Oklahoma football: Sooners lose ground in USA Today updated preseason top 25

With spring practice cancelled because of the coronavirus threat, not much has changed for Oklahoma football since the final game last season, yet the 2020 Sooners seem to have lost some favor with the way-too-early prognosticators at USA Today.

Later in April, or after the major FBS schools had finished out their spring practice workouts and held their spring games as a finale, would typically be the time that publications, like USA Today, would be putting together their post-spring top-25 updates.

But the time that we are emersed in currently has been anything but typical, according to USA Today staff writer Paul Myerberg, and with that in mind that publication has gone ahead and issued an updated college football preseason top 25.

With nothing really more to go on than what we already knew back in early January, you would think the preseason rankings would remain basically the same as the previous iteration. But there are several changes in USA Today’s newest version, even among the top 10 teams.

And one of those changes involved Oklahoma, which dropped one spot in the USA Today post-spring rankings, to No. 6. Clemson remains at No. 1, followed by Ohio State, Georgia, Oregon and Alabama. (Click here to see the earlier USA Today rankings that came out in mid-January following the CFP national championship game).

Oregon jumped two spots from its earlier ranking, moving past the Sooners in the process, and Alabama fell three spots from its No. 2 position in mid-January.

The uncertainty surrounding presumptive new starting quarterback Spencer Rattler, who, Myerberg points out, takes over “with little in the way of meaningful snaps under pressure” appears to be the reason for moving Oklahoma down a spot. In USA Today’s earlier 2020 top-25 projection, the publication offered that “the OU offense looks to be in strong hands with young quarterback Spencer Rattler.”