Steve Sarkisian shares his message for Ryan Wingo entering summer

Ryan Wingo made his presence known during his first semester on campus at Texas, exploding onto the scene as a highly-touted early enrollee out of the high school ranks.

Wingo finished the spring showcase having caught four passes for 81 yards, including a pair of touchdowns — including one that went for 56 yards. Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian revealed his message to the young playmaker after the spring game.

“He’s had one spring in our offense,” Sarkisian said. “How he can just keep trying to elevate his comfort level systematically so that he can play as fast as he can play — You can never catch enough footballs. It’s the prerequisite for the position. So just continuing work and catching the ball and then finding his rhythm but the thing about Ryan — I say it a lot about a lot of kids — but he’s an awesome kid.

“He’s got great work ethic. He’s humble and he just shows up every day trying to get better and it showed this spring. He really has come on, and for him to have the way that he played [during the spring game] as his coach, that’s exciting. I wish every guy could have come out and played like that, who continues to work that hard. But just his approach to every day, I think has paid off for him.”

Coming out of high school, Wingo was a four-star recruit rated as the No. 38 player in the country, per the On3 Industry Rankings, a proprietary algorithm that compiles ratings and rankings from all four primary recruiting media services. He was the No. 8 wide receiver in the 2024 class.

He wasn’t the only Texas wide receiver to show out last month. Three Longhorn wideouts — Wingo,  Isaiah Bond and DeAndre Moore Jr. — finished with at least 80 yards receiving while scoring at least one touchdown during the spring showcase.

All three wideouts are newer names in the Longhorn lineup. After Texas lost its top two receivers Xavier Worthy and AD Mitchell to the 2024 NFL Draft, Bond — who spent the last two seasons at Alabama — alongside Moore and Wingo, both of whom were highly-touted four-star recruits out of the 2023 and 2024 recruiting classes, respectively.

The next time fans will get to see their Longhorns wide receiving corps in action will be on Aug. 31 at home against Colorado State. However, they will not play their first conference matchup until Sept. 28 at home against Mississippi State.