NFL Draft: Sooner 1st-rounders have been few and far between in last decade

The opening round of the NFL Draft, one of the biggest events on the NFL calendar, will take place on Thursday night in Nashville, Tennessee, and it should also be a banner night for fans of Oklahoma football.

Three former Sooners are a good bet to selected in the opening round, and that has not happened since 2010, when four Oklahoma players were selected among the first 32 names called, including the No. 1 overall pick. Sam Bradford.

During the past decade, six former Oklahoma players have been taken in the first round of the NFL Draft. Two of the six were the first player selected in both the 2010 and 2018 drafts.

Last year Baker Mayfield became the fourth former Sooner to be selected as the No. 1 player overall in the 83-year history of the NFL Draft. And on the eve of the 84th annual NFL Draft, Mayfield’s replacement as the Oklahoma starting quarterback, Kyler Murray, is poised to become No. 5 on that list of OU players to have their name called first in the opening round of the draft.

Other than the four first-round selections from Oklahoma in the 2010 draft and Mayfield last year, offensive lineman Lane Johnson, in 2014, is the only Sooner first-round selection in the last decade. Johnson was the fourth overall selection, the top pick of the Philadelphia Eagles, in that year’s NFL Draft.

In four of the last five NFL Drafts, four OU players were selected in the seven rounds of the draft. The most Sooners selected in any year over the past decade is seven, in both 2010 and 2012.

According to a number of 2019 NFL mock drafts, two other Sooners, in addition to Murray, are in good position to become first-round selections on Thursday night. Wide receiver Marquise Brown should be the next selection from Oklahoma, likely to go somewhere in the middle to end of the first round. He should be followed by offensive lineman Cody Ford.

When all is said and done on Saturday afternoon, Oklahoma should have as many as eight players taken in this year’s draft, but the more likely number is five or six.

Running back Rodney Anderson, who had an outstanding 2017 season but suffered a season-ending knee injury three games into the 2018 season, and Bobby Evans, another standout member of the best offensive line in college football last season, are fairly sure bets to fall somewhere in the mid-to-late rounds of this year’s draft.

Three other Sooners are borderline draft considerations: Offensive linemen Dru Samia and Ben Powers and kicker/punter Austin Seibert.

Regardless of how it all falls out, this should be a good year for Oklahoma NFL Draft selections, and it all gets started Thursday, beginning at 7 p.m. CT, on ESPN.

Oklahoma has delivered 385 players all-time to the NFL Draft. According to OU athletic department officials, that is the fourth most of any college program. Forty-three of those players were selected in the first round.