GG was overrated, that HS out there is a magnet for football. you get a bunch of kids that developed early and you've basically got a team full of ringers playing. good for winnning state championships but you don't really know the talent. also, the way the ratings services work is circular. greg davis (the former OC) did a bad job developing talent as well.
could have also had trevor knight, apparently.
UT could have had its pick from almost any of the Big 12 QBs. They just repeatedly chose poorly.
Over the years they also had a shot at
Andy Dalton
Matthew Stafford
Christian Ponder
Ryan Tannehill
Andrew Luck
RGIII
Jonny Manziel
UT did recruit and make an offer to Griffen, but not as a QB. Same goes for Manziel, they recruited him as a DB but didn't end up giving him an offer. Out of that group only Stafford was recruited as a QB, and was given and offer for which he declined.
That said, Manziel was recruited to be a likely 3rd stringer for A&M. He just happened to blow the pants off of the competition and had a good coaching staff and a great QB coach. Basically almost everyone overlooked Griffen and Manziel(Manziel much more so). Hindsight is 20/20. Both Griffen and Manziel have preformed well above their recruiting evaluations, people forget they were 3 star/barely 3 star QB recruits in their respective classes. They wound up at their respective schools because other schools wanted them for other positions. That said Gibert was a 5 star bust. But yeah basically it is hard to evaluate high school QB talent, more so if said QB is on a overall talented team. Is it the QB? Or is it the team?