Which Longhorns could log 1000 receiving yards?

The Texas Longhorns offense has never seen three 1000-yard receivers on the same team. Only once has a Texas offense produced two 1000-yard receivers in the same season. That was in 2008 with Jordan Shipley and Quan Cosby. Despite a relative dearth of 1000-yard receivers in school history, this 2025 team has a variety of things working for it that could lead to a productive season for multiple Texas wide receivers.

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So how could anyone reasonably see three receivers hitting 1000 yards, especially when Steve Sarkisian has only seen one hit that mark in his time at Texas?

The answer in short is it is probably not reasonable due to efficiency.

Starting off with why it is unreasonable, Sarkisian has never had an offense with two 1000-yard receivers in the same season. Most of the Sarkisian offenses led to a majority of the targets going to a single wide receiver. In most years for Sarkisian, being the lead wideout in targets means you see 28-30% of the passes. If you’re a Heisman winning receiver, you get 35.8% of the team’s targets.

However, last year was a shift from the norm. The difference between WR3 and WR7 in targets was only four. In 2023 that number was 50, in 2022 it was 53, and in 2021 it was 21. Even in a slow year Sarkisian’s offenses hardly saw a spread of targets to that degree. How did that happen?

The cheap answer would be to claim that Isaiah Bond‘s injury versus Oklahoma shifted the targets around.

Yet when you look at the numbers through the Mississippi State game, it still tells a different story. So if not the Bond injury, what was the reason for Sarkisian’s offense to stray from the norm?

To get to that, we must first look at another norm that was broken. This was the first Sarkisian offense to have the top three WRs, leading TE, and leading RB in targets not record 74.4% of the target volume.

In fact, it was the first where that group didn’t even hit 70%.

This likely happened because of the running back position. Jaydon Blue had 58 targets, and Quintrevion Wisner had 57 targets. Prior to Mississippi State, those numbers were 19 and 10, respectively. The problem was the Mississippi State fumbling fiasco that caused Blue to lose his lead RB duties.

Which takes us to the other part of the problem in the RB room. Texas throws to win big games and has gone from Bijan Robinson and Roschon Johnson in 2021 and 2022, to Jonathon Brooks in 2023, to Blue and Wisner in 2024. Those are all NFL players, but Robinson was a first-rounder, Brooks was a second-rounder, and Blue was a fifth-rounder. See a pattern?

The last factor into the change in lead WR roles in 2024 is Texas lost players like Xavier Worthy, Adonai Mitchell, Jordan Whittington, Ja’Tavion Sanders, and Brooks to the NFL. A hodgepodge of potential options that Sarkisian had only seen in practice was bound to lead to unpredictable target numbers in 2024. And when you add the issues with the running back room, that just exacerbated the statistical anomaly.

When you look at the final four games of the season, the most important stretch, Texas saw a return to typical target tendencies for Sarkisian offenses. The top three WRs, top TE, and top RB accounted for 80.7% of the teams targets in those games.

This supports the idea that Sarkisian was unsure of which weapons to use earlier in the year, granted Bond’s injuries throughout the season played a role.

Now that an attempt was made to explain why the 2024 team had such a variance in team targets, could this Texas team actually see two 1000-yard receivers? One? Let’s look at the candidates

In that four game stretch DeAndre Moore was WR2, and Ryan Wingo was WR3. Moore had a few games where he really showed potential to be another lethal Sarkisian weapon. His 13 target showing with 114 yards in the SEC Championship may be a sign of a WR that with Arch Manning‘s deep ball could take the CFB world by storm in 2025.

Wingo is an easy pick to arrive at 1000 yards. The dude is big and fast and can get yards after the catch at a really high rate. He seemed to have some contested catch issues in the middle of the season, but hopefully that has been cleared up with offseason Lasik surgery and another year of development. Wingo has all the makings of a typical lead WR for Sarkisian and has had an excellent camp.

Parker Livingstone is the unknown here and maybe the longest shot for a 1000-yard season. Livingstone will have a different understanding of how his QB thinks because he lives with Manning, so that could help him in that area. Over a 16-17 game season he could very well hit 1000 yards and a top 2-3 role. Because his position will see him line up furthest from the QB, his yardage might be more boom or bust than Wingo and Moore.

Being the lead tight end for Sarkisian in the last three years usually means a healthy amount of targets and yards. The tight end that Sarkisian and company have landed for the 2025 season in Jack Endries could be in the same tier as Gunnar Helm and Ja’Tavion Sanders.

On its face, it looks like Endries is behind the other TEs. When you consider the yards per route run, Endries’ 2024 is in line with the quality years from Sanders and Helm. Endries is a good blocker who can run well at a good size. At this rate the only thing limiting the former walk-on in the Sarkisian offense is his knowledge of the playbook.

Endries is the key that opens up the door to a wide range of possibilities. His ability to block will force teams to either respect his presence at the line or be burned on a fake. By drawing attention to himself he will free up these other guys to get increased volume and efficiency.

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With Manning’s arm talent, and more willingness from Sarkisian to throw the ball downfield, Texas may have a few receivers with potential for a 1000-yard season.