aggy and the recruiting services are both circling around the problem but missing the actual issue.
Texas players aren't soft. The style of football is not so ubiquitous that it creates a vacuum of defensive talent that can only be solved by kids from Jersey.
The issue is that you have to be much more aware of upside and doing more complete evaluations. The Texas kids (and when I say this, you can add most of the Cali and suburban Georgia kids as well) have played A TON more football than those kids from the NE corridor. Tens-of-thousands more reps against other players that have played 1,000s more reps. Texas HS QBs are ready to play so much earlier than other QBs because they've seen more complex defenses and run more complex offenses than their counterparts. Coaches don't have to spend valuable practice time teaching common route trees in Texas. The kids have run them all and can also read combo coverages when they come in to high school as 9th graders. The Texas coaches don't have to spend near as much time teaching hand-fighting on the LOS - because the kids do it with their trainers. On and on.
It does create a plethora of guys in each class that are physically maxed out, or close to it, but are really good at football. Guys that have really good film and have played a crapton of football. These are guys that can be over-rated but can also help your team and provide quality depth. They ARE better football players because they have put their Gladwell 10k hours in. The downside is that if they end up long-term multi-year starters you will lack athleticism. (see Brian Williams, the Green bros, Stripling)
the 9.95ers aren't adjusting to these guys and are super reluctant to drop guys that were rated high early, because of their early varsity productivity as FR/SO but who are clearly maxed out. aggy has signed numerous guys that simply don't have the athletic profile of a plus NCAA/NFL athlete. Luke Matthews isn't soft - he is athletically limited. You could see that in every setting where he played against D1 talent, on film and in camps. Max Wright had bad knees at 17, signing him and then adding a bunch of weight doesn't mean Texas players are soft. It means that they did a poor eval. RJ Orebo weighed 11 pounds at 6'9" -- he's not indicative of Texas players being soft. He's indicative of a terrible eval. Going to get Adarious Jones didn't press the magic "now we're physical" at DT button. Do you honestly want to compare him to T'Vondre Sweat and talk about physical presence?
It's the fucking evals. There are Texas kids playing defense all across the country and they are fucking good. That take is lazy and stupid.