Malik's recruitment means all kinds of great things from a momentum standpoint, as it put a serious chink into the solidarity of about half of the top-10 Texas players who had bought in on the "aggy is about to win NC with another 5 more five-star guys" and "Texas and Mack Brown are dead, never to live again" lines that they lived with since 2012 and 2013. There are at least 3 or 4 top players who were having a tough time even admitting that they were considering us, because of the social media induced cult thinking that nobody wanted to take on and try to reverse.
This was going on even when many 2015 recruits and their HS coaches were seeing that there are better playing opportunities at need positions at Texas and were getting convinced of the fundamental coaching abilities of our staff and CS' record of NFL production and making real men out of kids. A late developing Charles Omenihu that CS wrapped up earlie this year was the only guy out on social media pumping some sunshine on UT, withstanding a lot of smirks and laughs at him all along (thanks Charles!). More than anything else, this is what was putting dampers on a lot of hard work Charlie and staff were doing in recruiting. So they correctly identified a lot of below top-200 players and got them but the national top-150 players were another thing. Nice visits, nice comments, but not enough commits.
But in one day, we managed to stop that tidal wave of bad perceptions right on its track.
It has almost surely firmed up the commitment of 4-star safety Deshon Elliott who many thought was trying to decommit and go to aggy. He is big friends with Deandre McNeal. 4-star national top-100 DB Kris Boyd is another. He is a flamboyant type who has been reluctant to even throw hookems up for months now (while his younger brother, 2016 offer Demarco Boyd kept showing hookems and is all sold on UT, as he was not part of the group that wrote off Texas in 2013 -- and these two are Curtis Brown's cousins for crying out loud!). After the state championships yesterday that his Gilmer HS won, Kris Boyd had no problem in joining younger brother in throwing up hookem signs for a lot of photographs. He is set to announce on Christmas day, and you can count him as ours, from all stuff I see at recruiting sites.
In addition, if the 4-star type Florida guys interested in us were beginning to wonder why they should trust CS' Florida reputation and come here when the Texas guys are not showing any such enthusiasm, they just got some ammunition to ward off those using that line to keep them in Florida. If the best player in Texas can commit to UT, it stops any such doubts on what it is that the Texas guys know that they don't.
There were some tweets from top 2016 guys who were impressed yesterday and that is yet another serious impact. I think many of them were also wondering what the heck was up with this 2015 bunch that for 2-3 years believed the BS out of aggyland about Texas being dead for good, and then continued to buy that crap spread by aggy (and some of our own fans) about CS being some guy "in over his head" who has never recruited for a top program (while he has been doing it for top-10 programs for some 10-15 years in his last two decades), whose coaching and core-value style wouldn't work (while his defenses at Florida and the whole team at UL clearly showed otherwise). If any top 2016 guys were wondering what that was all about, they got their answer too.
You can bet that saying "I am for Texas" stopped being so un-cool as of yesterday. It has truly been un-cool for Texas kids for 3-4 years. That is a monumental shift.
We badly needed the state's #1 recruit to finally stand up and say he believed in us, even if it came down to his last day of decision. It had a huge impact. The stars were aligned so badly against us and what Malik did yesterday was something only a Malik could have done. We are lucky that he saw the light. And CS finally got a break, and a reward for all the hard work he has been putting in.
In addition to all that, the best immediate thing is that we just solved a big concern of speed at the LB position after Edmond and Hicks' departure. Malik is legitimately a 4.5 in 40-yards. Perhaps the fastest LB recruit in the nation this year. And he is an early enrollee from January who will get 8 solid months to get ready to use it. He will make a bunch of freshman mistakes, I am sure, but he will certainly go cover and hit some guys next year. We needed it at the LB spot, badly.
What a tremendous turn of events this week!
