At first glance, the list of outgoing Texas football transfers this offseason won’t send many Longhorns fans spiraling into the depths of despair.
Nor should it. Nobody who played more than 115 snaps for the Longhorns last season elected to move on in the winter transfer portal period.
Still, hidden beneath a few layers of nuance, the Longhorns lost some pieces that could have impacted their hopes of putting together a successful 2025 campaign.
Here’s a look at three of them.
TE Amari Niblack (Texas A&M)
The hype didn’t match the production for Amari Niblack last season.
After he caught 20 passes for 327 yards and four touchdowns for Alabama in 2023, Niblack never earned consistent playing time in a Texas jersey. Gunnar Helm handled almost all of the receiving work at tight end for the Longhorns, while Juan Davis occupied a specialist role when coach Steve Sarkisian elected to deploy two-tight-end sets.
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As a result, Niblack’s 2024 stat line looked meager. He caught five passes for 33 yards and did not find the end zone.
Still, it’s difficult to look at the Longhorns’ tight-end situation heading into 2025 and come away thinking Niblack wouldn’t be a useful piece at the very least.
Texas lost both Helm and Davis to graduation, leaving Spencer Shannon as the most experienced tight end on the Longhorns’ roster unless Texas adds one in the spring transfer portal window. Shannon played 58 career snaps.
DT Sydir Mitchell (LSU)
Listen to Sarkisian speak for long enough and you’re bound to hear him talking about “big humans.”
The phrase encapsulates Sarkisian’s recruiting philosophy. He wants to build Texas’ roster using players who possess either exceptional speed or exceptional size.
Listed at 6-foot-6, 369 pounds, Mitchell certainly qualifies as one of the big humans Sarkisian covets.
A former top-250 prospect according to the 247Sports Composite, Mitchell played 36 snaps as a nose tackle for the Longhorns last season, registering four tackles and a tackle-for-loss. He backtracked once on his initial decision to enter the transfer portal but eventually followed through and landed at LSU.
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Clearly, his size makes him an attractive asset, and that’s reflected in his high-profile landing spot. And, as was the case with Niblack, the context surrounding his departure makes it more painful for the Longhorns.
Each of the top four interior defensive linemen on the Texas depth chart moved on. There’s still young talent on the roster, and the Longhorns restocked with three portal additions and a five-star freshman in Justus Terry.
Still, at a position where coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski rotates heavily, Mitchell would be a valuable player for the Longhorns in 2025.
Edge rusher Justice Finkley (Kansas)
It’s becoming just about impossible to retain players like Justice Finkley in the transfer portal era.
Once a highly-touted recruit with a strong athletic profile, Finkley was productive in spurts during the three years he spent at Texas. His strongest effort came in 2023, when he turned 284 snaps into 11 quarterback pressures and a pair of sacks.
The introduction of Colin Simmons and Trey Moore, as well as the strong performances of Barryn Sorrell, made playing time hard to come by for Finkley in 2024, though. He played fewer than 100 snaps for the first time in his collegiate career.
Sorrell is off to the NFL, and the Longhorns haven’t made any transfer additions to bolster their defensive end positions.
Is Finkley the difference between another near-miss in the College Football Playoff and the Longhorns finally cresting the game’s mountaintop? Probably not.
But he would have provided the Longhorns with some capable depth had he stuck around. Instead, the transfer portal offers him and other players like him the opportunity to become important players elsewhere.
Reach Texas Insider David Eckert via email at deckert@gannett.com. Follow the American-Statesman on Facebook and X for more. Your subscription makes work like this possible. Get access to all of our best content with this tremendous offer.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas football transfers: Three outgoings who could hurt the Longhorns
