Texas GM Brandon Harris joined the 3rd & Longhorn Crew on LHN today.
Q: Everything’s almost done and dusted. Can you finally breathe?
Brandon Harris: We have a couple more guys that are set to announce, and we may have a couple more surprises at the end of the week
Q: As the GM and in player acquisition, Are you working the phones up until the last possible minute, the last possible second
Brandon Harris: Ya, I think my last call last night ended at about 3 am, it’s a lot of conversations with agents. Not as much the parents. Once the number is agreed upon, it’s a lot of back and forth, and obviously, you wanna do a good job with these agents, because they may be connected to a player in the portal or in the next class, or have a player on your team.
Q: What has the last month been like for you?
Brandon Harris: It’s been good. We had our class pretty much committed coming out of this summer; we had some senior eval guys that you are trying to evaluate as the season goes on. My focus when we are in-season is on our team and our current players, making sure our players are developing and doing what they need to do and being encouraging for them and our staff to make sure they have everything they need.
In the end, it’s about making sure the guys we have taken commitments from are continuing to produce their senior year, and any guy we may be a late eval guy on, is continuing to produce, and our personnel team (John Michael Jones, Errin Joe, Bill Rees) and everyone associated with that does a good job managing that and making sure I’m involved in all of those decisions.
Q: Is there something right away that you guys know, this is a culture fit for us?
Brandon Harris: Number 1, they have to love football. If they don’t love football, that’s a big red flag for us. One thing that we always like to know, is how do they “learn football”, when they go in and do football are they engaging or are they worried about what their girlfriend is texting them. But also, coming from winning programs, the standard here is to win championships. We want guys that are coming out of HS and winning, if you are coming from a program and used to losing, when times get hard what are you used to? Losing – we want guys that when you get down in the 4th quarter, to have that type of mentality and thats what we have in this class and we have had since Coach Sark got here.
Q: You have to pick “Who is the Biggest Instant Impact in this class?”
Brandon Harris: Oooh man, this will probably come back and get me in trouble. A guy that I really like is Jermaine Bishop Jr out of Willis. He is a guy with tremendous upside, who can play every position offensively and defensively. Tyler Atkinson is another one; he had 200 tackles one year. Derek Cooper is another one who is a downhill runner, and obviously, that was a huge need for us in this class.
Q: “Who is the most athletic in the class?”
Brandon Harris: I have to go back to Jermaine Bishop on that one. I would go buy a lot of stock in him if I were a Longhorns fan… I think that kids going to be box office
Q: “Who is the Diamond in the Rough of this class?”
Brandon Harris: Really good question. I think we have a lot of those guys. They are all developmental pieces that you hope hit their potential while they are here. Another guy who I wouldn’t say is developmental is Smoke. I really like Smoke Matthews. I think the things he was able to do this year, and as we continue to evolve defensively. As we get longer at cornerback with speed and play against the really good WRs in the SEC.
Hayward Howard, “Buck” as we refer to him, is another player who has the versatility to play Safety and Corner.
Toray Davis, a flip from UCLA, from Boulder, that we flipped late.
I really like John Turntine, the same temperament as Kelvin Banks. I think we’re super excited about him and seeing his development.
And obviously, the Quarterback, if you don’t have one, you can’t win games. Dia Bell, the level of maturity he brings, players just want to be around him. I don’t want to leave anybody out, because we really have some great players in this class that we think come in and develop will become steals.
Q: Every class has a personality or a theme. Was there anything that stuck out?
Brandon Harris: Impact guys, and Blue Collar.. We were able to get these kids committed really, really early. As much as the standard is the standard of winning championships, going 9-3 in the regular season with a very young team and the noise. Like Coach Sark going to the NFL and all those things, on the inside, we all knew the truth. Just really excited to get these guys in and gel with the Great class we signed last year.
