In the new revenue sharing era of college football, entrances into the NCAA transfer portal are leverage plays that coaching staffs can\u2019t afford to disregard, a reality that played out for the third time this window when Texas Longhorns edge Zina Umeozulu entered the portal and then returned to the Forty Acres on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The 6\u20195, 262-pounder has three seasons of eligibility remaining.<\/p>\n
Out of Allen in the 2024 recruiting class, Umeozulu took official visits to Oklahoma and Texas A&M before committing to Texas during his senior season, following in the footsteps of his older brother, Neto, an offensive lineman for the Longhorns. Other offers for Umeozulu included Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, LSU, Miami, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Notre Dame, Ole Miss, Oregon, Tennessee, and USC. Umeozulu finished the cycle as a consensus four-star prospect ranked as the No. 165 player overall and the No. 14 edge, according to the 247Sports Composite rankings.<\/p>\n
While redshirting in 2024, Umeozulu played one snap in the blowout win over Louisiana-Monroe before taking on a bigger role in 2025, appearing in 12 games \u2014 he didn\u2019t play against Texas A&M \u2014 seeing his playing time increase to 203 snaps. Umeozulu recorded 13 tackles (four solo), three tackles for loss, two sacks, and 13 total pressures, including 10 quarterback hurries. Umeozulu also recorded six stops.<\/p>\n
With starter Ethan Burke exhausting his eligibility, Umeozulu is expected to play an important role in the rotation at Jack end behind prospective starter Lance Jackson, a rising sophomore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the new revenue sharing era of college football, entrances into the NCAA transfer portal are leverage plays…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":513424,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[1318,1317,1315,1316,62,112747,20815,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-513423","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-texas-longhorns-football-recruiting","14":"tag-texas-longhorns-football","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115888655173820530","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/513424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}