Recruiting is certainly a strong point for the Oklahoma Sooners under [autotag]Brent Venables[/autotag]. On both sides of the ball, OU has landed blue chip prospects, including five-star players [autotag]Jackson Arnold[/autotag] (2023), [autotag]Adepoju Adebawore[/autotag] (2023), [autotag]Peyton Bowen[/autotag] (2023), and [autotag]David Stone[/autotag] (2024).
It’s set the stage for the Sooners to contend when they make their move into the SEC. In the [autotag]2025 recruiting class[/autotag], the Sooners are already off to a great start with the summer recruiting season approaching. With 15 commitments, the Sooners sit No. 3 in the nation and No. 1 in the SEC in 247Sports team recruiting rankings.
And the Sooners are well within the top 10 of ESPN’s top 25 recruiting classes (ESPN+) for the 2025 cycle.
The Sooners’ first official class as a member of the SEC already has a strong foundation. It’s anchored by offensive firepower, including a pair of ESPN 300 wide receivers in [autotag]Elijah Thomas[/autotag] and [autotag]Gracen Harris[/autotag]. Harris is quick and has good hands. Thomas, an in-state commit, is a precise route-runner and offers a wide catch radius. Running back [autotag]Tory Blaylock[/autotag] can be an electric playmaker with excellent speed — he has registered a max speed north of 21 mph in games.
The Sooners stayed in-state to land [autotag]Kevin Sperry[/autotag] at QB. He has a quick release and good accuracy and threw for over 2,500 yards and completed 68% of his passes as a junior. In-state defensive end [autotag]Alexander Shieldnight[/autotag] has first-step quickness and active hands and tallied 11 sacks as a junior. While much of their class hails from OU’s primary recruiting base, [autotag]Trent Wilson[/autotag] was a nice win out of Maryland. He’s a defensive lineman with good initial quickness as well as agility, and he can be an active presence in the trenches. – Craig Haubert, ESPN
It’s a class that’s equally impressive on defense as it is on offense. Sperry has the chance to be every bit as impactful as the quarterbacks that Oklahoma’s brought on board over the last few years under Venables. His low-key recruitment has been an asset for the Sooners. With their quarterback committed, and helping peer recruit, the Sooners have been able to focus their efforts on an offensive line class that is as elite as 2024’s defensive line class was.
Even though Oklahoma’s experienced coordinator changes on both sides of the ball, they’ve continued to recruit at an incredibly high level. And with high-profile recruitments still to be decided along the offensive line and with five-star safety [autotag]Jonah Williams[/autotag], the Sooners have a chance to add another impactful class to the depth chart in 2025.
There’s still a long way to go in the 2025 cycle, but the Sooners are in a great spot. Any concerns about Brent Venables and his staff’s ability to recruit at Oklahoma are long gone.
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