On3 analyst predicts Oklahoma’s return to College Football Playoff

On3’s JD Pickell realesed his early College Football Playoff predictions with the Sooners in the number three ranking

The good folks at On3 have one of my favorite people in sports media: JD Pickell. His knowledge on the intracacies of football and ability to talk about the finer points of offenses and defenses are just excellent.

Pickell has a great video on Jeff Lebby’s offense that every Sooners fan should watch and another good one on Brent Venables’ defense.

On Pickell’s show, “The Hard Count” he gave his early prediction for who will make the College Football Playoff and the first two teams out. His top six has a diverse group of teams across four of the five power conferences with the Pac-12 as the only conference without a representative.

So Pickell has Alabama at No. 1, Ohio State at No. 2, Oklahoma at No. 3, Clemson at No. 4, Georgia at No. 5 and Baylor at No. 6.

I like this list. Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud are both going to be Heisman contenders. Both Ohio State and Alabama have stacked rosters, and of course, Nick Saban and Ryan Day are two of the best head coaches in the country.

I’ll get to the Sooners in a minute.

Clemson had a rough season by their standards last year. With issues at the QB position, the Tigers started 4-3, but would finish 2021 strong with six straight wins and a Cheez-It Bowl victory over Iowa State.

Considering this is a year removed from losing one of the best QBs college football has ever seen, I think we can give our friends in South Carolina a bit of slack.

Dabo Swinney isn’t a very popular man outside of Clemson, but the man is still one of the nation’s best head coaches. Even after losing Brent Venables, Clemson is going to be just fine. Clemson had the 5th and 10th ranked recruiting classes in 2021 and 2022, just throwing that out there.

Now the Sooners.

Essentially what Pickell is predicting here is OU winning the Big 12 Championship over Baylor with one loss or fewer. That’s what OU has needed in the past to get into the CFP.

As much as I would love to see the Sooners go undefeated, there always seems to be one loss that comes out of nowhere on the schedule. We’ll see what happens there.

As for Georgia and Baylor, I’m intrigued to see how this plays out.

Georgia still boasts and obscene amount of talent on both sides of the ball, but Stetson Bennett going blow for blow with Bryce Young in the SEC Championship doesn’t seem very likely to go the Bulldogs’ way.

I’m not sure what to think of Baylor. The Bears are dealing with a lot of turnover on both sides of the ball, but I do like their head coach, Dave Aranda. I think the Bears will have another good season, but I don’t think they make it back to the Big 12 Championship to defend their title.

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