Texas offers 2018 OT Reese Moore

Reese Moore, a 2018 recruit from Seminole, Texas, announced on Tuesday afternoon that he had received a Texas offer. The announcement was made via his Twitter account.

Seminole is in the Texas panhandle about 60 miles north of Odessa, 80 miles southwest of Lubbock, and 25 miles east of the New Mexico border. Needless to say, it’s not typically a high-traffic area for college recruiters, and Reese Moore is the first football athlete from the panhandle to receive an offer from Texas since Amarillo Palo Duro wide receiver Montrel Meander, who Texas flipped from Washington State mere days before National Signing Day in 2013.

Moore is a three-star recruit and currently slotted as the #83 overall Texas prospect in the 247Sports Composite rankings for 2018. Texas is the latest of nearly a dozen FBS programs to offer the 6’6” 265-pound junior, who has played primarily at tight end and occasionally at defensive end for his team over the past two seasons, but who is being recruited by most schools (including UT) as an offensive tackle.

Two minutes before he announced his UT offer, Moore tweeted that he’d received an offer from Virginia. In addition, Oklahoma and TCU offered within a day of each other in late January, and Moore previously reported receiving offers from Northwestern, Texas Tech, Washington State, SMU, UTSA, Central Florida, and Tulane.

Moore tells BON that the UT staff member he is most in contact with is offensive line coach Derek Warehime. He also says he has been invited to UT’s Junior Day, which is set for February 25. Moore attended Oklahoma’s Junior Day on January 28, and in the past year he has also visited Oklahoma State, Bayor, TCU, Texas, Texas Tech, Arkansas, and SMU.

He camped at Texas in June 2016, and was a visitor at DKR for the Longhorns’ 35-34 win over Baylor on October 29, 2016. He was in contact with the previous Texas staff, primarily with former offensive coordinator Sterlin Gilbert and former offensive line coach Matt Mattox, but was not offered during Charlie Strong’s tenure.

Moore was a key player this past fall on a Seminole squad that - one season removed from finishing with a 1-9 record - won nine games and advanced four rounds into the Class 4A Division II playoffs before falling to eventual state runner-up Sweetwater 38-14 in the Region I final. The coaches of District 2-4A DII voted him a first team all-district tight end. He was also a first team all-district tight end as a sophomore in 2015, and that season he also earned honorable mention all-state honors as a punter.

Moore is also a standout on the hardwood for Seminole’s basketball team, which went into its Tuesday night matchup with district rival Levelland (the team that eliminated them in last year’s playoffs) as the 8th ranked team in Class 4A, according to this week’s Texas Association of Basketball Coaches (TABC) poll. As a sophomore, he averaged 17 points, 10 rebounds, and nearly 3 blocked shots per game. After the 2015-16 season he was voted his district’s Offensive MVP, and was the only sophomore to be named to the TABC’s all-region team for 4A Region I.

Moore was first mentioned at BON as part of a post I wrote last March profiling six up-and-coming tight end prospects in the 2018 class. Seminole’s head football coach Kent Jackson told me at the time, “I know beyond a shadow of a doubt he is as good as I have seen as his age in my 30-year career.”

With him now holding offers from Big 12, Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12 programs, he has come a long way from the under-the-radar small town prospect he was at this time a year ago, and he’s probably far from done compiling big time offers.