Oklahoma football: Seven Sooners make 2018 Preseason All-Big 12 Team
By Chip Rouse
Get ready, here it comes. The annual onslaught of preseason all-conference teams and national individual award watch lists is in full swing, and that means another Oklahoma football season is inching ever closer.
On Wednesday, the Big 12 announced its 2018 Preseason All-Big 12 Team, and Oklahoma is well represented with seven players on the team, the most of any member school.
The Preseason All-Big 12 Team on offense includes five Sooners: RB Rodney Anderson, WR Marquise “Hollywood” Brown, TE Grant Calcaterra and offensive lineman Ben Powers and Bobby Evans.
Austin Seibert was named to the All-Big 12 Team as a specialist at punter and placekicker. In addition, freshman defensive back Brendan Radley-Hines was named Preseason Newcomer of the Year.
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Oklahoma’s eight overall selections were four more than the next best team (West Virginia).
With 1,161 rushing yards last season, most of which came in the final eight games, Anderson is the Big 12’s second-best returning rusher from a year ago. Brown made Sooner fans overlook the loss of speedster Dede Westbrook, catching 57 passes, most of the deep variety, for a team-high 1,095 yards. That was the eighth most in a single season on OU football history.
Seibert made the All-Big 12 second team last season as a kicker, making 14 of his 17 field-goal tries. He is 90 point shy of becoming OU’s all-time leading scorer.
Radley-Hines is a five-star recruit and the top-ranked member of the Sooners’ 2018 class of newcomers. He was a U.S. Army All-American out of high school.
Evans, a redshirt junior, and Powers, a senior, return from the 2017 Oklahoma offensive line that was considered one of the best in college football last season.
In addition to the preseason All-Big 12 Team, the administrators of the Bobby Dodd Trophy announced that OU’s Lincoln Riley is one of 20 head coaches on the 2018 preseason watch list for the award, which recognizes the college coach whose program best represents the three pillars of scholarship, leadership and integrity.
Riley is one of four Big 12 head coaches (Mike Gundy of Oklahoma State, Tom Herman of Texas and Gary Patterson are the others) who are preseason candidates for the Dodd Trophy.