Oklahoma
Oklahoma RB Taylor Tatum Showed Why He’s Ready for More Action
NORMAN — Does Oklahoma have a running back controversy?
Of course not. It’s one game into the season. Friday’s opponent, Temple, wasn’t very good. The Sooners face a daunting SEC schedule. Over the next three months, DeMarco Murray is going to need every one of them at different times this year.
But no one can deny that OU freshman Taylor Tatum looked pretty special in his college debut against the Owls.
“Yeah, you can see his explosiveness, and he’s got great power,” coach Brent Venables said Friday night.
Murray, Venables’ running backs coach and himself a Sooner gridiron legend, was serving a one-game NCAA suspension for Level II recruiting violations. He wasn’t on the sidelines Friday. But if he was, would he have gotten Tatum a little more work?
Tatum, a freshman from Longview, TX, went into the opener listed fourth on the depth chart. He finished with just four carries. But he led the team with 66 yards rushing as the Sooners rolled to an easy 51-3 win.
“Oh, it felt great,” Tatum said. “And there’s no other place I’d rather do it. Just all the people, the crowd was definitely into it tonight. The stadium felt even bigger when you’re (in) it – better than when you’re a recruit on the sideline looking in. So … you just have a burst of adrenaline. I haven’t been hit since last year, like November. So just getting hit again, getting live-action speed again was definitely a great feeling.”
Tatum sliced off a 4-yard run on his first carry in the first quarter, a sudden, one-cut burst up the middle in which he made a defender miss at the line of scrimmage.
His second carry came midway through the fourth quarter, when he got the offense off the goal line with a 19-yard scamper.
“Just be a running back,” Tatum said. “Find the hole, get vertical, make a couple moves and just make as many yards as you can.”
Two plays later, he caught a short pass from Michael Hawkins and gained 3 yards.
On the next play, he took a handoff up the middle, accelerated outside to the right and sprinted upfield for a 35-yard gain, the Sooners’ longest run of the night.
“I’m sure I just saw the hole,” Tatum said. “It was probably designed inside run. Linebacker fit the hole he was supposed to fit. I just – we both did our jobs. Found a hole, made a play. That’s probably what happened.”
Then he finished off that drive by taking a third-down option pitch from Hawkins, cutting upfield and scooting inside the pylon for OU’s only third-down conversion and final touchdown.
“I feel like on the whole we did pretty good,” Tatum said. “You score that many points, you’re doing something good. But obviously there’s always something to get better. Receivers blocked their butts off, o-line blocked their butts off. We still had some missed assignments. Everybody had something they could improve on tonight. Obviously we’re gonna enjoy the win, we’re gonna look forward and watch the film, but there’s always something to get better. So we’ll probably enjoy the win tonight, watch the film and get better for next week.”
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Tatum didn’t get to OU until he arrived for summer school in June. The presumption was that since he didn’t enroll in January and missed winter workouts and didn’t participate in spring practice, he would be behind.
He certainly didn’t look behind.
“Runs through trash, and he’s got excellent top-end speed,” Venables said. “Really good natural instincts carrying the ball.”
Tatum’s last real competition came during the spring, when he played baseball for Longview.
Even though it’s been while since he’s run with the football, Friday night felt very familiar to him.
“Oh yeah. For sure,” he said. “It took me a little bit on the summer and the fall camp to get my groove, but once I got that groove, I feel like, just keep getting better and better, and enjoy the process also.”
Oklahoma, of course, has a returning starter in third-year sophomore Gavin Sawchuk, who ran for 744 yards and nine touchdowns last year, averaging 6.2 yards per carry as he racked up five straight 100-yard games to finish the season.
The Sooners also have junior Jovantae Barnes, who gained 510 yards and five touchdowns as a true freshman but fought through a foot injury last year.
Also ahead of Tatum (they’re separated by an “OR” on the depth chart) is fourth-year junior Sam Franklin, a transfer from Tennessee-Martin who broke a 30-yard run on Friday and also showed elite speed.
Murray will also try to find carries this season for redshirt freshman Kalib Hicks and maybe even true freshman Xavier Robinson.
It’ll be competitive all season, and Tatum will get what he earns. He was a consensus 4-star running back prospect coming out of high school, rated the No. 1 running back in the nation by 247 Sports, Rivals and ESPN and No. 2 by On3. Last year he became Longview’s career leader in rushing touchdowns, with 53, and ran for 1,463 yards and 23 total TDs as a senior, 1,840 yards and 36 scores as a junior.
But high school accolades mean nothing to Murray when it comes to playing time.
Like Venables said, Tatum is a smooth, natural athlete, an asset in the passing game, an elite baseball player (he’ll head down to L. Dale Mitchell Park to help Skip Johnson’s squad next spring) who also excelled at track in high school (he anchored Longview’s 4×100 and 4×200 relays and won the district title with a 21.70 in the 2000).
Alabama wanted Tatum. So did Ohio State, Oregon, USC and just about everyone else. But OU won out because of the way Venables and Johnson worked together in recruiting him.
Oklahoma’s running back carries may be spread out among the group, like they were early last season. But it’s also likely that Murray finds his go-to guy and rides the hot hand — like he did late last season.
“I feel like we all know our role,” Tatum said. “I feel like we all push each other to a certain limit. I feel like we all have certain things that we do good. Everybody has their own little critiques and everything, but I don’t really (think) you have to get in and make a play. You just be yourself and run and do your job and be a good running back. Everybody’s here for a reason. It’s RBU. So we all just push each other.”
PORTAL TRACKER
Oklahoma State’s newly constructed staff got on the board Saturday, picking up portal commitments on offense and special special teams, so how about some defense?
Three Big 12 defenders have been linked with Oklahoma State via the transfer portal over the past few days, including a pair of former OK Preps standouts. Here’s a look.
Kanijal Thomas, CB, Kansas State
Thomas is an Oklahoman, playing his high school ball at Del City. He visited Stillwater on Saturday, according to On3.
He was a redshirt sophomore for the Wildcats in 2025, playing in seven games as a true freshman in 2023 before an injury saw his sophomore season end two games in.
Thomas played in eight games at K-State in 2025, finishing the year with five tackles, a PBU and a forced fumble. According to PFF, he gave up four catches for 21 yards this season on seven targets.
Now listed at 5-foot-11, 186 pounds, Thomas was a three-star prospect coming out of Del City in the 2023 class. He picked K-State over offers from OSU, Texas Tech, Iowa State and others.
Maurion Horn, CB, Texas Tech
Another Oklahoma kid, Maurion Horn has spent the past four seasons in Lubbock, where he has played in 30 games during that time. According to 247Sports, Horn will visit Stillwater on Monday.
He started all of Tech’s games in 2024, finishing that season with 56 tackles, three tackles for loss and five pass breakups. He played in seven games and dealt with some sort of injury, appearing on Tech’s availability report in Weeks 4, 14 and 15.
Horn has been targeted 88 times in his career, per PFF, where he has allowed just 47 catches.
He was a four-star prospect in the 2022 recruiting class out of Broken Arrow. He ended up picking Tech over offers from OSU, OU, Texas, Baylor, Arkansas and others.
Braylon Rigsby, Edge, Texas Tech
Listed at 6-foot-2, 275 pounds, Braylon Rigsby will join his Texas Tech teammate in Stillwater on Monday, according to 247Sports.
He’s played in 26 games across the past two seasons in Lubbock, accumulating 25 tackles and three tackles for loss during that time.
Per PFF, Rigsby has 21 QB pressures in his career to go with two QB hits.
He hails from Woodsville, Texas, which is near the Louisiana border. Rigsby was a three-star prospect in the 2023 recruiting class, coming in as the No. 861 player in the 247Sports Composite ranking.
Elite Delta Force captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife about 2 a.m. Saturday morning.
It happened in the Caracas, the capitol of Venezuela.
Social media posts how strikes ordered by President Trump into Venezuela and its military bases.
News 9 political analyst Scott Mitchell said the relationship between the U.S. and Latin America has not always been smooth and adds so many dominos will fall as a result.
“Venezuela is the beachhead for our adversaries that’s Cuba and Russia and China and Iran and it looks as if this latest situation where that they were assembling Iran swift attack boats that was sort of the last straw,” said Mitchell.
Retired war correspondent Mike Boettcher said the planning on capturing Maduro began in mid-December.
He adds Venezuela is a massive oil supplier whose oil has been taken off the market for years because of sanctions.
He has concerns about what comes next.
“That disrupts a lot of things.It even has an effect on the war in Ukraine, as Russia, you know, has used higher oil revenue because Venezuela’s oil was off the market.Oil prices went up.It helps fund the war in Ukraine,” said Boettcher.
The ramifications could even reach Oklahoma.
“China gets a 30 percent discount on the oil.If Venezuela goes for a more legitimate government and the sanctions are lifting, then they’re flooding the oil markets and that means bad news for the Oklahoma economy,” added Mitchell.
Following the capture of Maduro, President Trump said the U.S. will take control of the oil reserves in Venezuela.
Sources also say there are plans from the current administration to recruit American companies to invest billions of dollars in their oil industry.
A verified video shows the current state of Venezuela after the military operation.
Oklahoma State EDGE Kyran Duhon plans to enter the NCAA transfer portal, On3 has learned. Duhon was a member of the 2024 recruiting class.
Duhon spent one year at Oklahoma State, logged 16 total tackles (eight solo) across nine games. He began his career at UTEP, where he had a productive true freshman season, Duhon finished 2024 with 43 total tackles, including seven sacks and two PBUs.
At UTEP, his one season there resulted in second team All-Conference USA honors. He was also named to the On3 True Freshman All-America Team as well as the the Conference USA All-Freshman team.
However, Duhon’s stay in Stillwater didn’t go as expected. Oklahoma State finished the season with a 1-11 record, which included the Cowboys firing longtime head coach Mike Gundy after a 1-2 start. Doug Meacham was named interim head coach but ended the year 0-9.
Eric Morris has since been named as the program’s next head coach. He comes from North Texas, which finished with an 11-2 record and a trip to the American Conference championship game this past season. However, it doesn’t appear that Duhon will be sticking around during the changing of the guard at Oklahoma State this offseason.
Before college, Duhon was the No. 1,706 overall player in the class, and was recruited as the the No. 165 linebacker during the cycle, per the Rivals Industry Rankings, which is a proprietary algorithm that compiles ratings and rankings from all four primary recruiting media services. He was ranked as the No. 242 overall player out of Texas.
Once the NCAA transfer portal opens on Jan. 2, players can officially enter their names in the NCAA transfer portal and go on to initiate contact with their preferred schools. The portal will be open for 15 days and close on Jan. 16.
Notably, players who are on teams competing in the national championship game are allowed five extra days to make their portal decision. The College Football Playoff championship game will be played on Jan. 19, so the players on those teams will be allowed until Jan. 24 to enter the portal and choose their next school.
To keep up with the latest players on the move, check out On3’s Transfer Portal wire. The On3 Transfer Portal Instagram account and Twitter account are excellent resources to stay up to date with the latest moves.
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