The Texas Tech football team has been busy over the past few weeks. While also conducting spring football practices, the coaching staff and head coach Joey McGuire have been working hard to build the 2026 recruiting class.
Tuesday, their efforts paid off as one of the top high school offensive linemen in the great state of Texas announced his commitment to the Red Raiders.
Jerald "JJ" Mays, a 6-foot-4, 300-pound 3-star interior offensive lineman from Pflugerville, became the first offensive player to commit to the Red Raiders in the current recruiting cycle. Previously, the first seven 2026 commits for Tech had all called the defensive side of the ball home.
Mays is rated by 247Sports.com's composite rankings as the No. 742 overall player in the country. He's listed as the No. 103 overall player in Texas and the No. 64 interior lineman in his class.
Mays has plenty of options. In addition to Texas Tech, he has offers from Ole Miss, SMU, Arizona, Arizona State, Baylor, Duke, Houston, Maryland, Miami, Michigan State, Nebraska, Oregon, Stanford, Southern California, and others.
This is a critical recruiting win because it continues to help the Red Raiders try to build the future of the offensive line by traditional means, which McGuire prefers. In recent years, Tech has had to rely too heavily on the transfer portal to patch holes in the offensive line, and it has not worked out.
For instance, in 2024, three of the five week-one offensive line starters (Sterling Porcher, Vinny Sciury, and Davion Carter) were transfers. What's more, none of them arrived from power-conference programs.
Similarly, in 2023, three of the week-one starting offensive linemen were transfers. Of that group, only tackle Monroe Mills was a transfer from a power-conference school after coming over from Oklahoma State the year before.
In fact, during the three years of the McGuire era, Tech has invested heavily in transfer offensive linemen with only marginal results. The line has been the offense's most consistent and glaring weakness, and though another influx of transfers for 2025 will hope to fix that, the ultimate goal is for the program to recruit high school linemen and develop them into top-end Big 12 starters.
There has been good work done on that front as home-grown players like starting center Sheridan Wilson, as well as backup linemen Jacob Ponton, Ellis Davis, Holton Hendrix, and Daniel Sill all appear to have bright futures with the program.
Still, ensuring the offensive line's future health is a never-ending process. That's why it is essential that Tech continues to win recruiting battles up front as it has done with Mays. While there is still a ton of work to be done before the woes at that position are a thing of the past in West Texas, one can clearly see that McGuire is making progress in that regard, and landing Mays is another big step in the right direction.