Oklahoma football: Sooners lose another WR to transfer portal
By Chip Rouse
Another Oklahoma football wide receiver is transferring out of the program.
Believe it or not, that is not a bad problem to have. Why? Because it is indicative of the wealth of riches the Sooners are blessed, at least for the short term, at the wide-receiver position.
The way the Sooners look at it, it’s simply a matter of addition by subtraction.
Freshman receiver Trevon West has revealed he is entering the transfer portal, according to an article on Wednesday by Parker Thune of 247Sports.
West is the second Oklahoma wide receiver to elect to transfer this offseason.
Charleston Rambo, who was expected to be the Sooners leading receiver entering the 2020 season but saw diminished playing time as the year progressed announced in January that he was entering the transfer portal. The former four-star prospect from Cedar Hill, Texas, a Dallas suburb, is headed to Miami to play next season for the Hurricanes.
West was a three-star prospect and member of the Sooners’ 2020 recruiting class. He caught four passes for 59 yards in his college debut in Oklahoma’s opening game last season. He played in seven other games, including the Big 12 Championship and the Sooners’ Cotton Bowl win over Florida, but it was generally when the game was well in hand. He had no catches after the season-opening game.
Oklahoma is loaded with talent at wide receiver looking ahead to next season. Returning form OU’s six-time defending Big 12 championship 2020 squad are former five-star receivers Marvin Mims, who led the Sooners with 37 catches for 610 yards and nine touchdowns as a freshman, Jadon Haselwood, himself a former No. 1 wide receiver in the class of 2019, Theo Wease and Trejan Bridges.
Wease was the second-leading OU receiver last season, matching Mims’ 37 catches (for 530 yards and four touchdowns). By year’s end, Wease had become one of quarterback Spencer Rattler’s favorite targets.
Adding to that is a highly touted group of wide receivers in the 2021 class, which includes five-star prospect Mario Williams, rated the No. 4 WR in the 2021 class, and four-star prospects Cody Jackson and Jalil Farooq.
And there’s also four-star prospect Billy Bowman, classified as an athlete, who decommitted from Texas to sign with Oklahoma. Bowman is a multi-sport high-school star, with exceptional speed and athleticism, who could end up playing wideout or on defense.
And we haven’t even mentioned tight-end Austin Stogner, who will be a junior and was a highly recruited receiver in the same class that brought Haselwood, Wease, Bridges and quarterback Rattler to the Sooners.
One of the things that makes Lincoln Riley’s offense so dangerous is that it also utilizes the ability of the running backs (Kennedy Brooks, Seth McGowan and Marcus Major) and H-backs/tight ends (Jeremiah Hall, Brayden Willis and Mikey Henderson) to catch passes out of the backfield.
There isn’t a more competitive position for playing time anywhere on the entire Oklahoma depth chart than at wide receiver. And when you are one of the most, if not the most, prolific, high-scoring offenses in college football, that is a wonderful problem to have.