Oklahoma football NFL Draft history lesson

This is the 78th year of the annual National Football League Draft, which began in 1936. At least one Oklahoma football players has been selected in every year but two.

A total of 410 players who played football at Oklahoma have been taken in the draft. That’s the fourth most by any college team and averages out at 5.32 OU selections per draft year. Only twice, in 1962 and 1995, was an Oklahoma player not selected.

Forty-eight OU players have been selected in the first round of the draft, with five of those selected No. 1 overall. To put the latter point into perspective, Alabama quarterback Bryce Young was the first player taken in this year’s NFL Draft in Kansas City. He is the first Alabama player to be selected No. 1 overall.

When Oklahoma RB Eric Gray was selected in the fifth round of this year’s draft by the New York Giants with the 172nd overall pick, it marked the 16th consecutive year in which at least four OU players were selected in the draft.

There is a lot of history contained within Oklahoma’s 76 years of active participation in the draft, but two stand out above all the rest.

The biggest NFL Draft year in Oklahoma football history was in 1988 during Barry Switzer’s Sooner coaching era. Thirteen Sooners were selected in the 1988 draft. During those years the draft process consisted of 12 rounds. An Oklahoma player was selected in each of the first eight rounds, including two first-round picks: CB Ricky Dixon, selected No. 5 overall, and TE Keith Jackson, No. 13 overall.

Since 1994, when the NFL Draft process was changed to seven rounds, Georgia owns the record for the most draft picks from one team in any single year with 15 draft selections from the 2021 Bulldog team, including five first-rounders.

While 1988 was a banner year in terms of the number of Oklahoma players taken, but the 2010 NFL Draft was the best for OU first-round and top-10 selections. Four Sooners were taken in the opening round that year, including the No. 1 overall pick, QB Sam Bradford. In addition to Bradford, who at the time was the third No. 1 overall pick from Oklahoma in the history of the draft (there are now five), three of the first four draft selections that year were OU players: No. 3 DT Gerald McCoy and No. 4 OL Trent Williams. Oklahoma TE Jermaine Gresham was also a first-round selection in 2010, going with the 19th overall pick.

Only Ndamukong Suh, a defensive tackle from Nebraska, prevented Oklahoma from having the top three selections in the 1988 draft. Suh went to the Detroit Lions with the second overall pick.

Oklahoma is in the NFL Draft record book as the only school to have No. 1 overall draft plcks in back-to-back years and both at the quarterback position (Baker Mayfield in 2018 and Kyler Murray in 2019. The Sooners are also one of just three teams that have had as many as five No. 1 overall picks.