Oklahoma Football: Looking back at Sooners’ NFL draft day dominance

USC may be known for NFL draft dominance over the years, but Oklahoma football doesn’t quite get the love it deserves in this area.

Historically, USC has dominated this particular area, with bragging rights on a range of categories including most players drafted, most first rounders and tied for the most No. 1 overall selections with arch-rival Notre Dame with five each.  However, come April 24, in all likelihood, we’ll be looking at a three-way tie in this particular category with Kyler Murray being the Arizona Cardinals’ presumed first pick.

If this does, in fact, happen, and Murray goes at the top spot where his fellow Sooner, Baker Mayfield went just last year, that will make the Sooners the first team in NFL draft history to ever have quarterbacks selected first overall back to back years. The only other school that has produced consecutive first overall picks is USC with of Ron Yary in1968 and then OJ Simpson being selected at the top spot in 1969.

This type of unprecedented success at the quarterback position will almost certainly serve Lincoln Riley as an invaluable selling point to use on the recruiting trail, particularly with transfers, as both Mayfield and Murray began their careers at other schools before joining the Sooners.

As impressive as consecutive first selections might be,  it won’t be the first time the Sooners made history on draft day. Back in 2010, the Sooners accounted for three of the first four players selected when Sam Bradford was picked first overall, followed by Gerald McCoy and Trent Williams who were taken third and fourth, respectively.

These types of achievements are no small thing and the fact that it’s never happened in the 84-year history of the NFL draft is a testament to how elite Oklahoma has become at the quarterback position.

As the bar continues to be raised in Oklahoma, Lincoln Riley has already achieved consideration as one of the game’s most elite coaches with his most recent example of recruiting genius being none other than Jalen Hurts. The Alabama transfer will certainly have his hands full trying to fill the shoes of the two quarterbacks that came before him, but Hurts has something under his belt that Murray and Mayfield don’t which is a national title. That combined with a 24-2 record as a starter makes him just as good as anyone to take the starting job in Norman next season.

Who knows, maybe by this time next year Hurts will have won the Heisman and be heading into the draft as the presumed first pick. Of course, this feels unlikely at the moment, but if there was ever a school capable of producing a historical draft day scenario it’s Oklahoma.