TexAgs' recruiting analyst Ryan Brauninger joined TexAgs Radio on Wednesday morning for another edition of Recruiting Country, highlighting the latest news and notes from the recruiting and transfer portal trail surrounding Texas A&M.
Husan Longstreet, this is a kid who, after the coaching staff weeded through the transfer portal period in the winter, and sat down to look at their 2025 big board. Longstreet was a QB that Collin Klein circled and stamped he was his number one guy he wanted to get in the country. It was an all-out blitz to get him from the coaching staff. Jason Howell and I joked on the in-house visit to break down his commitment, like welcome to the party Collin Klein.
As we’ve gone on and our starting to learn more about this coaching staff, they are all jumping in to land their big targets. We’ve seen Trooper Taylor do it with Deondrae Riden, Sean Spencer and Tony Jerod-Eddie with Landon Rink and Adam Cushing. You keep checking off those boxes, and eventually, Holmon Wiggins is going to get a big one.
When Collin Klein came in here, he didn’t have much of a reputation as a recruiter. Not a bad reputation, just not one. He had a fantastic reputation as an Xs and Os guy.
The head coach at Willis, Trent Miller, just glowed about Collin Klein and how he set up his meeting, and he was on the whiteboard explaining offense. Miller had been at Spring when Spring was putting up offensive numbers, so he’s a big offensive football guy. He said it took him like two minutes before he took out his notepad to write some of the stuff down.
Klein had a reputation as an elite offensive mind. So to see him go out and go, “I want this guy nationally, not in the state of Texas.” He goes across the country, stamps him, and goes and gets him. That should be a big feather in the hat of Collin Klein, and potentially, you start looking at what A&M could do at the quarterback position while he’s here. If that’s the bar he’s setting, that’s a pretty outstanding entry-level bar to set.
I’d go farther back than just Jimbo Fisher. I think joining the SEC changed the dynamic of A&M’s footprint back in 2012. Then you add Johnny Manziel and Mike Evans, that makes A&M an attractive offer. These kids getting recruited now were like nine or 10 years old, and they all probably wanted to be Johnny Manziel out there. I don't know if Husan Longstreet has that in him, but I would think there were a lot of young football players across the country trying to be Johnny Manziel.
The more prospects, coaches and trainers that start making trips to College Station... With the rise of social media, it has made this place less of an unknown. So now people really want to come see it. The facilities are top-notch, and the game day atmospheres are almost unbeatable. All of that stuff is more readily available because they have it all on their phones.
I felt that A&M reestablishes itself in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex with Marcus Garcia. They can big-time start checking that box off. There's more coming from DFW. That had to happen.
That’s a huge credit to Mike Elko but TJE having his connections has paid dividends. Marcus Garcia is a player. He’s a DFW kid, and he’s a DFW kid from an elite program. If you think about him as a sophomore, when he got to start playing, he was a tight end at 215 pounds. Now, he’s like 6-foot-5 and 265 pounds with plenty of room for getting into that 300 to 305 range. He projects anywhere on the line of scrimmage.
Usually, when you get an undersized offensive lineman, you think they are going to grow into a tackle, but they like Marcus Garcia’s versatility, and they really like his power. He’s an elite thrower of the shotput, so that is a good indicator of his strength and explosiveness.
You could potentially see Garcia down the road playing center. He’s got that skill set and has that mind for the game. Cushing has specifically targeted these guys in the class.
It is going to be very interesting to start combing through this and see who’s getting the big pushes out of all these offers they’ve got out in the state, which they would accept commitments from, and we’re starting to understand that better as the weeks come on. They are on the verge of continuing to add to that group. We believe once they do that and go on a run here on the offensive line, another coach that we would gotta start talking about his recruiting prowess that was an unknown coming in is Adam Cushing.
One thing in that 2024 class that we kind of forget is that Dealyn Evans is still coming
and will show up this summer. For the 2025 class, front seven players, you got Landon Rink, Kelvion Riggins and then you’ve got Marcus Garcia and Josh Moses on the offensive line. I would expect them to continue to add to that front seven on defense and line of scrimmage on offense soon.
What happens if you get Rink and your next addition on the defensive line is DJ Sanders at Bellville? I’m not insinuating anything at all there because his timeline is such an unknown because he’s such a quiet kid. We keep hearing fantastic things about where A&M is at in the running for DJ.
If those are your two starts on the defensive line, holy crap. You don’t miss a beat there if those are your first two. Anything you do outside of that is kind of a cherry on top. I think they are actively searching. They had Javion Hilson in this weekend, who’s a Florida State commit and one of the top players at his position in the country. They gave him a lot to think about, and that’s a guy who was completely off the radar.
For that part of the roster, they are actively looking for pieces, and Max Granville is a kid in the state who very much fits that mold.
A&M has knocked it out of the park on these unofficial visit weekends. Even during the week, they are bringing these kids to watch practice and that is something started by Mike Elko to show them how they are going to be coached here. When you’re trying to convince people of stuff as a new coaching staff, let’s just get them down here and let them see it with their own eyes and make their own opinions.
We continue to hear the exact same stuff: Structured, organized and on time. You get to see your position coach, and you get to sit in meetings and listen. They are doing a really good job of stream lighting and being very efficient in these processes on these visit weekends.
Noah Mikhail is a linebacker from California, who tweeted he is coming in the summer. I believe he will be there this weekend, and Jonah Williams will be here this weekend. Kaliq Lockett will be here this weekend. We talked a lot about the spring game at one point thought the visiting list might not be the best because they have put the emphasis on practice. The quality is going to be very good.
They’ve had offers go out. You’ve seen the defensive lineman from Kent State, CJ West report an offer, and you’ve seen a defensive lineman from Rutgers, Rene Konga, report an offer. A&M is in on KeAndre Lambet-Smith, a wide receiver from Penn State. The wide receiver out of Houston, Samuel Brown.
I would think a linebacker if the right linebacker pops up. Maybe they go to another offensive lineman if they think he’s an immediate-impact guy. This coaching staff is not going to shy away from competition just because they do not want to hurt somebody’s feelings on the current roster.
