There was a talent gap between Oklahoma and LSU. But just how wide is that gap? The gap, though, is not because of a lack of recruiting.
We all saw it.
LSU walked out on the field against Oklahoma in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl and looked bigger. Looked faster. Looked stronger.
The Tigers romped the Sooners by epic proportions. Heisman Trophy winner Joe Burrow pitched a no-hitter against the Oklahoma defense. The Sooners made the LSU defense look like world beaters.
There was a talent gap between the two. But just how wide is that gap?
Here is what Lincoln Riley said about it the day after the game to a group of selected reporters.
“I don’t think the result of this game is going to change anything in recruiting. We know we’ve got to continue to get better personnel. Right now, we’ve got a lot of good personnel, but there’s still a handful of teams across the country, from top to bottom, that have better personnel than we do. That just is what it is. We’ve got good personnel. We’ve got a lot of good individual players, but we got to continue to build talent base across the whole team, and I think especially defensively.
“It’s kind of like the same process — I know you all are tired of me saying it — but the same process we went through offensively. We kind of got caught in a transitional year, certainly offensively, and scrounged it together and we were able to do some good things. We’re closing the gap. There’s no doubt we are. I think a lot of the things that need to happen are being done, it’s just there’s not always the immediate results we always want. That’s just part of building it.”
The gap he is referencing, isn’t really there for recruiting.
Oklahoma has been climbing in its recruited talent since Lincoln Riley got to Norman, Oklahoma in 2015. The Sooners have increased the amount of blue-chip recruits on its roster by 23.46 percent since the 2015 season. Oklahoma will be at 63.27 of its roster being four or five star recruits in the 2020 season as it stands today. The Sooners were at 39.81 percent in 2015.
Riley is right when it is in regard to three programs—Alabama, Ohio State and Georgia. Those three are across the 70 percent threshold of its roster being blue-chip recruits, with the Crimson Tide being at an unimaginable 88.78 of its roster being four or five-star recruits for the 2020 season.
Riley isn’t right when it comes to the tier underneath those three. Oklahoma has more recruited talent the last four years than LSU, Florida, Penn State, Texas and many others. The Sooners even have more recruited talent than Clemson, who was won two of the last three national championships and vying for a third in four years in a week and a half.
The conversation here lies within the comparison with Clemson. The Tigers, albeit their location in the southeast, are churning out NFL talent at every position across the board while recruiting at the same level the last four-to-six years as Oklahoma. Dabo Swinney’s ability to develop his talent is the reason the gap between them and the Sooners exists.
When it comes down to it, Oklahoma brought in 18 defensive backs since the 2016 recruiting class. Twelve of those defensive backs were four-star recruits. Only five of the defensive backs signed from 2016-18 made major contributions in multiple years thus far (Parnell Motley, Tre Brown, Tre Norwood, Patrick Fields and Bookie Radley-Hiles). Three of those from the 16-18 classes have transferred. Four of those four-star defensive backs came from the 2019 recruiting class, and the other, Ty DeArman, is already set to transfer.
For one final time—the Mike Stoops era at Oklahoma set the Sooners back. As did having Kerry Cooks oversee the Oklahoma secondary.
The notion that the gap is solely based on recruiting is true in a small instance. The reality that Oklahoma’s development of players, specifically on the defensive side of the ball, is what set the Sooners back.
That’s the burden that Alex Grinch had to live with in 2019, and what he’ll have to change in 2020 and the years to come.
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