Oklahoma Football: 3 early storylines heading into 2020 season

Oklahoma football has been dominant in Big 12 play in recent years. Can the Sooners take the next step and play for a national championship?

There are two ways to look at Lincoln Riley and the Oklahoma Sooners and they can both be true at the same time.

On one hand, Oklahoma has won five straight Big 12 championships, it’s consistently one of the top-ranked offenses in the country under the brilliant play-calling of Lincoln Riley, it has made the playoff four out of the past five seasons and produced two of the past three Heisman winners and last years runner-up.

On the other hand, Oklahoma consistently yields bad defenses that hold it back, it’s been blown out in three of the four playoff games that it has been involved in and after last year’s epic playoff disaster against LSU, I think it is fair to question Riley’s ability to win a national championship.

With Jalen Hurts off to the NFL, redshirt freshman Spencer Rattler is expected to become the next quarterback for the Sooners. Senior running back Trey Sermon, who was expected to be the No. 2 ball carrier this season, has recently transferred to Ohio State.

For a program that has won so much recently, Oklahoma has quite a few storylines and these are the three biggest heading into this season.