Sooners' new general manager bringing an NFL perspective to Oklahoma's future roster construction and scouting
If you've paid any attention to NFL discourse during the offseason over the years, you've likely heard a debate revolving around "positional value" in football. This specifically refers to roster building and the proper strategies for doing so. Positional value means exactly what it sounds like. It is a strategy meant to assign a value […]
If you've paid any attention to NFL discourse during the offseason over the years, you've likely heard a debate revolving around "positional value" in football. This specifically refers to roster building and the proper strategies for doing so.
Positional value means exactly what it sounds like. It is a strategy meant to assign a value to certain positions in order to decide how best to spend resources in building out a roster. Positions with higher value, like quarterbacks, earn more than "lower" positions like an offensive guard.
Many people discard positional value, while many others believe in its importance. For the Oklahoma Sooners, it sounds like new general manager Jim Nagy will be bringing an emphasis on positional value to Norman as he assumes his new duties in building the future of the Sooners.
I'm curious to see just how this translates into college football moving forward. It's a different ballgame than the NFL in terms of valuable positions, even if the off-the-field models are becoming more similar.
Running backs in college are several times more valuable than they are viewed in the NFL. For many teams, safety will be vastly more important as well. On the flip side, tight end is more valuable at an NFL level than it is for many college teams.
Nagy saying "I need to know which players in his [Venables] system are really valuable because we can't spend money everywhere" is a smart indicator of the synergy that he and Venables will have on building out a roster that fits the vision of both Nagy and Venables. This will be crucial to the future of the talent at Oklahoma, and it's somewhat relieving to hear Nagy speak about adapting his views to work alongside Venables.
As it relates to Oklahoma under Brent Venables, linebacker feels like a position that is vastly more important than how a traditional NFL team would view it. Conversely, Oklahoma has ignored tight end recruiting and development under tight ends coach Joe Jon Finley for several years now, so its importance feels relatively low.
It will be interesting to see just where the Sooners invest in moving forward. Roster construction has never been like this before in college football, and this kind of transparency will bring some light to how different coaches value different positions in each of their scheme instead of simply getting as much talent as they possibly can.
Part of the decision-making that went into hiring Jim Nagy into this role was his ability to identify talent as a longtime NFL scout. If he can bring that NFL vision and adapt it to college football and Venables' scheme, I feel confident in the future of Oklahoma's talent.
