Texas Football Recruiting: Are Mack Brown's Longhorns Finishing Up Too Early?

There is no question that Mack Brown is one the greatest recruiting head coaches in college football history. The Longhorns land stud after stud and are one the very elite college football programs bar-none.

Brown and his staff have started a new trend lately, primarily in this decade, of early recruiting.

Basically Texas locks up a good portion of their recruiting class by the end of the spring, and only have a few prospects left they're in the hunt for in the fall. Really in the fall, the Texas staff is already out evaluating junior prospects.

The Longhorns then set up a couple Junior Days in the Mid-Winter, offer juniors, and secure a slew of commitments by the time their fax machines are ringing for the current year's classes letters of intent.

What also makes Texas so unique is their recruiting strategy starts and ends with locking up talent inside the state.

Many times almost all of the Longhorns' recruiting class is from the Lone Star State. They rarely leave Texas, only if a player is either originally from the state or has close family in the state. In that case, that player also must be deemed an elite level, national recruit.

 Brown and his staff firmly believe in winning with homegrown, Texas talent, as they are the state's flagship program and many of the top high school players grow up dreaming of being Longhorns.

Yet in recent years, the Longhorns have begun to hear criticism that they finish their recruiting too early, and offer prospects too early, before really evaluating players.

Therefore they secure commitments from players who are not as talented as other players around the country and hence why many believe their talent level has dropped a bit over the past few years.

In the 2011 class, Brown got 17 of his 22 commitments in February alone.

Thirteen of those pledges were before Valentine's Day.

Think about that folks. He signed his 2010 class on the first Wednesday in February and by Valentine's Day he already had 13 players in the 2011 class and by then end of the month he had 17.

Texas' last commit was their class headliner, running back Malcolm Brown, who committed in August, before his senior season. If that's not finishing up a recruiting class early, then what is?

Sure, Texas was in the running for other players like Jermauria Rasco and a few more going into the home stretch for signing day, but after Brown, that was it. They were done and had already started on the 2012 recruiting cycle.

Take into consideration that in August players like Jadeveon Clowney, Curtis Grant, Jay Rome, Nick O'Leary, Ray Drew, Cyrus Kouandjio, and Tony Steward were still uncommitted.

Now these players may not have been interested in Texas and may have already moved on in their recruiting options, but what if a few of them had come back and gotten re-interested in the Longhorns?

Would there have been room?

This year, the Longhorns only have one commitment secured in Connor Brewer, a 6'2", 190 pound quarterback who is among the top in the country. But the Longhorns do have a Junior Day coming up and that is where they are expected to land another large batch of pledges for their 2012 class.

I have noticed  that in much of the NFL Draft talk that the talent level at Texas is still very high, but not like in years past.

The Longhorns used to have top NFL prospects all over NFL Draft boards. This year, their top prospect is Aaron Williams, a cornerback expected to be a late first round to early second pick.

Sam Acho, Curtis Brown, Chykie Brown, John Chiles, Eddie Jones and Michael Huey are all mid round prospects at best. This is not up to par for Texas' standards, as usually the Longhorn's have prospects that are high first rounders to second rounders on average.

This dip may be due to the Longhorns securing lesser talented players for earlier commitments in their recruiting, rather than waiting to evaluate players throughout the recruiting cycle.

I'm not saying Texas should wait and go after everybody, but who knows if George Farmer or Ishaq Williams would have fallen in love with the amazing facilities of the Texas University sports complex and the city of Austin on an official visit in the fall?

Do the Longhorns finish recruiting too early?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

But it is a theory to keep an eye on going forward.