The 2023 Oklahoma football roster contains 42 newcomers. A good number of those newcomers were on campus and participating in spring football, but they are still new to OU’s systems and way of doing things.
It is a very talented group overall, especially in the infusion of defensive talent, and several of the newcomers are expected to see the field early and have an immediate impact. For those Sooners returning for the 2023 season, including seven starters on defense and five on offense, headed by starting quarterback Dillon Gabriel, the expectation is that a year within the system and overall culture should equate to better results in 2023.
In theory, that’s the way things should work out, besides in the eyes of college football experts and certainly within the Sooner Nation, things can’t get much worse than what occurred in Brent Venables first season as Oklahoma head coach. The Sooners found themselves on the wrong side of a winning season — something highly uncharacteristic of an Oklahoma football team in the modern era — with just six wins and seven losses.
Looking back at those disappointing seven 2023 losses, however, four of them were by just three points, including a Cheez-It Bowl loss to a Florida State team that is projected by many to be a top-10 team this season.
Brent Venables and the Oklahoma coaching staff believe they can turn those close losses into wins in the 2023 season with even a slight improvement in defensive play, which Venables said during the spring practice period he expected to be “on a different planet” in the coming season.
There’s no question that the defense is going to have to be better if Oklahoma is to return to its historic winning ways, but it has to be a total team effort, individual and collective accountability and complementary play on both sides of the ball.
As always, the Sooners are loaded with talent, almost 40 percent of which, though, have yet to play one down in an Oklahoma jersey. The Sooners don’t have any true super stars or lockdown All-America candidates, as they’ve been notably blessed with in recent seasons, which means OU is going to need players to step up and out of their comfort zones and deliver above and beyond expectation levels.
These kind of performances happen each and every season and in every game. When it becomes consistent over an entire season, it can be a real difference maker and outcome changer.
Here are five Sooners who are in a good place to have breakthrough 2023 seasons: