Stormin in Norman
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Oklahoma football: Receivers coach Simmons is OU’s secret weapon

By Christopher Dukes

PASADENA, CA - JANUARY 01: Marquise Brown #5 of the Oklahoma Sooners and CeeDee Lamb #9 of the Oklahoma Sooners react in the 2018 College Football Playoff Semifinal at the Rose Bowl Game presented by Northwestern Mutual at the Rose Bowl on January 1, 2018 in Pasadena, California. (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)
PASADENA, CA - JANUARY 01: Marquise Brown #5 of the Oklahoma Sooners and CeeDee Lamb #9 of the Oklahoma Sooners react in the 2018 College Football Playoff Semifinal at the Rose Bowl Game presented by Northwestern Mutual at the Rose Bowl on January 1, 2018 in Pasadena, California. (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images) /
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It is hard to believe, but somehow Oklahoma football outside receivers coach Dennis Simmons manages to fly under the radar.

Related Story: Two Sooner receivers on 2018 Biletnikoff Award watch list

Lincoln Riley’s first hire when he  joined the Sooners as an offensive coordinator, Simmons is one of only two people to ever to coach two Biletnikoff Award winners, yet he doesn’t even have his own Wikipedia page.

Oklahoma fans may not know it, but they owed Simmons a big thank you seven years before his first day on the job in Norman. Simmons, along with a baby-faced assistant named Riley, mentored Michael Crabtree. It was Crabtree who broke through a Texas arm tackle on a fateful night in Lubbock,  to break the hearts of an entire Burnt Orange fanbase and put Oklahoma back on the path to the 2008 Big 12 Championship and National Title appearance. Crabtree would go on to finish fifth in the Heisman voting that year and become the first Simmons pupil to win the Biletnikoff Award.

After following Riley and Ruffin McNeil to East Carolina, Simmons joined Leach in Washington State before coming with Riley to Oklahoma in 2015.

Since he has been at Oklahoma, Simmons has put in work. He tutored Dede Westbrook, taking the Blinn Junior College product from a raw talent to a Heisman Finalist and Biletnikoff Award Winner.

Marquise Brown was a skinny College of the Canyons freshman and part-time Six Flags worker  before Simmons helped turn him into “Hollywood”  in 2017. The guy on the other side wasn’t a slouch either. CeeDee Lamb became a Freshman All American thanks in part to Simmons’ guidance.

When he isn’t serving as a leader of young men on the field, he’s recruiting the next generation of great Oklahoma receivers. His fingerprints are all over the Sooners’ 2019 receiver class. It’s a class that contains Rivals’ No. 1, 4 and 12 receivers in the country in Theo Wease, Arjei Henderson and Trejan Bridges.   

Both Brown and Lamb are on the Biletnikoff watch list going into 2018. If one of them were to win it would make Simmons the only man to ever coach a trio of Biletnikoff winners. Maybe then he could finally get his own Wikipedia page.

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