Dillon Gabriel’s decision to transfer to Oklahoma has the Sooners in a great spot entering 2022. It means OU has a quarterback in place with 25 collegiate starts, over 8,000 passing yards and 70 touchdown passes to his name.
“It was a chance to play with a really good team. This school’s got a lot of history with quarterbacks, but also just with great players,” Gabriel said in his recent podcast appearance.
Athlon Sports’ Steven Lassan projected who each Big 12 team’s starting quarterback would be and ranked the 10 quarterbacks. Oklahoma offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby already named Gabriel the starter on national signing day, so there’s no mystery in Norman.
Lassan ranked Gabriel as the Big 12’s No. 1 quarterback in his “pre-spring, way-too-early” Big 12 quarterback rankings for 2022.
After Gabriel, Lassan ranks Oklahoma State’s Spencer Sanders No. 2, Texas’ Quinn Ewers No. 3, Baylor’s Gerry Bohanon No. 4 and Kansas State’s Adrian Martinez No. 5.
In the bottom half of his Big 12 quarterback rankings, Lassan ranks TCU’s Max Duggan No. 6, Texas Tech’s Donovan Smith No. 7, Kansas’ Jalen Daniels No. 8, Iowa State’s Hunter Dekkers No. 9 and West Virginia’s Nicco Marchiol No. 10.
Here’s what Lassan wrote about Gabriel.
The transfers of Spencer Rattler (South Carolina) and Caleb Williams (USC) depleted Oklahoma’s quarterback room. However, the news isn’t all bad here for the Sooners. Although Williams will be missed, Gabriel arriving as a transfer from UCF softens concerns about this position. Also, Gabriel worked under offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby at UCF in ‘19, so the transition in scheme should be minimal. There’s a lot of new around Gabriel this offseason, so spring practice is all about acclimation and getting everyone comfortable in the new scheme. Developing depth behind Gabriel is a must. – Lassan, Athlon Sports.
OU signed four-star quarterback Nick Evers back in December. Evers is already on campus, so that should help Oklahoma in building that depth behind Gabriel.
In the meantime, Lebby and OU feel great that Evers is leading the Sooners in this transition year.
“The guy’s averaging over 300 yards a game, three touchdowns a game in 26 starts, so you can’t argue that piece of it, but I think probably the thing that I’m most excited about is this guy knows how to operate. He knows how to walk in the building every single day have great ownership in how he’s going to operate, how he’s going to take command of the offense and what it means to be a quarterback. To me, that is huge and that is critical as we set the tone and the standard of how we’re going to do things,” Lebby said.
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