Urban Meyer perfectly sums up the underwhelming state of Texas football

Urban Meyer criticized his former OC Tom Herman for a lack of player development at Texas.

Texas football consistently rakes in some of the top recruiting classes in the country. Yet, they struggle both on the field against top competition, and when it comes to making an impact every April come the NFL Draft. With the Longhorns struggling early this season — albeit with a comeback win against Texas Tech Week 1 — we’re stuck asking the perennial question: Will Texas ever truly be ‘back’ with Herman at the helm?

The answer is tougher to diagnose than the simple on-field product. Sure, Herman takes the Longhorns to bowl games and finishes near the top of the Big 12, but the lack of College Football Playoff aspirations is concerning. Herman has been at the helm since 2016.

Enough time has passes to assess how Herman’s done developing talent at Texas

“How do you evaluate the roster of a college program, especially a blue-blood program like Texas? It’s called the NFL Draft,” Meyer pointed out on FOX’s Big Noon pregame show. “When you see this graphic here, it just takes your breath away that first-round picks — they have top-10 recruiting classes every year. However, it doesn’t show up in the NFL Draft.”

Meyer went on to state that bringing in top recruiting classes is important, but Herman hasn’t done a great job at making sure that talent is right for his program. Instead, he’s let others’ assessments of high school athletes do the talking for him.

“Let’s talk about the why. Here is the why. There’s two reasons — No. 1, evaluation. You have to really, thoroughly go back and say, ‘Are we evaluating the right way in our program?’ But here’s where I want to spend a second talking about, development. Once they get on your campus, you have to develop them. And when I say development, it’s weight room, it’s training room, it’s nutritionists — it might even be a sports psychologist — and then, of course, it’s going to be the assistant coaches,” Meyer continued.

Meyer’s second point about player development is the most important. Even five-star recruits don’t come on campus as Heisman Trophy candidates. They need to get better year-over-year, and Herman is failing in that aspect, minus a few outliers. The NFL Draft numbers showcase that, and Texas’ lack of representation at the next level could eventually get the best of them in recruiting as well.

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