Texas Recruiting 2014: My Guys Recruiting Draft, Round 4

It feels a bit sad to say this, and the draft certainly could have gone another round with some excellent players still on the board after four, but these four will be the final selections in 2014. Last week brought the first, second, and third rounds, respectively, while the retrospective dropped before that. Here's the list of the picks through the first three rounds:

1. Arlington Martin defensive end Myles Garrett -- HH
2. Beaumont Ozen cornerback Tony Brown -- GoBR
3. Mansfield Timberview safety Edward Paris -- GHG90
4. Denton Guyer quarterback Jerrod Heard -- TAH
5. Fort Worth All Saints running back/fullback Daniel Gresham
6. St. Augustine (LA) running back Leonard Fournette
7. La Porte linebacker Hoza Scott
8. Dallas Bishop Dunne cornerback Nick Watkins
9. Mount Pleasant wide receiver Kd Cannon
10. Lancaster safety Nick Harvey
11. Lewisville Hebron safety Jamal Adams
12. Coppell defensive lineman Solomon Thomas

Follow after the jump for the final round.

Round 4, Pick 1 -- The Audit Horn

Fort Worth All Saints offensive tackle Demetrius Knox

A few weeks ago, Demetrius looked signed, sealed, and delivered to Texas. The consummate jokester led his Twitter followers on quite the adventure, which eventually ended up in Knox not being able to reach Texas coaches to give his commitment. However, after talking to All Saints coaches, Knox decided it would be best for him to take his time and help get exposure for his HS teammates. Can't fault a kid for helping his teammates get looks from the country's top programs, as well as taking advantage of the entire recruiting process. In the end, I think Knox fulfills the dream of playing with teammate and best friend (and fellow My Guy) Daniel Gresham. An Ohio native, Ohio State will factor into the recruitment, as well as Alabama.

Round 4, Pick 2 -- GoSECHornsGo90

Hinesville (GA) Liberty County linebacker Raekwon McMillan

"My name's GoHornsGo90...and I'm an SEC-aholic." *Hi GoHornsGo90*

For my 4th and final pick, I'm going with yet another likely SEC-bound player that Texas is showing cursory interest in, GA LB Raekwon McMillan. Why do I keep selecting SEC players, you may ask? Because they're better than everybody else and I love employing the Orwellian concept of doublethink in simultaneously hoping we finally land one of these vaunted wunderkind (alliterative property if you say it out loud...correctly) SEC freaks of nature and knowing that we never...actually...will.

*phone rings* "Oh, hi Wescott. What's going on man? You're telling me Shiro Davis actually DID commit to UT? Haha, very funny Wes. Now lay off the Ruby Redbird Shiner Bock and Sour Cream and Onion Doritos." *click*

Raekwon is the recently-discovered brother of long-forgotten rapper J-Kwon, of "Tipsy" (errbody in the club gettin' tip-sy) fame. As shown by his last name, he usually performs the act of getting "tipsy" in one of the Peach state's many upstanding Irish imbibing establishments.
McMillan reads the flow extremely well, times up his penetration perfectly, then erupts through the hole, before ultimately cleaning up any messes. Unsurprisingly, he's a father of three at the age of 16.

A good comparison for McMillan is a guy like former Florida stud LB Brandon Spikes, now with the Patriots. Both have good size for their positions at around 6'2", while McMillan should eventually be able to easily carry the 250 lbs. Spikes is listed at (Raekwon is currently listed at 235, but that may be 5-10 lbs. too generous).

Raek plays a lot of MLB for his HS football team. That makes sense with his ability to diagnose plays in the "swarm" and slip past blockers to explode through defenders in the backfield. Seems like a high-IQ football player and even showed examples of coach-on-the-field ability on film. Currently awaiting ruling from the "Committee on Cross-Racial Stereotypes" before we can definitively state that. Cut to: Kenny Vaccaro and Carrington Byndom attempting to play XBox 360 on a digital camera with a Wii controller sans Blake Gideon's leadership.

The most interesting thing about McMillan, aside from everything else I just made up, is how much he lines up at DT for his high school football team. I wouldn't expect even the maniacally maniacal maniac man Man(iac)ny Diaz to pull that one off, but who knows. It's great experience, as it teaches Raek to use his hands to eschew blockers, as well as the importance of leverage in rushing the passer. Leading to an augmented ability to ultimately play MLB, OLB, or even DE at the collegiate level. That's like, a lot of versatility, man.

I'm sure Diaz will make this most brilliant point to McMillan in the unlikely event he should ever decide to actually visit Austin and make all this dribble worthwhile.

Round 4, Pick 3 -- GoBR

Aldine Eisenhower running back Donald Catalon

Man, Blake just went off the deep end. Let's all have a moment of silence for him...

On the real, though, I don't know that Ruby Redbird Shiner can have that type of effect, but whatever it was that caused this, I'm interested to know. And by the way, I don't care for that fruity beer. I'll stick with the classic Shiner Bock, thanks.

There needs to be some in-state love right about now, and there are some pretty darn good players left on the board. While you pine after guys who aren't going to end up at Texas (would you perhaps pick Nathan Starks in the fifth round, if possible?), I'm going to roll with the a guy who throws it how he knows it -- like this \m/ -- Aldine Eisenhower stud Donald Catalon.

You can have your visions of Fournette. Yeah, he's good, but meh on him being My Guy. Just because Catalon is committed doesn't just make him My Guy. He's My Guy because he's good and if you want to sleep on him for Fournette, that's a mistake.

The crazy thing to think about is that Catalon will be replacing Malcolm Brown and Joe Bergeron, and he's already committed before those two enter their sophomore seasons. After taking Johnathan Gray and Kyle Hicks, a speed back and a solid program type of guy, Catalon is an intriguing mix of speed and power.

By the time he gets to college, he'll be a little bigger than Gray and Hicks, but should still have the speed to outrun defenders. He may be the type of hybrid who has to plug in at night because he's energy efficient -- when he sees a crease, there's no dancing. He just gets north-south in a hurry, with the vision to see those ever-so-small creases.

Square shoulders to the line of scrimmage as quickly as possible? Check. Nifty, subtle feet? Check. Some experience getting clean releases at the line of scrimmage as a receiver? Check. Lower body strength to get behind pads and break some arm tackles? Check.

Also, did I mention that he wore a Texas shirt to an OU camp? Yeah, he did.

Yeah, Blake, you can have Fournette. I'm rolling with my boy Catalon.

Finish us off here, HH. I'll be disappointed if you go Blake on us and don't pick a Texas kid. Big Cameron Robinson, though? That would be a legit pick.

Round 4, Pick 4 -- HaroldHill

San Antonio Churchill tight end/H-back Dmitri Flowers

Cameron Robinson does look legit. I probably would have picked Catalon if he was available. I don't know what to make of GoHornsGo90's picks. My best guess would be he's taken a hit to the head like Leonard Shelby in Memento and he now believes that he's doing a My Guys draft for And The Valley Shook. I have some good news for him, though. Since CBS and the SEC Network are widely available even out in DC, he'll be able to watch all of his My Guys picks in a couple of years without having to switch carriers to AT&T U-verse.

This is part where a TV broadcast of this draft would show a graphic displaying Orangebloods' top rated available players (not counting those committed to other teams) are: 1. Derick Roberson (DE), 2. Darrion Johnson (DB), 3. Varshaun Nixon (RB), 4. Zach Whitley (LB), and 5. Cameron Hampton (LB), with Roberson, Whitley, and Hampton all reported to have Texas offers.

I wrestled with my last pick over the weekend and was never seriously favoring any of those. Initially I was ready to send in my pick of Arlington Bowie safety Edwin Freeman. He's a guy I got to see in person in June at the Colleyville 7on7 SQT. He was bigger than he looked in his sophomore highlights. He spent most of his time as the free safety and he grabbed a couple of nice interceptions but even in a non-tackling format such as 7on7, he looked like a guy who preferred to play closer to the line of scrimmage.

He's listed on Bowie's roster as 6'1" and 190 lbs. but unless he's dropped some weight since June he's closer to 200. Whether he will play strong safety in college or spin down to linebacker remains to be seen. He's a good tackler who plays near the line a lot but looks equally comfortable following receivers in coverage. Because of his size it would be easy to see him as potentially DeMarco Cobbs 2.0, except we haven't seen DeMarco Cobbs 1.0 healthy for a full season and Freeman doesn't spend any time on offense for his high school team, as Cobbs did.

What he does look like is the kind of defensive player who could be used to blitz off the edge, provide run support from the secondary, and shadow tight ends, running backs and receivers on passing downs when called to do so. Cobbs is a junior now and will have just graduated when Freeman begins his college career, and if Freeman signs with Texas he could be used in a similar role to what Manny Diaz has Cobbs filling. Cobbs is listed as 6'2" and 218 and I'm confident Freeman could bulk up to that 220 lb. area without a noticeable loss in speed.

Freeman was going to be my guy going into Thursday night, I just hadn't sat down to write this out yet. Then on Thursday night I learned that San Antonio Churchill's Dimitri Flowers, who I wrote a post about in July, had begun his junior season in dominating fashion, carrying the ball 7 times for 32 yards and 2 touchdowns and catching 8 passes for 140 yards and another touchdown to lead his team to a seven-point win over San Antonio Clark in a rivalry known locally as the Gucci Bowl for reasons unknown to this writer.

San Antonio Express News bloggers who were at the game said Flowers had mostly lined up at H-back, just as he did as a sophomore. Though he's not ranked on the LSR 100 for 2014 at this time, I believe he'll be among this class's highest ranked tight ends (or he could be categorized as an "athlete") when all is said and done, and that his skill set will allow his college team to use him in a multitude of ways.

In the end, I couldn't decide between the safe pick who shows versatility on the defensive side (Freeman), and the under-the-radar pick with some versatility at a very under-appreciated position on offense whose stock should be a lot higher by the time we're recapping this draft and preparing to make our Class of 2015 picks. So I flipped a coin (which is probably how the Buffalo Bills made their 1st round picks for most of the past decade), with heads for Freeman and tails for Flowers, and it landed on... Dimitri Flowers.

So he is our 2014 My Guys Draft Mr. Irrelevant, probably the last time he'll be called such a name.

A surprising pick to end the draft, leaving five-star Louisiana offensive tackle Cameron Robinson on the board, but I guess HH is the under-the-radar specialist. He just couldn't help himself in the end. With the draft complete, where did the BON recruiting writers miss out? How about the lack of love for Texas commits Derick Roberson (a top-10 player in the state, by all accounts) and Lorenzo Joe? Does Blake love the SEC so much now because he's a Missouri grad and the Tigers are now in the conference? Is he a traitor for only picking one Texas kid in four rounds? All important questions to ponder... --GoBR