In the Stoops era OU has never consistently had top 5 recruiting classes. However, the staff has excelled @ finding players with huge upside who may only have 2/3 stars but are coachable and fit the system. Stoops & the staff have also been very good a seeing where a player's greatest potential is and convincing said player that a position shift is in his best interest.
Our recruiting fell of after the 2008 season and Stoops got rid of 4 coaches when this fall off became painfully obvious on the field of play.
As far as any analysis of this year's edition of OKLAHOMA FOOTBALL is concerned, it is way too early to tell simply based off of one home game vs a lessor opponent. Tulsa on the road will probably be a little tougher test but honestly, it will be the Tennessee game before we will really know how good we are.
As a long time OU fan and observer of the program, what I did see last Saturday was very encouraging and would indicate that we have a chance to be one of Stoops' better teams. We really only have 2 areas of concern and they are both depth related. First, if Trevor Knight goes down, we will bring in a RSF who has never taken a live game snap. Second, with our starting MLB (Frank Shannon) still in limbo in terms of his Title IX situation, we are thin @ MLB. His replacement, Jordan Evans is a potential super star but he was ejected Sat. for targeting and we replaced him with a senior walk-on. Evans is money but after that, we are exposed.
I am not sure where the idea came from that our secondary is weak. We bring three starters back from last year and the entire unit performed well Sat. The score vs La. Tech was somewhat deceiving. With 2:19 to go in the first half the score was 31-0. We played something like 20 true freshmen, much as you all did and literally cleared the bench on both sides of the ball in the second half.
Stoops has called our front 7 on D potentially the best we have had since he came to OU & I would compare the O-line to the 2008 unit which put all 5 into the NFL. Two of them start for the Redskins and one for the Vikings.
If the Vols are going to run on OU they will have to negate 6'6", 341lb NT Jordan Phillips. He is a huge but tremendously athletic kid who was injured early in the season and had to have back surgery. He is 100% now and an incredible force in the middle. When you add him to the bunch you saw in the Sugar Bowl (Tapper, Striker, Ndulue, & Grissom) you are looking at a very large but incredibly athletic and fast D-front. Evans & Alexander round out the front 7 @ LB and they are both tremendous.
One last comment, we have a tremendous kicking game in all aspects. It is as good as we have had in years.
I am trying to provide as candid a view as I can w/o appearing to be a homer or in anyway talking down to Tennessee. All Sooner fans are really excited about seeing the Vols on Owen Field.
