Texas hires former Oklahoma State WR Rashaad Samples to football staff

Along with the recent addition of co-offensive coordinator and offensive line coach Herb Hand, the newest Texas Longhorns non-coaching assistant is former Oklahoma State Cowboys wide receiver Rashaad Samples, who joined head coach Tom Herman with the Houston Cougars after leaving Stillwater.

The Twitter profile for Samples indicates that his assignment will be the wide receivers, though he’s not one of the 10 assistant coaches. In that role, Samples won’t be able to coach players, including during practices or games, and can’t recruit off campus, but he could be an asset to the program as an on-campus recruiter:

Perhaps just think of him as Bryan Carrington’s new protege.

Samples was an accounting major at Houston after giving up football last year as a result of multiple concussions. A member of the 2013 recruiting class, Samples caught three passes for 11 yards in 2014 before transferring and sitting out the 2015 season. The concussions kept him from ever playing for the Cougars.

Joining Herman at Texas brings Samples to Austin five years after he was recruited by the Longhorns out of Skyline High School, where he was an Under Armour All-American and a consensus four-star prospect.

In addition to providing another on-campus recruiter, hiring Samples also deepens the program’s ties to high school football coaches in the state, as his father, Reginald, is the former coach at Skyline and now coaches at Duncanville. The elder Samples is now the all-time winningest African-American high school football coach in UIL history after more than 25 years as a head coach.