Oklahoma football: OU should have two 1st round NFL picks for sure

Forty-three Oklahoma football players have been selected in the 83-year history of the NFL Draft. That works out to one out of every seven Sooners who have had the good fortune of becoming NFL draft picks.

Former OU quarterback and Heisman Trophy-winner Baker Mayfield not only was selected in the opening round of last year’s NFL Draft, he was the No. 1 player taken overall.

Mayfield, who served as the field general of one of college football most prolific offensive machines in his three seasons as the OU starting QB, was one of four Sooners taken in the 2018 NFL Draft, but the only one selected in the first round.

Before Mayfield, Oklahoma had not had a player selected in the first round of the draft since 2013. That year, offensive lineman Lane Johnson was the top pick of the Philadelphia Eagles and the No. 4 player selected overall.

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Despite the Sooners’ tremendous record of success over the past two decade, they have had only 14 players total taken among the 30 players selected in the first round of the draft since 2000. Two of those 14, though, were No. 1 overall picks (Mayfield in 2018 and Sam Bradford in 2010.

Could Kyler Murray, a fellow Sooner Heisman Trophy winner,,  become Oklahoma’s third No. 1 overall player taken in the NFL Draft in the past nine season. Some mock drafts have him projected that high since he elected to purse a professional football career over baseball. Although that is certainly a possibility, the likelihood is much lower. But the former OU star is all but certain to be selected on the first day of the 2019 NFL Draft on April 25.

Murray will participate along with other quarterback prospects  in the NFL Combine later this week. How that workout session goes will shed additional light on how high Murray’s number might be called in the upcoming draft.

Also scheduled for a workout session at the combine this week is OU offensive lineman Cody Ford, who is rated as a first-round selection on most draft boards. Ford is rated the highest of four OU offensive lineman who have either declared for or are eligible for this year’s NFL Draft. Those four NFL prospects made up four-fifths of the offensive line that won the 2018 Joe Moore Award as the best in college football.

In all, eight former Sooners have been invited to participate in this year’s NFL Combine, which gets underway this week and runs through March 5. In addition to Murray and Ford, other OU players with a good likelihood of going in the draft are wide receiver Marquise Brown (who will not attend the NFL Combine, rehabbing from foot surgery), running back Rodney Anderson, offensive linemen Ben Powers, Bobby Evans and Dru Samia and kicker Austin Seibert.

For four consecutive years, Oklahoma has had just four players selected in the NFL Draft. They could double that number this year, deliver more than one first-round pick, something that hasn’t happened since 2010, when four Sooners were taken in the opening round, including three of the top four players selected overall.

The four OU first-round selections in 2010 represents the most ever from Oklahoma. The Sooners’ largest NFL draft class was in 1988, when 13 different Oklahoma players were taken in the draft.

This year’s Sooner draft class won’t come to close to either of those high-water marks, but it should be one of the bigger OU classes this century.