players, and Texas keeps losing depth pieces.
I’ve been one to point out, in defense of head coach Steve Sarkisian, that Texas isn’t losing starters. Sure, Liona Lefau would’ve probably started, but Ty’Anthony Smith might just be better. They’re looking to upgrade on Parker Livingstone.
But that doesn’t mean those two wouldn’t have been players I accepted on this roster. That doesn’t mean that Texas hasn’t lost around 12 players that I saw as important pieces of depth on the roster. With the newest loss of Kobe Black, Texas now has three rostered CBs with real experience on the outside. That is significant.
But let’s take a step back and leave the Texas bubble.
Believe it or not, Indiana is a model organization for a lot of programs. They dominated the Big Ten this year and earned a first-round bye in the College Football Playoff. They may be playing for a national championship after tonight’s Peach Bowl. This was a program without a nine-win season since 1967 before 11 wins in 2024.
Indiana had 35 players who played over 125 snaps this year, already a shallower group of players than Texas utilized. They were also a generally healthier team.
On offense, five of their seven players who played significant snaps but weren’t starters were transfers. Texas was at a solid zero out of seven.
Not just transfers, though. These players were all in their fourth year or later. Three were out of eligibility after this year. But it didn’t matter to them that they were role players; they were signing up for a national title run. Some were multi-year transfers, but someone like Zen Michalski joined the team to compete for a tackle spot after being at Ohio State the prior four years. Jonathan Brady played at two different West Coast schools before signing up to be a WR4 or WR5 at Indiana.
The defense is pretty much the same. All but one depth player was a veteran transfer addition.
One of the biggest knocks on schools like Indiana, or Texas Tech, or even Ole Miss is that these programs don’t recruit well enough to stack talent. The depth can’t be there.
Yet, all three of those schools were tremendously deep this year. Why? Because they recruited players that they knew could play at the collegiate level, who weren’t afraid of being a depth piece. No egos, no money problems. Just underrecruited football players.
Texas is already starting to do this. Michael Masunas probably won’t lead the TE room in snaps, but his experience is integral to the team going forward.
But most other portal additions have been starters, so Texas clearly has some work to do.
I’ll return to Black as an example to talk about the weird spot a player like him is in. He has just two years of eligibility remaining, but, aside from a late flash versus Texas A&M, hasn’t really shown a ton of consistency in his career for the Longhorns to lock up a spot in 2026 even with most of the secondary departing.
That then creates a conundrum. Texas wants Black around, but at what price? And is he OK with being the No. 3?
Players like Black, or let’s say Jordan Washington, are tough evaluations because we know they are talented based on their recruiting profiles and flashes, but their play on the field doesn’t mirror that. There are a ton of G5 players who have been more productive in college and that the average coach would prefer to start next season with.
So those players move on for a chance to start somewhere, which they probably should. Utilize the power of your recruiting stars. Go maximize your chances at reps in the next two seasons to get drafted. But where does that leave Texas?
It actually leaves them in a spot to save money and get better at the same time. Black commands a heavy paycheck: he was the No. 6 CB in the 2024 class and has played in both years on campus.
But say Texas looks to the portal and does what Indiana does to find depth: scans for players that are accepting of their role as a backup who have a ton of extra experience on their hands. Texas has already done that with Gavin Holmes at cornerback, and he was exactly what you could ask for at that spot. They’ve already done it extensively at the defensive line.
Finding proven production in the portal is not difficult, and they can get it for cheaper with more experience and potentially a better scheme fit.
Just because we don’t have a name and a face yet doesn’t mean these players don’t exist or won’t be a part of the team. I’m expecting these types at OL, LB, and CB. Maybe more.
One last idea before you go is that Texas has some leverage in this that Indiana doesn’t: past recruiting relationships.
You can also acquire depth by getting younger. Turn a player with two years of eligibility into someone with four. Texas has already done that with Zion Williams from LSU at defensive tackle.
Texas is so deeply connected in the recruiting circle that when a talented player enters after just one year, they have a prior relationship. They can sell the player on the fact that the room is thinner than when they’d previously discussed and that they’d have a chance to assume a starting role the next year.
You have three options with depth heading into an offseason:
Retain
Buy experience
Re-invest into younger options
For Texas’ CB4 spot behind Warren Roberson, they could either go for a player we know can compete or find someone with four more years of eligibility that we know is talented. This also works for LB and the offensive line.
It’s hard for me to get too upset about a player leaving who isn’t young but also isn’t experienced. That’s just limbo, especially when I know that we can find one or the other of those traits in the portal with ease.
I’m just asking fans to keep calm on the depth front for now. We have a week of this left, and if Texas’ CB room is still extremely thin by next Saturday, I’ll gladly join the concern. But there is a process to this stuff, and Texas has, generally, operated well this year.