Football question

[WTSooner]

Early 2027 NFL mock draft: Arch Manning, Dante Moore top potentially elite QB class

“Just wait until the 2027 draft class.” Well, with the '26 draft completed, we can turn our attention to that highly talented group.

www.nytimes.com

An Oklahoma QB going to early in next year’s first round in some projections! Alas …

I would be shocked if Stone didn't go in the first half of the first round.

 

[Eielson]

He won't have to. We'll start getting back to having some early rounders next year.

That said, OU's path to the top isn't to out-recruit everybody. We don't have the money or the resources to do that with any consistency. It's to build around culture and development.

No doubt. BV produced plenty of first rounders his first time here and Clemson. The drought likely breaks next year with Stone. And several other guys up front have a chance if things go well. I'm very excited to see if Okoye puts it together this year. We saw glimpses filling in for RMT.

But mid-round guys like Stutsman, Bowman, Halton, Daniels, etc will always be the backbone of this elite defense. We'll have dudes like that at every position to hold our defense together when the stars like RMT go down.

Elite defense is elite. Simple as that. Dorks can cry about draft night all they want.

 

[WichitaSooner]

It's funny that one of our posters consistently wants to brag about our defense in his praise of Brent as if Brent is simply our DC. It's also amusing that he throws around teams like Indiana and Ohio State in comparison to OU. Let's see, one just pulled off the greatest turnaround in college sports history and is the reigning champion, another won the title two years ago and is always in the playoff, and the third has . . . one top 10 finish, no playoff wins, and two sub-.500 seasons in four years. Yet people who point out that we need more high-end draft picks are "dorks."

It is simply beyond any (rational) debate that we need more first round and second day talent on our roster if we are going to compete for titles, or, at the very least, playoff wins, which should be the expectation. Now, if the goal is simply to have a highly rated defense that can help us win nine or 10 games and produce a day two pick (or two) plus a few Saturday picks, that's a different question. But last I checked, OU doesn't hang banners to celebrate top 5 defenses.

This year was a step in the right direction, given how anemic our drafts had been the previous couple years. And I am not arguing that there isn't reason to think things will be even better in the next year or two. All I posted was that we need more early picks to be in the mix for a title, and somehow Brent's acolyte turned it into a manifesto about "elite defense."