Former Baylor recruit Duvernay good catch for UT
AUSTIN — Devin Duvernay was the first one out. That part should not have come as much of a surprise.
In his entire life, Duvernay has lost so few footraces that he can remember almost every rare defeat. The last time he didn’t win a 100-meter dash was as a junior at Sachse High School, almost two years ago at the Texas Relays. Two months later, he won the state 6A championship in a blistering 10.27 seconds.
But the reason he beat all of his fellow recruits out of Baylor last June wasn’t his world-class speed, or even his status as the most prized football prospect of the bunch.
As it turned out, the Bears forgot to sign him in the first place.
Duvernay, who’s now a freshman wide receiver at Texas, was one of about eight recruits who tried to get out of their commitments to Baylor after the Bears dismissed coach Art Briles in the wake of the school’s sexual assault scandal. Most of the players were stuck until Baylor released them from their official letters of intent, which they’d signed last February.
But when Duvernay asked NCAA officials to look into his case, they noticed something odd. Baylor had never filed Duvernay’s paperwork, so in their eyes, he was a free man.
“They told me technically I wasn’t signed,” Duvernay said. Moving on from Baylor
Still, Duvernay had some issues to work through. First, his twin brother Donovan was still bound to Baylor (the Bears reportedly filed his letter twice by mistake), and the siblings wanted to attend school together. Second, Duvernay needed to decide if he really wanted to go elsewhere after sticking to his Baylor commitment for months.
He said Briles’ departure — and the uncertainty about further fallout — convinced him to move on.
“I just had my mind set on playing with (Briles) and his staff,” Duvernay said. “And just hearing they’d be all gone, and not knowing if there would be any bowl sanctions or anything, I just wanted to be safe and get out.”
That’s when UT, needing a field-stretching young playmaker for its revamped spread offense, began to pounce. Duvernay said tight ends coach Jeff Traylor was “on (him) hard” from the beginning, but he wanted to meet with new offensive coordinator Sterlin Gilbert to find out what exactly the Longhorns had planned for him.
Gilbert, coincidentally, had worked under Briles at Houston and built his offense on the same principles. He told Duvernay exactly what he wanted to hear.
“We just laid it out to him and gave him an understanding of how we could utilize him in this offense, where he would fit in,” Gilbert said. “We were obviously excited about that for him, and fortunately he was excited about us.” Rapport with Buechele
In late June, Duvernay agreed to join the Longhorns, and his brother, who eventually got his release, joined him. Duvernay already had developed a bit of a bond with freshman UT quarterback Shane Buechele after both players had attended The Opening in Oregon in 2015, and they soon started reconnecting with post-practice throwing sessions in July.
“We had to go to work once he got here,” Buechele said.
It helped that Duvernay is, in Gilbert’s words, “highly intelligent” with “every intangible you could want in a recruit.” And although it took Duvernay a while to crack the Longhorns’ rotation of receivers, that work is starting to show results.
In his last two games combined, Duvernay caught seven passes for 177 yards. Against Oklahoma, he scored on a 63-yard deep ball, and against Iowa State he reached the end zone on a 75-yard play that Buechele thought at first was doomed.
“I let that ball go and I thought I overthrew him,” Buechele said. “But that’s hard to do.” Always the fastest
On a team that features other national-level track athletes (hurdler/receiver John Burt) and occasionally breathtaking burners (quarterback/receiver Jerrod Heard), Duvernay’s speed stands alone.
Receiver Dorian Leonard said Heard has joked about wanting to challenge Duvernay to a race in track spikes, “but I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Leonard said.
“When he’s running, it doesn’t look like he’s going full speed,” Leonard said of Duvernay, shaking his head in wonder. “But he’s covering so much ground.”
Duvernay knows it, too. Asked this week when he first realized he was faster than everyone around him, he said it was a long time ago.
“At a young age, I beat everyone,” Duvernay said. “And I never slowed down.”