Oklahoma football: Young safeties rocket up depth chart

Every position is truly up for grabs

The change could be a sign of things to come as the young, hungry and talented defensive recruiting classes Lincoln Riley has been stacking up in the past couple of years start to come of age and become too good to keep off the field. The Sooners are in a situation where all 10 returning starters are currently looking behind themselves on the depth chart and hoping to hold off hard-charging youngsters.

The coaches have also heaped praise on DeSean White, who is currently backing up two-year starter Kenneth Murray at middle linebacker. Though nothing is set in stone by any means and coaches aren’t going to volunteer the inner workings of the depth chart to us in the spring, it will be interesting to watch who plays with who in the spring game in two weeks.

Turner-Yell is a hard hitter

Go back and watch some of Delarrin Turner-Yell’s high school highlights and you will see a guy who played the strong safety position more like a linebacker. He sniffs out plays in the backfield and hits with bad intentions.

Teammate Caleb Kelly threw some praise Turner-Yell’s way when he met with the media yesterday, noting that the redshirt sophomore is good for at least one big hit per practice.

The top-shelf comparison for Turner-Yell’s skill set would have to be the late Brandon Everage, who was one of the most feared defensive backs in college football during his time at Oklahoma.

Everage was a second-team All American and a national champion and Turner-Yell hasn’t made an official start yet so we aren’t going overboard on those comparisons just yet, but he could very well end up being the kind of enforcer the Sooners have been missing in their secondary for quite some time and we all know a couple of big hits can change the psyche of the entire defense (and the opposing offense).