Why Texas’ Ryan Wingo belongs in the conversation about star freshman wideouts

During the Oklahoma broadcast, Kirk Herbstreit said Steve Sarkisian told him that Ryan Wingo could be as good as any of the other freshmen wideouts in the country. Normally you could chalk it up to a coach hyping up his own guy, but there is context that suggests Sark is right about him being just as good… and maybe even better.

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Who might he be competing with? Many look toward Alabama’s Ryan Williams , Ohio State’s Jeremiah Smith , and, when healthy, Auburn’s Cam Coleman .

Let’s assess the competition. Williams emerged as a top wideout in college football as a young true freshman with the running joke being no one has heard he is 17-years-old. While it has been repeated what seems millions of times, it is still impressive. It’s reminiscent of Xavier Worthy ’s incredibly hot start to his true freshman season in 2021.

Not only do both players have similar athletic and physical profiles, but their stats through the first six games of their careers are remarkably similar.

Let’s touch on the other freshman phenom. Ohio State has had a lot of great wideouts play in Columbus recently. To borrow a line from Top Gun , the list is long and distinguished. A freshman playing well in scarlet and grey shouldn’t be all that surprising, but Smith is having a better freshman year than ALL of those great wideouts for Ohio State.

He is getting it due to a larger volume of targets, another point relevant to the discussion about Wingo.

Now let’s bring this all back to Austin, Texas. Wingo has blown Texas fans away so far in 2024, and a large amount of that production has come from him running with members of the second string offense. Wingo is second in yards from scrimmage for the Longhorns. The guy in front of him? Isaiah Bond, the guy in front of him on the depth chart.

To put it simply, the opportunity for Wingo has not been the same as it has been for Williams and Smith. However if you look at his numbers in the averages, he is on a similar plane as those two. It is incredibly easy to see why all three are getting national hype, albeit more of it is going to the kids not named Wingo.

Based on averages, Williams and Wingo have a slight edge with the ability to get serious amounts of yards after the catch. Not to say Smith can’t, but it’s clear both the Ryans have a special knack for the big play after they complete the catch.

What if Wingo had the same volume of targets as these other guys? Where would his yardage be, and would it be better than what we saw from Worthy in 2021?

To do this, you would need to assume a team target percentage. With the two other freshmen being separated by only 0.4% in team targets, let’s stake Wingo in the middle ground at 23% of the Texas Longhorns team targets. That would give Ryan Wingo 42 targets (23% of 182), tying him with Smith. Now assuming he would have held the same averages, the rest can be calculated.

This is all hypothetical, but there is a clear difference in targets between Wingo and the other two freshmen. Wingo has three possible NFL wideouts playing in front of him on the first team.

Now when you have a guy like Ryan Wingo, you can have him take over for an injured Isaiah Bond without missing a beat. What a luxury to slide a player averaging over 25 yards per touch into the starting lineup!

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Time will tell who the top dawg is of the bunch, but for now Horns fans can be happy knowing he belongs at the dinner table with Williams and Smith.

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