Oklahoma football: How can you snub the OU defense on All-Big 12 1st Team?

A little over a week ago the 2020 All-Big 12 Team was announced and three Oklahoma football players received first-team honors.

The problem is, all three of the Sooners were All-Big 12 First-Team selections were offensive players. There were players from Oklahoma on the first-team defensive unit.

Someone please explain to me, how can that possibly be?

All season long, we heard about how good the Oklahoma State defense is. Likewise, West Virginia and Iowa State.

Yet Oklahoma was equal to or better than all three in several overall defensive statistics, and over the Sooners’ last six games, no team in the conference was better defensively than Oklahoma.

Iowa State placed four players on the first-team 2020 All-Big 12 defense and West Virginia had two first-team defensive selections.

Four Sooners did make the All-Big 12 second team on defense — defensive linemen Ronnie Perkins, Perrion Winfrey and Isaiah Thomas and defensive back Tre Brown — but one or more of the four certainly are worthy of first-team consideration.

Perkins could be the best defensive end in the Big 12, but he has played in just five games this season, and that number was just four at the time the Big 12 2020 football awards were announced on Dec. 17, a couple of days before the Big 12 championship game between OU and Iowa State.

The fact that Perkins only played in five games could also be a reason he wasn’t given higher consideration. He was credited with 5.5 sacks in those five games, however, and 9.5 tackles for loss.

Oklahoma recorded the third-most sacks in college football this season (38), and Thomas, linebacker Nik Bonitto and Perkins were responsible for 21 of them.

In their last four games, or since Nov. 1, including the Big 12 Championship, won by the No. 6-ranked Sooners, Oklahoma ranked in the top 10 in 10 different statistical defensive categories

• 1st in sacks per game (4.8)
• 2nd in interceptions per game (2.0)
• 3rd in passing efficiency defense (93.1)
• 3rd in rushing yards defense/carry (2.4)
• 3rd in rushing yards defense/game (77.8)
• 4th in scoring defense/game (14.3)
• 5th in third-down conversion percentage defense (23.9)
• 9th in pass completion percentage (50.3)
• 10th in passing yards/attempt (5.3)
• 10th in total yards allowed/game (303.8)

Over the full season, Oklahoma ranks 19th nationally in total defense (333.6), 2nd in rushing defense (90.6) and fifth in third-down conversion percentage defense (27.7).

To underscore the improvement made by the OU defense in two seasons under defensive coordinator Alex Grinch, just two seasons ago, the Sooners ranked 114th among Division I teams in rushing defense (453.6), 59th in rushing defense (159.8) and 118th in third-down conversion percentage defense (46.4).

So, I circle back to the central question posed by this article: How can there be no…nada…zero Oklahoma players on the 2020 All-Big 12 First-Team Defense? And beyond that, why is there no Oklahoma representation as either Defensive Player of the Year, Defensive Newcomer of the Year or Defensive Lineman of the Year in the conference?

Individual honors are what they are, but the truth is, if you ask any player on the Oklahoma team, they will tell you that winning the Big 12 Championship tops all of this. And the Sooners have reigned over the Big 12 for six consecutive seasons and 14 of the 25 years the Big 12 has been in existence.

And another truth is, the Oklahoma defense can take much of the credit for that this season.