Every team experiences turnover every season in college football. This year, the Sooners not only lost key players on both sides of the ball, they had a major shift in coaching personalities and philosophies.
In a sense, the culture is shifting at Oklahoma to fit the personality of its new head coach Brent Venables.
Over at Bleacher Report, David Kenyon picked one word for each of the top 25 teams. For Oklahoma, the word he chose is “resetting.”
Brent Venables replaced now-USC coach Lincoln Riley. As of this writing, the Sooners have 10 outgoing — including star quarterback Caleb Williams — and nine incoming transfers. The 2022 recruiting class didn’t fall apart, but a handful of blue-chip prospects decommitted after Riley’s departure. What we expected to see at OU has changed dramatically; the offseason will be a much-needed time to reassess the wild two-month stretch in Norman. – Kenyon, Bleacher Report
Oklahoma looks to be in good shape ahead of national signing day and spring practice. At the same time, the coaching change has left people thinking Oklahoma’s in a situation where it needs to take stock of where it is. While the Sooners have experienced losses, they’ve had contingency plans for just about every one of them.
The Sooners are in a much better place than a lot of people want to give them credit for. Technically it’s a reset as they turned over all of the defensive coaching staff and brought in a new offensive coordinator. Despite the loss of Williams, the Sooners feel pretty good about where their offense is heading, especially with the returns of Theo Wease and Marvin Mims.
Sure they lost Kennedy Brooks to the draft, but they have two incoming freshman, Jovantae Barnes and Gavin Sawchuk, who look as if they could be immediate contributors this fall. Combined with the return of Eric Gray and Marcus Major, and the Sooners running back situation is in a good place.
They’re projected to bring back three-fifths of their starting offensive line. Replacing Marquis Hayes and Tyrese Robinson’s experience will not be easy, but they have talent that’s been waiting for an opportunity, and they brought in a couple of offensive linemen through the transfer portal.
On defense, the Sooners’ strength looks to be at linebacker where they have as many as six guys that could be contributors in the fall, led by veterans DaShaun White and David Ugwoegbu.
With Woodi Washington, D.J. Graham, and Key Lawrence back, the Sooners are in a good place in the secondary. They’ve added experienced options through the transfer portal that could help mitigate the losses of Delarrin Turner-Yell and Pat Fields at safety.
The big question is who steps up to replace Nik Bonitto, Perrion Winfrey and Isaiah Thomas. Bonitto and Winfrey look like top 60 NFL draft prospects, and Thomas could very well push his way into that. That’s a lot of experience and production heading to the NFL. The Sooners have potential options to fill in in Ethan Downs, Clayton Smith, Reggie Grimes and Marcus Stripling, but at this point it’s simply projection.
The Sooners may be resetting. It happens with every coaching change. But it’s not like they don’t have a talented squad that’s capable of returning them back to the Big 12 championship in the fall.
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