Oklahoma football: Wide-receiver balance a key Sooner weapon for 2022
By Chip Rouse
If you thought the Oklahoma football passing game was a major element in the Sooner’s high-powered offense of recent seasons, wait till the 2022 season gets underway.
The Sooners have been blessed with outstanding quarterback play over the past seven seasons along with a full arsenal of speedy, sure-handed receivers — running backs, H-backs, tight ends and wide receivers all included — in an Air Raid offense designed to stretch the field and score quickly and often.
All of that worked out very nicely for Lincoln Riley and the Sooners, who finished in the top-three in the nation in total offense — and twice No. 1 in the country — in four of the seven seasons Riley was on or heading the Oklahoma coaching staff.
Throwing the football was obviously a key feature of the Air Raid offense, but to tell you the truth, the Sooners ability to run the ball effectively is what set up the success of the passing game.
Riley is now gone, along with a pair of former No. 1 quarterback recruits in Spencer Rattler and Caleb Williams (both at one time leading Heisman candidates) and four of OU’s top five receivers from a year ago, and there is a new sheriff in town (offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby) running the Oklahoma offense along with a new starting quarterback.
Marvin Mims returns as the OU leader in receiving yards the past two season, and Theo Wease, who missed practically the entire 2021 season because of injury is back and healthy as a highly dependable and productive No. 2. Wease was second to Mims in receiving yards in 2020.
For whatever reason, Mario Williams, Mike Woods and Jaden Haselwood were the primary targets with Caleb Williams the quarterback the second half of the season with Mims, the team’s leading receiver the year before as a freshman, receiving less targets than the breakout year before.
Mims should again emerge as the team’s leading receiver and deep threat in 2022, and Wease, Drake Stoops and Jalil Farooq are expected to take on bigger roles than the year before.
The Sooners added Arizona State transfer LV Bunkley-Shelton and J.J. Hester from Missouri to the receiving corps in the offseason. Bunkley-Shelton was third on the team at Arizona State last season with 33 catches for 418 yards and two touchdowns. Hester was Missouri’s highest-rated recruit in 2019. He redshirted in 2020 and played sparingly for Mizzou in 2021, but still caught 12 passes for 225 yards a couple of receiving TDs and a team-high 18. 8 yards per catch. Both are redshirt juniors.
There are also two highly rated freshman receivers that are probably going to see a lot of the field this season. Jayden Gibson, from Winter Garden, Florida, stands 6 feet, 5 inches, and Nic Anderson, from Katy, Texas, is 6-foot, 4 inches. They provide an advantage Sooner receivers haven’t had in recent seasons: height and length. Both will be mismatches for opponents: Gibson with his length and Anderson with his length coupled with his explosiveness.
Those are the wide receivers quarterback Dillon Gabriel will have at his disposal, but defenses are also going to have to account for the Sooner running backs, especially senior running back Eric Gray, who caught 23 passes last season. There’s also H-back/tight end Brayden Willis, filling the versatile role in which Jeremiah Hall and Dimitri Flowers preceded him.
"“I love the chemistry,” head coach Brent Venables said about his receiving corps during Big 12 Media Days last month. “They’re dependable. They’re reliable. They’re accountable.“But they got a toughness to them I really love,” he said."
What could make this group more productive and dangerous for opponents to handle than was the case a year ago, for sure, but throughout the Riley coaching era is their interchangeability and the ability of the Sooner offense to distribute the ball to multiple receiving targets, making it difficult for the defense to pinpoint coverage.
And if OU is able to run the ball effectively and stretch the field, factored in with the up-tempo offense Lebby plans to run, the Sooner receivers should have a hey day.
The same explosive, quick-strike Oklahoma offense, but with different looks from a different, super-charged, smash-mouthed operating scheme.
Stop us if you can…