Oklahoma football: Another LSU QB move is more good news for Sooners

Oklahoma football received some more potentially positive news on Friday concerning the recruitment of No. 1 quarterback prospect Caleb Williams.

Williams announced a week ago, in the “All on the Line” blog he has been writing for Sports Illustrated.com, that he will make his recruiting commitment official on July 4. Several weeks ago, the top-rated 2021 quarterback prospect revealed that he had narrowed his list of schools to three, including Oklahoma.

LSU and Maryland are the other two schools he is considering, and on Friday LSU announced the commitment of highly touted, in-state QB prospect Walker Howard for the class of 2022. Howard is a legacy, the son of former LSU quarterback Jamie Howard, who played for the Tigers from 1992-95.

Why LSU’s Friday announcement is of particular interest to Oklahoma is because a little over a month ago, the reigning college football national champions made similar news with the announcement that four-star QB prospect Grant Nussmeier, rated as the sixth best quarterback in the 2021 class, had committed to the Tigers.

LSU currently has four scholarship quarterbacks on the active roster, including junior Myles Brennan, the heir apparent to Heisman Trophy winning QB Joe Burrow. It would appear that the LSU quarterback room is beginning to get rather crowded — for the immediate future, at least. The other two QBs on the Tiger depth chart consist of a redshirt freshman and two true freshman signal callers.

Now they have added to that with the recent commitments by Nussmeier and Howard for the next two recruiting cycles.

For weeks now, college recruiting analysts have been saying that Williams is leaning heavily toward Lincoln Riley and the Sooners, but with Burrow now departed for the NFL, the current and future QB picture at LSU appeared ripe for bringing in talented new blood. That picture has now dramatically changed.

Although conventional wisdom would say that Oklahoma’s championship resume and the remarkable success quarterbacks have had in Riley’s offensive system would be highly appealing to Williams, you can’t rule out Maryland, despite that program’s recent struggles. For one thing, College Park, Maryland, is a lot closer to Washington, D.C., where Williams is from, than either Baton Rouge or Norman.

The prize for landing the No. 1 dual-threat prospect Williams is more than just the QB himself. He is expected to bring with him several other highly recruited prospects who have been waiting to make their decisions based on where Williams goes.

The Sooner Nation is anxiously awaiting Williams’ decision.

If he dons the crimson hat with the interlocking OU logo on the Fourth of July, which many expect him to do, those extra firework booms and sparkly shower displays raining down from the sky will be from the massive celebration going on in Norman, Oklahoma.