Oklahoma football: Looking ahead to the Sooners’ defensive line in 2022

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of articles previewing and breaking down the Oklahoma football position groups for the coming college football season. We begin with an examination of the Sooner defensive line group.

Oklahoma head coach Brent Venables is a known entity within the Sooner Nation, and one of the things he is known for is not promising what he can’t deliver.

One of the first things he promised when he accepted the OU job was a “punishing” defense. That was music to the ears of Oklahoma football fans who have been frustrated for a number of years since Venables left Norman in 2011 to go on to bigger and greater things for a decade at Clemson.

With the return of Venables to the school he served for 13 seasons under head coach Bob Stoops, the Sooners not only are getting a veteran coach who has more than earned his stripes to become a college head coach but one of the college game’s best and most accomplished defensive minds.

Venables beliefs strongly that the formula for a great defense begins with the guys upfront on the defensive line.

Oklahoma loses some key pieces to its defensive front with NFL Draft declarations by nose tackle Perrion Winfrey and defensive end Isaiah Thomas.

Venables’ championship defenses at Clemson were built around big, strong bodies and physicality, so you can expect to see the OU defense transition away from the “Speed D” concept practiced by previous Sooner defensive coordinator Alex Grinch.

Grinch liked a three-man defensive front, but Venables has always been more inclined to feature a four-man defensive line with some three-man fronts mixed in.

The guys likely to see much of the time on OU’s defensive line next season are redshirt junior Jalen Redmond and Tulane transfer Jeffrey Johnson, who started four years for the Green Wave and actually line up on the other side against the Sooners in the season opener last year. The defensive end starters will probably be junior Reggie Grimes, who started for the Sooners in the 2021 Alamo Bowl win over Oregon, and senior Marcus Stripling.

Another player likely to see a lot of action at defensive end next season for the Sooners is sophomore Ethan Downs, an Oklahoma native who saw a lot of reserve duty last season. Another notable backup is senior Josh Ellison, who played in all 13 games in 2021 and started in four.

Oklahoma’s 2022 recruiting class includes four defensive linemen (four-star Gracen Halton, a flip from the Oregon Ducks; three-star edge rusher Kevonte Henry; edge rusher R Mason Thomas, who flipped from Iowa State; three-star down lineman Cedric Roberts), and the Sooners also add Jonah La’ulu, a transfer from Hawaii along with Johnson.

Venables and his staff got a late start filling out the 2022 recruiting class, but they are out in force looking to bolster future defensive line dept through the 2023 and 2024 recruiting classes.

The Sooner coaching staff is expanding the traditional OU recruiting footprint with a new focus on the southern states of Alabama, Georgia and even Florida, where Oklahoma has had some recent success. Not only is the South a hotbed for football talent, that area will serve the Sooners’ competitive interests when they become part of the Southeastern conference.

OU is making a concerted effort in the next couple of recruiting cycles to recruit defensive linemen, specifically defensive ends with length