Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley is fully aware of the impact Kenneth Murray and Neville Gallimore being drafted has on the future of his program.
The Sooners gathered a bad reputation on defense in just a few short years.
With Mike Stoops as defensive coordinator in 2017, Oklahoma ranked 60th in total defense, and by 2018 fell to 105th, per TeamRankings.
In 2019 with Alex Grinch leading the defense, the Sooners saw massive improvement, and are now projected to send two defensive players in Kenneth Murray and Neville Gallimore in the first two rounds of the 2020 NFL Draft.
For Lincoln Riley, this is a huge sell in recruiting.
“Without a doubt. I think a lot of guys watch us play. And there’s a lot of games with a lot of dominant defensive performances with basically the same players that we had the year before, and a lot of people took notice.” Riley said on recruits taking notice of the two. “I know the last game that’s fresh in everybody’s mind was obviously not our best performance. We didn’t play well, we were missing a lot of pretty impactful players who did stuff against a fantastic offensive football team, but that doesn’t take away the way we played the other 13 games and how many big strides we made defensively. The recruits have certainly seen that and the evidence is there in the numbers that it’s real. It’s not where it’s going to be, but headed in the right direction and we can absolutely feel that as we have often communication with these recruits right now.”
This year marks the first year Oklahoma will have multiple defensive players drafted since the 2016 draft when Charles Tapper, Zack Sanchez and Devante Bond were drafted.
“It’s important to us. There’s always been such a tremendous history of OU players and getting drafted high.” Riley said. “Then I think more than that isn’t the guys who have been drafted, but just how many of our guys seem to go and have success and be prepared and ready to make the most of those opportunities. It’s important. It’s important historically. Then, obviously, you got a chance to have back-to-back No. 1 overall picks, kind of launches it into an even different stratosphere. So it is. It’s important. Kids want to win championship but also each of these kids have individual dreams and goals and to hear your name called no matter if you are the first pick or the last one, that means a lot of things went well because every player that puts on a college football jersey has a dream of that and it just doesn’t happen for many.”
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