Recruiting Country: The latest recruiting news surrounding the Maroon & White

TexAgs' recruiting analyst Ryan Brauninger joined TexAgs Live on Wednesday morning for another edition of Recruiting Country, highlighting the latest news and notes from the recruiting trail surrounding Texas A&M.

Key notes from Recruiting Country

• You wonder going into football season, A&M has this amount of commitments, and here's the group of players that they are after. You're talking about a Tobi Haastrup‍ or Lamont Rogers‍. The receivers they've been after Daylan McCutcheon‍ and Malik Clark‍. Clark is the outlier. The pool of players they're going after is not vast and expansive. It is really just the same names. A&M has not cast a wide net. We're halfway through the season now. By this point, the Hudl tapes have made the rounds. Anybody who's had really good seasons has been scouted. You have to wonder: A&M must feel good about its recruits because they don't feel the need to stretch themselves right now.
   
• What we also do not know is how much each year they will allot to the portal. Even though this is their first recruiting class, they were behind in the class of 2025 in terms of relationships and getting to know the important decision-makers. 
   
• I think we'll see in the class of 2026 a really clear picture of how they want to operate going forward. For the class of 2025, I think they're really comfortable with how its looking. Right now, it looks like the plan is to hold firm with what they've got, be really focused on the targetted players, and look to get the rest of them from the portal. They really need a running back. This makes me feel like they're allocating this spot for a transfer from the portal. Deondrae Riden‍ had a great weekend, and I think they're excited to have him as their high school running back. Le'Veon Moss is looking like he is going to the NFL, so it looks like they're going to need another running back.
   
• I think they would like to find a tight end who they feel confident in as an in-line blocker and also can function in the passing game. Nick Townsend‍ is an outlier there because he's a freak show of an athlete. Maybe, they're looking for more of a Max Wright type of body style. You can go position by position, and I don't think they're going to take a body to take a body. It doesn't seem like they're going to expand the player pool just because they need more bodies. There is a kid out of Austin Anderson High School named Ed Small‍. He was once committed to Texas to play baseball, but now he's going the football route, and his stock keeps going up and up. He's now committed to TCU, but I love his game.
   
•  We don't know how Mike Elko really wants to operate. With the way that player movement happens now, I think that being rigid in the way that you approach recruiting is even more faulty than it ever has been. Just saying every year that you want to take X amount of kids from highschool and X amount from the portal, you really don't know how the portal is going to look by the year. Being rigid like that is pretty shortsighted, and I don't think the coaching staff is going to think like that.
   
• Texas is really trying to be a thorn in their side as much as they can with Kelshaun Johnson‍. Chace Sims‍ looks locked in, but Texas is definitely going to try to get him to campus. Oregon hasn't gone anywhere with these West Coast kids. USC and Husan Longstreet‍ have been a big talking point, but I haven't heard anything about that. It was all speculation. I think we have not said the coaching staff has not been doing a great job because the closest thing to a flip was with Chace Sims, where they nipped it in the bud and got him on campus the next week.
   
• Tiger Riden has always had that sort of volume in his game. He was due for a game like that since he is so talented and plays for a great team. You're going to see their star players come to the forefront in the district-run and even in the playoffs.
   
• Texas A&M is interested in the younger kids on that Prosper offensive line. Zaden Krempin‍ is one of them. He is a huge target for A&M in the 2026 class. I forget the other one's name. They have an incredible offensive line. Connor Carty‍ is committed here. They have great players there.
   
• Ryan Williams is crazy. There are hardly any humans that can change direction the way he did in the Georgia game. Texas A&M is not in on any players like Ryan Williams. I mentioned Malik Clark and Daylan McCutcheon as kids they are kicking the tires on. Billy Liucci has said they are going to keep the window open for transfers this offseason. 
   
• I think Helaman Casuga‍ moving his commitment date has more to do with him making sure all his family can be there. I don't think it is too much to read into as far as where A&M stands. Anything can happen, but we feel pretty good about where A&M sits. He seems like he'll end up wherever he commits because of the kid that he is. Our limited interactions with him and his family have been super. It seems like he checks a lot of the culture boxes that Mike Elko is looking for, especially in a signal caller and a leader. 
   
• We are going to get a much clearer picture with this 2026 class of how they want to run a recruiting class from start to finish. They were behind when they came in for the class of 2025.
   
• A lot of folks are saying this is Mike Elko's most talented team. There is no way for you to know that. You have no idea if this will be his most talented team. I think people are saying that because of the 2022 recruiting class. Pull up that class and see how many of those guys are impact players at Texas A&M. Go look at the 2023 class that wasn't rated as high. It has some real players in it that are making an impact on Saturday.
   
• If you believe that this is going to be Mike Elko's most talented football team, then you can't come in behind that and say he struggles as a recruiter. Let me go through the names of the players that Mike Elko recruited that are playing on Saturday: Cyrus Allen, Terry Bussey, Jabre Barber, Tre Watson, Shane Calhoun, EJ Smith, Ar'maj Reed-Adams, Koli Faaiu. All those guys are playing, and some of them are playing a bunch. If this offense is going to take a jump, it is going to be those guys.
   
• On defense, here are some of the names: Dezz Ricks, Will Lee III, Jaydon Hill, Trey Jones III, Marcus Ratcliffe, Scooby Williams, Solomon DeShields, Nic Scourton, Cashius Howell and Myles Davis. All those guys are either playing a bunch or a little. They all committed to Mike Elko when he came in as the new coach.
   
• The last names on my list are Shemar Turner, Bryce Anderson and Tyreek Chappell. Elko played a massive role in recruiting all those guys as they were coming out of high school as well. If you say that this is a super-talented team, then you better give props to the head man for being a recruiter.
   
• Jalen Milroe would have come here without question. Jimbo Fisher & Co. chose Eli Stowers over him. They had them in back-to-back days at camp. Milroe has gotten better and better, and he's turned himself into potentially a Heisman trophy winner and first-round pick. 
   
• Anthony Evans III, the wide receiver from Converse-Judson. The Aggies never really got into his recruitment and he went to Georgia. Now he is returning punts and kickoffs for them. 
   
• Julian Humphrey is a cornerback for Georgia. He is from Clear Lake High School, and A&M never pursued him out of high school. He was good enough to go to Georgia and start. 
   
• Dillon Bell might be Georgia's best receiver. He is a Houston Kincaid kid. 
   
• It is always funny to track the kids that A&M did not pursue from the state of Texas that go to these big programs in the SEC or nationally. I am not talking about kids like Donovan Jackson who A&M really wanted. I am talking about the kids that A&M did not push for who went to schools like Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Ole Miss or LSU. I wonder if this new staff will take that into account and be more aggressive in pursuing Texas kids that they may be fringe on to prevent them from going to another school and playing against him.
   
• You have to trust your own evaluations, but if another school is pursuing someone hard, then you may need to give them another look. A program that makes everyone in Texas give a kid another look when they offer is Utah. They have a reputation for scouting the state and offering kids, and then a lot of folks go back and reevaluate.