Looking toward Texas football's future: Ryan Wingo

Just 12 months ago Ryan Wingo was stepping foot onto a college campus for the first time. Throwing up a Hook ‘Em for the Texas Football Instagram and parsing through his class schedule, Wingo was one of the 18 early enrollees for the 2024 class that was just looking to get adjusted to the bustling lifestyle of a student-athlete at one of the nation’s most prominent universities in Texas’ fourth-largest city.

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Now, just one year later, there may not be a single Texas football player, aside from Arch Manning, tasked with stepping into a larger role than the St. Louis product is for Steve Sarkisian‘s receiving corps.

Wingo boasted a strong but far from elite freshman season on the 40 Acres. Wingo was one of just nine Power Four true freshmen to be targeted over 50 times, notching 472 receiving yards and two touchdowns as quarterback Quinn Ewers‘ seventh-most targeted player and fourth-most targeted receiver.

“I feel like it’s been good,” Wingo said prior to the Peach Bowl about his freshman season. “I feel like my support system and my receiver room made it better for me. Going through adversity was the biggest change for me. I think my receiver room helped me a lot with that.”

Though overshadowed by historic freshman seasons from Ohio State’s Jeremiah Smith and Alabama’s Ryan Williams, Wingo was an important part of a top-four team in just his first year on campus.

“We tell all of them prior to coming here that they control the playing time they get,” Texas wide receivers coach Chris Jackson said prior to the Peach Bowl. “A lot of that is not necessarily what they put on the film, but it matters picking up the offense and gaining trust. That’s one of the biggest things that he did. He learned the offense and he gained the trust of not only the coaching staff, but Quinn and Arch. From the beginning, he took this thing the right way and went about it the right way.”

Wingo was one of the sensations of the 2024 spring practices, living up to his five-star billing on the practice field. He then parlayed that into early opportunity, announcing his presence with a long run at Michigan and making big catches throughout the year and even in Texas’ playoff games as part of a high-quality freshman year.

But whether you believe it be a spring of bad luck, a unfortunate roster cycle at the position, or exactly the plan with a receiver this talented, Wingo is now expected to take one of the largest sophomore leaps in Texas football history, thrusting the teenager directly into the WR1 role for the 2025 season.

It’s hard to believe this was the plan from the jump for Sarkisian. The Longhorns entered the 2024 season with what seemed to be a loaded receiving room that would operate by committee, with six players expected to catch passes from Ewers and Manning. Those six players, Wingo, Isaiah Bond, Matthew Golden, DeAndre Moore Jr., Silas Bolden and Johntay Cook, ended up being the only six receivers to receive 10 targets for the Longhorns this year.

During last offseason it seemed not just possible but likely that Texas would retain four of these players for 2025. Bond was expected to enter the 2025 draft no matter what, and Bolden was likely to make this season at Texas his last. But with Golden entering his third college season and Moore and Cook both being talented rising sophomores, it looked like the future of the Texas receiver position was in an extremely secure spot.

But as the season went on, things began to change. Cook left the program (and later Washington’s after joining them through the portal), and Golden was so good that he was getting late day-one, early day-two NFL draft buzz. With Bond and Golden declaring, Moore and Wingo are the only two that remain. And despite a portal class that featured 15 receivers rated a 92 or higher on On3’s portal rankings, nine of which are heading to the SEC, Texas was not able to secure a single new piece to the puzzle during the most recent window.

This leaves, for now, a fairly inexperienced receiver corps for 2025. Moore will be stuck at the slot role, one that will continue to hold an important place but a lower statistical ceiling in the Sarkisian offense, and everyone surrounding Wingo will either be a true or redshirt freshman. There are plenty of worlds where a Kaliq Lockett, Jaime Ffrench, or Aaron Butler turns into an absolute stud next season, or a top transfer finds his way to Austin later in the spring. But as it stands, Manning looks like he will be force feeding the No. 8 receiver in the 2024 class.

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So what can Texas fans expect from Wingo as he enters his sophomore year, hoping to breakout into one of the nation’s best pass catchers? A lot of targets, maybe more than any other Longhorn, and an opportunity to build off his 572-total yard season.