Austin paper ranks Maryland football’s D.J. Moore the 65th-best player Texas will face in 2017

The Bevo Beat, Austin, Texas’ major daily newspaper’s Texas Longhorns sports news blog ranked Maryland football’s D.J. Moore the 65th best player the Longhorns will play this season.

I’m not here to say their ranking is wrong, per se. It’s actually probably pretty fair, but I am here to be a bit of a homer and make the case that Moore should be higher on the list.

Texas plays in the Big XII, and with that comes a lot of really talented players. Oklahoma’s Baker Mayfield and Orlando Brown, Oklahoma State’s Mason Rudolph and James Washington and Kansas State’s Dalton Risner should all occupy spots in the top 15, if not the top 10 of this list when all is said and done. The Longhorns also play an out-of-conference game against a loaded USC team this year, which certainly adds more than a few players to this list.

That’s all well and good, but Moore was one of Maryland’s best players last season. He put up 637 yards and six touchdowns on 41 catches, all without having a consistent presence at quarterback and often turning nothing into something.

Moore did benefit from having one of the best running games in the Big Ten drawing eight and nine men into the box, freeing him up to do his thing on the outside, but again, having a quarterback that could get him the ball was often an issue. If the quarterback play improves even a little bit this season, Moore could be in for another great season and may even top the numbers he put up last year. All in all, his big play ability and consistency as the Terps’ top receiver surely call for a higher ranking than this.

Jessie Aniebonam and Shane Cockerille have already checked in on this list at Nos. 87 and 85, respectively. We’ll have to keep checking back to see if Ty Johnson, Lorenzo Harrison or Jermaine Carter Jr. make the list, where they land, or if some Terp linemen or defensive backs get ranked.

In other news

As Tight Ends Week continues at Testudo Times, Daniel took a look at how Avery Edwards could build on the flashes of potential he showed as a freshman in 2015.

Former Terp Callie Caplan of The Baltimore Sun wrote a great piece on Melvin Keihn’s planned trip back to Liberia to surprise his mother, who he hasn’t seen since he was eight.

Maryland men’s basketball recruited Mo Bamba pretty hard in the Class of 2017, but ultimately lost out to Texas. But yesterday, his brother, Ibrahim Johnson, posted an explosive Facebook video alleging Bamba took money from a booster with ties to Michigan, one of Bamba’s final contenders.

Maryland football’s Ty Johnson had the most yards after contact per attempt of any returning running back in the Big Ten last season by a healthy margin.