Oklahoma football: Cowboys, Bengals becoming homes for former Sooners
By Chip Rouse
Including the four Oklahoma football players selected in the 2020 NFL Draft, 40 Sooners are presently represented on the rosters of 22 NFL teams.
The Sooner with the longest active NFL tenure in this group is Adrian Peterson. The four-time All-Pro and three-time NFL rushing leader has completed 13 pro seasons since he left Oklahoma in 2007 and will be in his third season as a member of the Washington Redskins.
Three NFL teams — the Cincinnati Bengals, Dallas Cowboys and Baltimore Ravens — have four former Oklahoma players on their roster.
Prior to last week, the Ravens led all NFL teams with four Sooners on the active roster, but with Dallas taking a couple of Oklahoma teammates in this year’s draft, and with the Bengals earlier in the week reacquiring OU career rushing leader Samaje Perine as a free agent, those two teams matched Baltimore, each with a quartet of players who played collegiately for Oklahoma.
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Perine, a fourth-round draft pick, the 114th player overall. by the Washington Redskins in 2017, played the 2018 season with Peterson in Washington before being released by the Redskins last season and picked up by Cincinnati.
On Dec. 24 last year, the Miami Dolphins acquired Perine off of the Bengals’ practice squad for the Dolphins 2019 season finale. The Bengals reacquired for former OU running back this past week.
Cincinnati now has three former Sooner running backs on its roster. Joe Mixon and Perine were part of the best running back tandem in college football at Oklahoma in the 2015 and ’16 seasons. Perine exceeded 1,000 yards all three seasons he was at OU, and in 2016 he and Mixon both rushed for more than 1,000 yards.
The Bengals also have Rodney Anderson on their roster. The former OU running back was drafted by Cincinnati in the sixth round of the 2019 NFL Draft. He missed most of last season with a knee injury, something that plagued his throughout his OU career.
Mixon has had the best NFL career of the three so far. The lead running back on the Bengals’ depth chart, Mixon has run for more than 1,000 yards in each of the last two seasons.
The fourth Sooner on the Cincinnati roster is linebacker Jordan Phillips. Phillips, Mixon and Perine were all part of the 2017 NFL Draft class.
A year ago, Dallas had no players from Oklahoma on its roster, but as result of the draft and offseason pickups, the Cowboys are now the home of four former Sooners.
In addition to CeeDee Lamb, who the Cowboys selected with the 17th overall pick in the opening round of this year’s NFL Draft, and defensive tackle Neville Gallimore, who went to Dallas in the third round, also acquired free agents Gerald McCoy and tight end Blake Bell.
McCoy, an All-American defensive tackle at Oklahoma, was the No. 3 overall player selected in the 2010 draft, by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. In that particular draft year, three of the first four players selected (No. 1 Sam Bradford, McCoy and No. 4 Trent Williams) were Oklahoma Sooners.
McCoy played nine seasons with the Bucs and spent last season with the Carolina Panthers. Bell, a converted quarterback, was drafted in the fourth round in 2015 by the San Francisco 49ers. He spent last season with the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs.
Former Sooner receivers Marquise “Hollywood” Brown and Mark Andrews had stellar years for Baltimore last season. The Ravens also have offensive tackles Ben Powers and Orlando Brown on their roster. “Hollywood” Brown and Powers were 2019 draft picks by the Ravens, in the first and fourth rounds, respectively. Andrews and Orlando Brown were third-round selections in the 2018 draft.
Other NFL teams with multiple Sooners on their roster are Washington with three and the Los Angeles Rams, Philadelphia Eagles, Atlanta Falcons, Arizona Cardinals, Cleveland Browns and Kansas City Chiefs, all with two apiece.