Oklahoma football: Ronnie Perkins’ 3rd-round draft selection bit of a surprise
By Chip Rouse
Defensive end Ronnie Perkins became the second Oklahoma football players selected in the 2021 NFL Draft.
He is now the property of the New England Patriots, who selected Perkins with the 33rd pick in the third round, the 96th player taken overall.
There were no Oklahoma Sooner celebrations on opening night of the draft on Thursday, when 32 first-round selections were announced. Oklahoma joined the party with a pair of draft selections on Friday.
Perkins joined Sooner teammate Creed Humphrey, who was selected by the Kansas City Chiefs with the 31st pick in the second round, 63rd overall.
Humphrey and Perkins are the 17th and 18th Oklahoma players taken in the NFL Draft in the Lincoln Riley head-coaching era and the 398th and 399th OU draft picks all-time, fourth most of any college team.
A number of NFL Draft experts, including ESPN’s Mel Kiper, projected Perkins to go earlier in the draft. In fact, in Kiper’s final mock projection leading into this year’s draft, he had Perkins at No. 40.
Based on pure performance numbers, that early-to-mid second-round positioning is probably a valid assessment, if not a bit higher than that. The reason for Perkins’ draft slide is probably related to the six-game suspension he and two other Sooners received late in the 2019 season for failing a drug test.
Nevertheless, the New England Patriots may have gotten a steal having a player of Perkins’ ability available late in the third round. And it may have worked out favorably for Perkins, as well, becoming part of a program with a future Hall of Fame coach and a record-tying six Super Bowl wins.
One college football writer described Perkins as a players who “camped out in opponents’ backfields in his three years at Oklahoma.” He was a major disruptive force on a Sooner defense that was doing its best to get better the past couple of seasons,
The 6-foot, 2-inch, 253-pound Perkins started seven of his final eight games for Oklahoma his freshman season, in 2018, and finished as the team leader in sacks.
Perkins played in a total of 33 games at OU, but only six last season because of the suspension. He was like a tiger let out of a cage over the final six games last fall. He finished the season with 24 tackles, 10.5 of those for lost yardage, with 5.5 sacks and nine quarterback hurries.
You have to go back to 2015 and 2013 as the only years in the last decade in which an OU offensive skill-position player was not one of the first two Sooners selected in the draft. In the last 10 NFL Drafts, Oklahoma quarterbacks and wide receivers have been the big tickets populating the early rounds of the draft.