Oklahoma football: Analyzing spring roster changes
Oklahoma football did a little spring rearranging of the roster before the start of their first practice this week.
Lincoln Riley dropped some news ahead of the start of spring practice, announcing the return of wide receiver A.D. Miller. He also announced that Michael Thompson will move from the defensive to offensive line and Braden Willis will slide from tight end to h-back.
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None of these three changes are particularly world shaking, but they do say something about the roster, depth at certain positions and perhaps about the program as a whole. We’ll get into each individual move and analyze them one by one:
A.D. Miller returns to the roster
After announcing he would transfer to Illinois in January, A.D. Miller pulled a George Costanza and returned to the program
Miller has been around the Oklahoma football program for a long time and though he’s battled some injuries, the senior wide receiver has been involved in some big moments (he drew a huge pass interference call in the Sooners’ comeback win over Tennessee in 2015) and at least one that he would certainly like to forget (being tackled by a ref against Florida Atlantic last year) in limited playing time as a Sooner.
At 6-foot-3 and near 200 pounds, Miller can be a physically-intimidating specimen if he can ever put it all together and let’s not forget that the Dallas, Texas product has 10 starts under his belt during his time as a Sooner.
What does it mean for the program? This one might say as much about the state of the Illinois program as it does Oklahoma’s. Miami’s Jeff Thomas made the same decision this spring, returning to the Hurricanes rather than joining the Illini. However, it also shows the Sooners are still concerned about depth at the receiver spot and think Miller can help out. Whether that ends up being as a mentor to the three freshman five-star wideouts in Trejan Bridges, Jadon Haselwood and Theo Wease or as an actual on-field contributor remains to be seen, but clearly Riley thinks A.D. Miller is still worth of a scholarship in 2019 and he’s done little to show Sooner fans they shouldn’t trust his judgement on such matters by now.