Nik Bonitto can feel it. The defensive backs can feel it. Grinch can, too.
Upon Perkins return to the football field for Oklahoma, the havoc being caused has grown exponentially. There have been more interceptions, sacks and tackles for loss in the last three games than there have been in the last five since the Sooners’ defense has taken off.
His overall presence, whether it’s his voice, his play or the attention he gets from an offense, is lifting the entire Oklahoma defense.
“I just feel like me being there for ‘em, I can talk a guy up before a play, get them fired up before a play,” Perkins said. “Some plays I can probably catch a double-team and a guy can come free through his gap. So I definitely feel like my presence has helped the defense a lot, you know, me being on the field with them instead of talking on the sideline. I just feel like, yeah, my presence has given guys more of a boost, for sure.”
There was a way Kenneth Murray lifted Oklahoma a year ago. A fiery, emotional leader that made play after play which helped elevate his status as the the alpha of the Sooners’ new defense.
It’s a role Perkins is resembling in 2020. A role that has made a really good situation for Oklahoma even better.
“Yeah, I mean, he’s a good player and for us, we’ve said this some while he was gone, he’s an emotional leader for us,” said Lincoln Riley after the Oklahoma State game. “Not just an emotional leader, but a pure leader. Our guys feed off of him and he’s got a really good presence with our guys, having been through a couple of battles. So his energy and excitement to get back on the field with us has kinda stayed and obviously, you add a good football player in there … we’ve kinda infused him to what was already a good situation up front and it’s made us even better.”
It’s a domino effect.
In how the alpha role is played out is a bit different. Murray stood in the middle of the defense and could have an impact on any given play. Perkins can’t, but that hasn’t stopped him from stepping into the new role as the 2020 version of Speed D’s cover boy.
His presence is feeding an already emotionally driven defense into something that hasn’t been seen at Oklahoma in over a decade.
“I think some of that stuff is infectious—it just is,” Grinch said after the Kansas game. “Whether it’s talking about the secondary and this guy makes an interception, there’s something to that as well. It’s the same thing when you see some physical play. When a guy next to you’s playing physical, all of the sudden that becomes the expectation. Obviously you want more than one guy doing it an all those things but I think certainly in Ronnie’s case, it creates the standard for how it should be done and what happens when you turn on the video, it becomes real self-evident when one guy’s playing at this speed and everyone else is playing at this speed. If you’re a competitor at all, you’re going to say well, I need to raise my game because I need to look like that guy. I continue to mention, best-case scenario we’re talking about 11 different guys in all those different realms, whether it’s in the linebacker room you think back to a year ago. We’d look awfully slow next to Kenneth Murray for real reasons. Same thing in the secondary and all of those but all of the sudden that becomes the standard and if you don’t look like that, you look like a slow football player which you never want to be accused of. That is good. I do, Nik Bonitto getting three sacks tonight, I’d hope he would thank Ronnie for some of that too.”
And Bonitto does.
“I’m definitely feeling his presence and I feel like the whole defense is as well,” he said. “That’s a guy that automatically comes in and you can just feel his impact. You can see a lot of people are starting to get free on the D-line with more one-on-one’s because they pay a lot of attention to him. So the impact that he has on the game, it’s better for this defense. I feel like because he’s back, our defense is also better. He’s made a really big impact since he’s come back.”
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