Oklahoma football: Two Sooners ranked in ESPN Top 100 college players for 2023
By Chip Rouse
A team loaded with talent — both real and potential – but no actual superstars is the best way to describe Team 129 of Oklahoma football.
This was apparent with one Sooner player selected to the 2023 Preseason All-Big 12 Team and was underscored once again in ESPN’s annual ranking of the 2023 Preseason Top 100 College Football Players.
Two Oklahoma players — LB Danny Stutsman and QB Dillon Gabriel — are listed in the ESPN Top 100 of college players. Stutsman comes in at No. 51 and Gabriel is at No. 60, and that’s it.
In past seasons, especially under Bob Stoops and in the early years of Lincoln Riley’s time as Oklahoma’s head coach, you would have expected four and perhaps as many as five Sooners to appear in a top 100 ranking, and those same five likely would have been preseason All-American candidates as well.
It’s not that you have to have a team loaded with superstars to win in college football, but a program with Oklahoma’s championship history and high performance standards should be able to place more than a couple of players in a top 100 of college players.
The best teams in the country are generally the ones with the best talent, and that is readily confirmed at a quick glance in a review of the players ranked highest on the list and the teams they represent.
For example, Georgia and Michigan, the two teams that rank one and two, respectively, in both the preseason Coaches Poll and Associated Press Top 25, placed three players each in the top 25 of the ESPN Top 100. Six Georgia players were ranked in the top 50, and there were five from Ohio State among the first 50 players on the list.
These kind of numbers have come to be expected from the forementioned teams. Here is the sad testimony for Oklahoma, though. Kansas, a team picked to finish ninth in the 2023 Big 12 Football Preseason Media Poll, placed three players in the ESPN Top 100.
And here’s something else that has to be extremely hurtful for Oklahoma. The No. 1 player in the ESPN Top 100 for this season is former Sooner quarterback and No. 1 recruit Caleb Williams. Another former Sooner quarterback, Spencer Rattler, is No. 93 on the list.
Perhaps this will all change for Oklahoma as Brent Venables continues the replenishment of the relatively bare cupboard of talent he left behind in Norman after bolting for Southern California. Venables and his staff have been successful for a couple of consecutive cycles now in putting together highly rated recruiting classes with both five- and four-star talent. If they are able to develop those players and help them reach their full potential, we’ll be singing a different tune here as far as the Sooners are concerned in the next couple of years.