Oklahoma Sooners' Brent Venables can't help but rave about recently committed player at much-needed position
Sometimes in recruiting, stars don't always mean anything. In fact, I'm willing to bet a lot of schools put the stars to the side and look at the high school player himself, who he played, and what his fundamentals are. I know for sure that's how Brent Venables and the Oklahoma Sooners are when they […]
Sometimes in recruiting, stars don't always mean anything. In fact, I'm willing to bet a lot of schools put the stars to the side and look at the high school player himself, who he played, and what his fundamentals are. I know for sure that's how Brent Venables and the Oklahoma Sooners are when they do their recruiting.
Sure, the Sooners are just outside the top 10 in recruiting class this year, but they don't care or look at that. They look at the player, not the star rating, and this class was no different, especially with one player in particular.
With Jackson Arnold gone in the transfer portal, the Sooners needed another quarterback. Luckily for them, they were able to get a kid to flip on signing day. And what's even better, is that he flipped from Oklahoma State, the Sooners' second biggest rival. Despite Jett Niu, the Sooners' newest quarterback, being just a three-star recruit from Utah, the Sooners' biggest flip may have been him.
Niu is a guy the Sooners love, and his tape speaks for itself. Brent Venables, during the national signing day event in front of media and donors, couldn't stop raving about Niu.
"We had been looking for a young quarterback," Venables said earlier this week. "We had some bad news a few weeks ago, where a quarterback that had been committed to us for a year and a half, that we had been very loyal to, as 25 quarterbacks, we have a long line of guys that wanted to come to the University of Oklahoma, and he's going to go to another school… We looked at several guys, but this is a guy that coach [Ben] Arbuckle actually recruited and had on campus several times at Washington State. He comes from a fantastic program in Salt Lake City.
"He's a winner, has great pocket presence, tremendous accuracy, can really push the ball down the field, has good feet, really good feet. And you will see him climbing the pocket with all sorts of looks. This guy is really polished. Immediately the day he comes in here, he won't have to be a 'developmental' kind of guy that needs a lot of work. We are incredibly excited to get him in just a few weeks."
The Sooners needed another quarterback, and they could still target one in the transfer portal, as there are some pretty good quarterbacks out there with experience that the Sooners could use. Or they could end up going with Michael Hawkins as the starter. In fact, I wouldn't rule out Niu winning the starting job. I mean, why wouldn't he if Venables is saying he's not a developmental quarterback?
Now, I wouldn't bet money on Niu winning the starting job. However, the staff seems to like him a lot.
