An unlikely NFL Longhorn, offensive line development under Kyle Flood and a lingering baseball issue

Two message board topics — one on P.J. Tucker’s recent retirement and a discussion about Longhorn football players who could fly — got me thinking about an unlikely long-tenured pro athlete from the Forty Acres who could scoot.

The 2016 NFL Draft cycle wasn’t one to write home about for the Texas program. Hassan Ridgeway was the only Longhorn invited to the NFL Scouting Combine and the only lone draft pick Texas produced. Ridgeway was a fourth-round pick by the Indianapolis Colts, one of four teams Marcus Johnson played for during a six-season NFL career.

A late addition to the 2012 recruiting class, Johnson, who was committed to Texas Tech and Texas A&M before flipping to the Longhorns shortly after Texas went to College Station and left Kyle Field with a 27-25 win over the Aggies in 2011, didn’t record a catch as a true freshman. Johnson’s time with the Longhorns was plagued by inconsistent quarterback play, which contributed to his 42-game career (18 starts) concluding with 61 receptions for 473 yards and four touchdowns.

Still, Johnson had enough flashes in a Texas uniform (12 catches for 187 yards and two touchdowns while helping the Longhorns to two improbable wins over Oklahoma in three Red River Shootouts) and performed well enough at his pro day (ran a 4.37 40-yard dash with a 37-inch vertical jump, an 11-3 broad jump and 22 reps on the bench press) while checking in at 6 feet 1 inches and 204 pounds for the Philadelphia Eagles to take a chance on him as an undrafted free agent. Johnson won a Super Bowl as a member of the Eagles, ending his NFL career in 2022 with the New York Giants with numbers as good or better than his production at Texas (60 receptions for 938 yards and three touchdowns while starting 19 of 55 career games for the Eagles, Colts, Giants and the Tennessee Titans).

Thankfully, Steve Sarkisian has guided the Longhorn offense into a much more prosperous era of the forward pass. Under Sarkisian, four Texas wide receivers have been drafted, with Xavier Worthy and Matthew Golden going in the first round in 2024 and 2025, respectively. That’s the same number of Longhorn wideouts drafted over the course of 11 drafts (2010-20), none of whom went higher than Marquise Goodwin, the No. 78 overall pick (third round) by the Buffalo Bills in 2013.

Cam Coleman should make it three first-round wide receivers produced by Sarkisian in four drafts. To put that into perspective (and not including Eric Metcalf, who was selected in the first round of the 1989 draft as an ahead-of-his-time all-purpose back), Johnny “Lam” Jones (1980) and Roy Williams (2004) were the only first-round wideouts to come out of Texas since the first draft after the AFL/NFL merger in 1967 before the Kansas City Chiefs made Worthy the 28th overall pick in the 2024 draft.

With that said, during a largely forgettable period of offensive football for the program, Marcus Johnson was a bright spot who arguably had a more notable NFL career than what he accomplished at Texas.

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Jake Langi, a former member of the Texas recruiting staff under Sarkisian and Tom Herman who’s now a senior personnel analyst for Rhett Lashlee at SMU, had a social media post on Monday that should reinforce Kyle Flood’s ability to develop offensive line talent.

Langi said he was once on a staff that signed five offensive linemen in a recruiting cycle. Only one of the five, who had “zero offers” and was “unranked” when Langi found him, played professional football.

Langi didn’t mention the recruit or the college program. But the Longhorns did sign five offensive linemen in 2018, which was Herman’s first full cycle on the job.

Junior Angilau was a multiple-year starter whose career was derailed by an injury. Reese Moore and Rafiti Ghirmai transferred out of the program after making little to no impact. Junior college signee Mikey Grandy never played a snap for Texas after concussion-related issues forced him to retire.

The fifth signee in that class was Christian Jones, a soccer player who found football late and was committed to the Mustangs before the Longhorns flipped him ahead of National Signing Day.

A reserve for his first two seasons at Texas before emerging as the team’s starting right tackle in 2020, Jones had a rough transition to left tackle under Flood in 2021. Nevertheless, the arrival of Kelvin Banks Jr. allowed Jones to move back to right tackle, where he flourished, evolving from a player who struggled mightily and noticeably in 2021 to a two-time All-Big 12 selection and a fifth-round pick of the Arizona Cardinals in the 2024 draft.

From the previous staff, Flood inherited Jones and Hayden Conner. The two Herman signees departed the Forty Acres as NFL draft picks (the Cardinals took Conner in the sixth round of the 2025 draft) who played key roles in the program's long-overdue return to the national championship discussion.

After neglecting the offensive line in the transfer portal ahead of the 2025 season, the Longhorns added a likely future NFL offensive tackle (Melvin Siani), a probable starter at left guard (Laurence Seymore) and two developmental pieces (Jonte Newman and Dylan Sikorski) who showed varying degrees of promise during spring practice. Still, if Texas can develop more homegrown talent in the trenches like Jones and Conner and not be overly reliant on the transfer portal (which has its drawbacks because top-tier linemen aren’t cheap, especially if there’s a need for an NFL-caliber tackle), the Longhorns can allocate their roster-building resources to fill other needs.

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Texas salvaged a baseball road series loss in Knoxville over the weekend, taking a 12-6 decision over Tennessee on Sunday. Losing two of three games to the Volunteers aside, a lingering issue facing Jim Schlossnagle’s club is what the Longhorns can expect the rest of the way from starting pitchers Luke Harrison and Ruger Riojas.

Harrison’s struggles against SEC competition have primarily come on the road. After going 5.2 innings in wins over Auburn (7-6 on March 21) and South Carolina (5-3 on April 3), Harrison lasted a combined 4.1 innings in losses to Texas A&M (0.2 innings in an 11-4 loss on April 11) and Tennessee (3.2 innings in Saturday’s 14-9 loss), which matched the length of his outing in a 4-3 win over Vanderbilt on April 26.

Five of the six hits Harrison allowed in the loss to the Volunteers were for extra bases, including four home runs. Harrison has given up 27 hits and 20 earned runs in his last five starts, only one of which he’s gone more than 5.0 innings (seven innings in a 2-1 loss to Alabama at home on April 19).

Riojas, whose start was moved from Saturday to Sunday due to what Schlossnagle said was a combination of soreness and his continued bullpen work with Max Weiner, hasn’t had an outing exceed 5.0 innings since his seven-inning gem in a 14-0 run-rule win over Oklahoma on March 26. His pitch count has exceeded 74 in just two of those six starts (83 in a 9-8 road loss to the Aggies on April 10 and 99 in a 3-1 loss to the Crimson Tide on April 18).

Riojas has allowed at least four earned runs in four of his last six starts, including four via a grand slam on Sunday at Lindsey Nelson Stadium. He’s allowed 25 hits over his last 30 innings, 20 of which have been of the extra-base variety (11 doubles, five triples and four home runs).

The life of an SEC pitcher is dealing with one top-notch offense after another. Still, a welcome sight for Longhorn baseball observers would be Harrison and Riojas entering the postseason off of strong outings when they pitch for No. 6 Texas (36-12, 16-10 SEC) in the last series of the regular season against Missouri, which starts on Thursday at UFCU Disch-Falk Field.