Why the mass exodus of Sooners players is a good thingBy Jason Kersey Jan 17, 2020The AthleticNORMAN, Okla. — On its face, it all seems dire.
Since the calendar turned to 2019 (i.e., since the arrival of defensive coordinator Alex Grinch), 19 Oklahoma players have entered the NCAA’s transfer portal and 15 were defensive players; the latter number is 16 if you also include Michael Thompson, who was recruited as a defensive tackle but switched to the offensive line at OU.
This week, four OU defensive players — defensive back Jordan Parker and linebackers Mark Jackson, Levi Draper and Ryan Jones — entered the transfer portal. All four were four-star recruits. Jackson started seven games in 2018, but barely saw the field as a true senior in 2019 and redshirted. Draper and Jones were 2017 signees who had made little impact. Parker started eight games as a true freshman in 2016, but a preseason ACL tear the next season and other injuries derailed what once seemed like a promising career. In 2019, he didn’t even dress out for the final seven games.
Here’s what everyone needs to understand about this mass exodus: It’s not a bad thing. In fact, it’s a good thing for all parties.
These are the kinds of things that happen at programs that want to win national championships. Coaches at programs such as Alabama, LSU and Ohio State — the kinds of programs Oklahoma aspires to reach at the tippy-top of the college football hierarchy — frequently have these kinds of difficult conversations. I’m not talking about just flat-out “cutting” guys, but sitting down and being brutally honest with them.
Every scholarship freed up to sign a new player is critical. On the level of college football at which Oklahoma believes it should be playing — seriously contending for and winning national championships — programs simply can’t afford to continue using scholarships on guys who aren’t going to play.
A lot of this certainly has to do with development, too, and it’s clear that the previous defensive staff was not developing talent well enough. But entering his second season, Grinch and his staff need as many of their own guys as they can accommodate.
If that seems distasteful or unpleasant, well, welcome to the world of big-time college football. This is what it takes in 2020 to win a national championship — something Oklahoma historically is familiar with but hasn’t achieved in nearly two decades.
It should be noted that these things aren’t nearly as unpleasant as they may seem from the outside. If Draper and Jones weren’t playing much by the time they were third-year sophomores — especially on an Oklahoma defense that has for years been in desperate need of depth and talent — they probably weren’t going to play. It’s better, too, for those guys to find a place where they can get on the field.
Programs like Alabama and Ohio State don’t recruit with the idea that they’ll be relying on a bunch of fifth-year seniors. They recruit guys who they expect to have for three years.
After these latest four portal entries, Oklahoma is sitting at 81 scholarships for next season, meaning four more spots have opened up for either February signees or incoming transfers. And there’s a chance that more defensive guys could hit the portal before long.
The NCAA’s dead period ended Friday, meaning Oklahoma coaches were back out on the road to finalize their 2020 class and continue working on the 2021 and ’22 classes. The Sooners signed 22 players in December and have one commitment — four-star defensive end Reggie Grimes Jr., a national top-100 prospect — expected to sign in February.
Oklahoma’s defensive depth does seem ominous moving forward after all these defections, but in the long run, this probably is a good thing for both the program and the players. And you can start to see the level of player Grinch is attracting to Norman. Just this week, 2022 linebacker Kobie McKinzie (6 feet 3 and 227 pounds as a high school sophomore) committed to the Sooners. McKinzie, from Lubbock (Texas) Cooper, could be a national top-50 player in the 2022 class.
Oklahoma has reached the College Football Playoff four times, and that is a remarkable achievement. But the Sooners have yet to get past the semifinal round, and to take that next step as a program, OU must have elite — and not, as cornerbacks coach Roy Manning tweeted Friday morning, “pretty good, kinda good, or maybe good” — talent up and down its roster.
Roy Manning
@CoachRoyM
Back on the road today! 🚘
Need ELITE DUDES! Not pretty good, kinda good, or maybe good. Why? Bc this isn’t a pretty good, kinda good, maybe good PROGRAM. This is @OU_Football! The BAR here is set to ELITE and it ain’t changing! #THESTANDARD #OUDNA🧬
1,714
11:37 AM - Jan 17, 2020 · Austin, TX
And to put together a roster on that level, sometimes parting ways with guys who aren’t contributing is necessary.
Boulware moving on?Multiple reports have Oklahoma running backs coach and special teams coordinator Jay Boulware joining the staff at Texas; he reportedly will be the Longhorns’ special teams coordinator and tight ends coach.
Boulware, a Texas alum, first joined the OU staff in 2013 as special teams coordinator and tight ends coach. He switched to running backs in 2015 and has coached guys like Samaje Perine, Joe Mixon, Rodney Anderson, Trey Sermon and Kennedy Brooks — all of whom have excelled under Boulware’s tutelage.
[Note: Boulware has been announced as an assistant at UT.]But Oklahoma’s running back recruiting has dipped a bit since Boulware took over from Cale Gundy, who now coaches inside receivers. Perine, Mixon and Anderson were Gundy recruits. And just last month, the Sooners lost a pledge from four-star running back Jase McClellan of Aledo (Texas) High. A national top-50 prospect, McClellan had been committed to OU for 2½ years before he signed with Alabama in December.
Since news of Boulware’s apparent departure hit Twitter, many have speculated that a natural, no-brainer replacement might be DeMarco Murray, the former Oklahoma superstar running back who just finished his first season as running backs coach at Arizona. On the surface, that absolutely makes sense. Murray, who enjoyed a successful NFL career, still owns the Oklahoma career records for all-purpose yards (6,718) and touchdowns (65).
Maybe Murray coaching Oklahoma running backs would be a resounding success. But it’s also important to remember that just because a guy was a superstar player at a school doesn’t necessarily mean he would be a great coach at the same place.
First, Murray has one season of college coaching under his belt. Programs like Oklahoma don’t typically hire assistants with so little experience. There’s a reason it took Bob Stoops so long to hire Calvin Thibodeaux as his defensive line coach. Stoops had a d-line coach opening in 2013, ’15 and ’16, and didn’t hire Thibodeaux until the third time, when Diron Reynolds unexpectedly left for Stanford after just one season in Norman. There’s also a question as to how good a recruiter Murray would be.
In November, colleague Ari Wasserman wrote a deeply reported piece trying to figure out why Arizona has failed so badly at signing the best talent within its state. For example, Arizona coach Kevin Sumlin’s son plays at powerhouse Salpointe Catholic, located a mere 2.2 miles from the UA campus. Salpointe had two national top-100 prospects, but five-star running back Bijan Robinson signed with Texas and four-star safety Lathan Ransom signed with Ohio State. Murray was Arizona’s lead recruiter on Robinson, and Murray may have stopped by briefly at Salpointe twice.
“I feel like they should have been here a lot more,” Robinson told Wasserman. “… ’Cause, you know, Texas and Ohio State are so far from here and they’re here all the time. I constantly talk to them all the time. You know, I didn’t have that same feel with U of A. I’ll talk to those coaches all the time from Texas. I barely ever texted the U of A coaching staff.”
Again, maybe Murray would be successful as an Oklahoma assistant. Maybe, as a former player, Murray would have the passion and fire needed to recruit at the elite level at which Oklahoma expects to recruit. But maybe hiring a veteran assistant with proven recruiting ability is a better move.
