OU football recruiting: 📈📈📈
OU football recruiting: 📈📈📈
Oklahoma's 2023 recruiting class, which has gained five commitments since July 4, is shaping up to be a top-10 group after a slow start.
✌🏽 Happy Monday, friends. Let’s ride.
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🔒 Locked in
When Brent Venables’ first year as Oklahoma’s head football coach reaches its end, refer to the past seven days — and potentially this entire month — as one of its biggest victories.
After a slow start on the recruiting trail, the Sooners enjoyed some Fourth of July fireworks and set off a few more booms over the next six days.
It started with Phil Picciotti, the three-star linebacker from Perkasie, Pennsylvania, who committed to OU last Monday. Speedy four-star receiver Jaquaize Pettaway, a Houston product, then chose OU over Texas two days later.
Oklahoma carried its momentum into the weekend with commitments from four-star offensive tackle Cayden Green on Friday, three-star offensive tackle Logan Howland on Saturday and Adepoju Adebawore, the elite edge rusher from Kansas City, Missouri, on Sunday.
While there’s still more work to be done, the Sooners have vaulted into the top-10 recruiting class conversation. If OU keeps the pace, a top-five finish might just be in reach.
No matter what happens, this was an important and necessary week for Venables and his staff. OU proved it can land elite players in the trenches, scoring huge wins with specifically Green and Adebawore’s commitments. It also proved OU’s offense can still attract high-end receivers, who possess game-changing speed, like Pettaway.
Most importantly to OU’s future success, Venables is providing proof of concept to his recruiting strategy.
All five of the Sooners who committed this past week made official visits to OU the same weekend — June 3. If you’re unfamiliar, this was a massive visitors weekend for the program and the Sooners are showing that, with a little patience, Venables’ staff has what it takes to sustain OU’s lofty recruiting standards.
And perhaps it would be foolish to suspect a brand like Oklahoma would all of a sudden stop drawing commitments from blue-chip prospects, because the name on the head coach’s office changed.
But the Sooners are no longer stuck down the recruiting rankings because of a small number of verbals. OU is putting the pieces together for an elite 2023 recruiting class, and as things stand, Oklahoma’s recruiting success in July is merely getting started.
🗓 Save the date
Big 12 Media Days returns to AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, this week.
The event starts Wednesday, July 13, and concludes the following day. The Sooners will take the stage on Day 2 with Brent Venables getting his first crack at the conference media.
He will be joined in Arlington by OU defensive Ethan Downs, quarterback Dillon Gabriel, receiver Marvin Mims and cornerback Woodi Washington.
My biggest storyline heading into the event: will OU’s players wear suits to their Media Day interviews?
📺 New video
We dropped a new video on the Eyes on Oklahoma YouTube channel over the weekend, detailing why Dillon Gabriel can be the Big 12’s best quarterback in 2022.
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