The Texas Longhorns are quickly filling up spots at wide receiver in the 2014 class, first picking up a Monday pledge from Marble Falls (Texas) wide receiver Garrett Gray and now a Thursday morning pledge from Longview (Texas) pass-catcher Dorian Leonard, as broken by Smoaky.com proprietor David Smoak.
Dorian Leonard commits to the Texas Longhorns over Oklahoma
Despite failing to attend either summer camp in Austin, the Longview wide receiver made the call for Texas on Thursday.
A high three-star prospect on the verge of a four star from 247Sports, Leonard is rated as the no. 62 wide receiver nationally and the no. 60 prospect in Texas in the 247Sports composite rankings, though 247Sports also has him higher significantly higher. The 6’4, 205-pounder held offers from Florida State, Oklahoma, Oregon State, and Texas Tech prior to making his pledge, though the favorite was thought to be Oklahoma, a school that is increasingly struggling to recruit in Texas and win head-to-head battles with the Longhorns, despite the big wins recently in the Cotton Bowl.
The emphasis is clearly on big-bodied receivers in the 2014 class for Texas -- players with the speed to stretch the field vertically, the size to win jump balls in the redzone and body up defenders in the short passing game, and the physicality to win blocking battles on the perimeter with the growing use of run/pass reads that utilize bubble screens to the perimeter to stretch defenses horizontally, all skills that Leonard possesses.
And all of the sudden, the Longhorns now have a numbers crunch at wide receiver with the two commitments in the last week. Currently standing at four pledges at the position in 2014, Texas still has three big targets left on the board in Mount Pleasant (Texas) star Kd Cannon, Texas City (Texas) speedster Armanti Foreman, and recent TCU decommit Emmanuel Porter, the Dallas (Texas) Lincoln product who was expected to become a Longhorn not long after his decision to re-open his recruitment.
Right now, it’s hard to imagine that the ‘Horns could take two of those prospects with the wide receiver group originally thought to have four spots, so the next prospect to commit could be the last take at the position in 2014, a class that now sits at 16 pledges.
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