Associated Press

NORMAN, Okla. (AP) — It’s finally Jackson Arnold’s time.

The former five-star quarterback opens the season as No. 16 Oklahoma’s starter after waiting behind Dillon Gabriel last season. He will lead the Sooners against Temple on Friday night in his second career start.

Arnold steps into a position that has produced like few others in college football. Oklahoma has featured Gabriel, Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray, Jalen Hurts, Spencer Rattler and Caleb Williams at quarterback in the past decade. Mayfield and Murray each won the Heisman Trophy at Oklahoma and Williams played a year with the Sooners before transferring to USC and winning a Heisman there. Mayfield, Murray and Williams were No. 1 overall picks in the NFL draft.

Arnold understood the history when he signed. He hopes to someday have a statue at Heisman Park across from Memorial Stadium – an honor previously bestowed upon Oklahoma’s seven Heisman winners, including four quarterbacks.

“It’s a ton to live up to,” he said. “But at the same time, I want to create a name for myself, create a legacy for myself, and really, I don’t want to be compared to one of those guys. I want to be the best version of myself, and hopefully I can get a statue out there one day.”

Arnold passed for 361 yards with two touchdowns and three interceptions in his first college start, a loss Arizona in the Alamo Bowl last season. He left an impression on Temple coach Stan Drayton.

“That was a very talented football player that we saw playing quarterback against Arizona,” Drayton said.

Backup quarterback

Freshman Michael Hawkins won the battle with Casey Thompson for the spot behind Arnold.

Thompson has passed for 5,338 yards in a career that took him to Texas, Nebraska and Florida Atlantic before he landed where his father, Charles Thompson, played quarterback in the 1980s.

Coach Brent Venables considered it no small feat that Hawkins earned the spot over such a proven veteran. Venables said Thompson has been a great mentor for the younger quarterbacks, but Hawkins performed better overall.

“Mike has shown us a lot of things,” Venables said. “Tremendous playmaker, really focused and locked-in. Fundamentally sound. He’s got a big arm. He’s a quick decision maker. He can improvise and keep his eyes down the field. He can beat you with his legs. As I said, there’s not a route that he can’t excel in.”

Not naming a QB

Drayton resisted naming a starting quarterback between Forrest Brock, Evan Simon and Tyler Douglas. It wasn’t that he hadn’t picked one, it was that being undecided seems to have helped the Temple quarterback room.

“What I’m not going to do today is announce a starting quarterback,” he said during his weekly availability. “I have a great competitive situation going on in that room right now, and I don’t want to lose that edge. Iron sharpens iron mindset, and everybody in that room is is getting better.”

Temple Tuff

Temple has named its Temple Tuff players as selected by their teammates who will wear single digit numbers this season.

This year’s honorees are linebacker D.J. Woodbury (0), receiver Ian Stewart (1), safety Andreas Keaton (2), defensive end Tra Thomas (3), cornerback Elijah Deravil (4), receiver Dante Wright (5), defensive tackle Latrell Jean (7), tight end James Della Pesca (8) and defensive tackle Demerick Morris (9).

Stewart is the only one returning from last season.

Anderson out

Oklahoma receiver Nic Anderson will miss the opener as he recovers from an undisclosed injury. The 6-foot-4 sophomore caught 38 passes for 798 yards and 10 touchdowns last season. Oklahoma already had announced it had lost receiver Jayden Gibson for the season with a knee injury.

Andrel Anthony, who led Oklahoma in yards receiving last season before being knocked out for the year with a leg injury, will be available.

Quotable

Drayton, after being pressed about the quarterback situation: “That’s for us, not for y’all. I apologize.”

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Now that South Dakota State is (sort of) in the game — that is, EA Sports College Football 25, of course I had to simulate their Week 1 clash with No. 17 Oklahoma State at Boone Pickens Stadium.

It is, of course, not a completely accurate simulation. While the game already comes with the Cowboys roster fully loaded and the players accurately rated, I had to create the Jackrabbits, and edit the prefabricated roster as well as I could to somewhat resemble the Jackrabbits.

My SDSU creation has an overall team rating of a 72, compared to an 84 for OSU, for what that’s worth.

Instead of ‘playing’ the game myself, I set it up and let the computer control both teams.

Here’s what happened:

– The Jacks got the ball first and moved quickly into the red zone on passes to Davin Stoffel and Devon Cole, but back to back sacks pushed SDSU all the way back to the 35, and Hunter Dustman’s 52-yard FG was wide right, and SDSU came up empty on an 11-play drive.

– The SDSU defense forces a 3 and out.

– The Jacks again move into the red zone, are again pushed back by a sack, and again miss a field goal. Still 0-0 despite two good drives for SDSU.

– The Cowboys take the lead on a 55-yard streak from Alan Bowman to Rashod Owens. 7-0 OSU.

Halftime

– OSU goes 3 and out, the drive killed by a Randy Keumonge sack.

– SDSU ties it up on a 58-yard drive that ends in a touchdown pass from Mark Gronowski to Griffin Wilde and includes a fourth-down conversion in the red zone.

– OSU answers with a 10-play, 82-yard drive, with Ollie Gordon taking it in from 3-yards out to make it 14-7.

– A pick six by OSU’s Korie Black on an underthrown fade puts the Cowboys up 21-7 with just over a minute to play in the game.

– Gronowski is sacked on three straight plays to end the game.

Final score: Oklahoma State 21, SDSU 7.

The low score is largely due to the game being played with just five minute quarters (I didn’t have the patience to sit through full 15s), but otherwise played fairly realistically. The Jacks had success moving the ball, but the OSU pass rush on 3rd down killed their drives. The Jacks did a good job on Ollie Gordon, but that left them susceptible to the pass and the veteran QB Bowman made them pay.
It will be interesting to see if any of that plays out on Saturday.

Final stats:
SDSU
Gronowski 19-24, 167 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT
Amar Johnson 11-35
Griffin Wilde 6-56, 1 TD
Devon Cole 4-30
Cale Reeder 6 tackles
Daeton Mcgaughy 6 tackles, 1 sack

OSU
Bowman 8-10, 150 yards, 1 TD
Gordon 10-34, 1 TD
Collin Oliver 3 sacks, 10 tackles
Collin Clay 4 tackles, 1.5 sacks

Matt Zimmer is a Sioux Falls native and longtime sports writer. He graduated from Washington High School where he played football, legion baseball and developed his lifelong love of the Minnesota Twins and Vikings. After graduating from St. Cloud State University, he returned to Sioux Falls, and began a long career in amateur baseball and sports reporting. Email Matt at mzimmer@siouxfallslive.com.

NORMAN — No. 18-ranked Oklahoma opens the 2024 season — Team 130, history and Brent Venables remind us — on Friday against Temple, and it’s a big one.

Not necessarily the game itself. OU is a 43-point favorite to beat the Owls in the program’s first-ever Friday night home game.

But the whole season — Venables’ third as head coach since returning to Norman and replacing Lincoln Riley — is beyond huge for the Sooners. It’s gargantuan, titanic and monumental all rolled into one. 

Joining the Southeastern Conference will do that.

SEC play arrives in about 23 days when the Tennessee Volunteers come to Owen Field. Just beyond that lies a trip to the snake pit that is Auburn, AL.

So while the Sooners are sure to roll past Philly’s finest on Friday night, they’ll need to have a sharp eye tuned in to making the kind of continued improvements that will show up when the SEC games get here on Sept. 21.

Here are three keys to the Temple game:

Three of last year’s starting offensive line are currently on NFL rosters. A fourth just got waived. And a fifth is starting for Missouri (who hosts OU in an old Big Eight reunion on Nov. 9). 

It’s not clear if the Sooners have ever had to replace all five starters up front — but that’s exactly what Venables and o-line coach Bill Bedenbaugh faced this offseason. And no doubt, it was tricky.

Sunday’s two-deep shows that three of the five FBS transfers — left tackle Michael Tarquin, center Branson Hickman and right guard Febechi Nwaiwu — have earned starting jobs heading into week one. Two more transfers — right guard Geirean Hatchett and right tackle Spencer Brown — are listed as backups.

The other two starting jobs, per the two-deep, belong to junior left guard Jacob Sexton and third-year sophomore right tackle Jake Taylor.

That’s all pending everyone’s good health come Friday, of course.

Gone from last season are left tackle Walter Rouse, left guard Cayden Green, center Andrew Raym, right guard McKade Mettauer and right tackle Tyler Guyton. Rouse, Raym and Guyton all made NFL rosters this week, Mettauer was released Tuesday and Green is now a starter at Mizzou.

Two redshirt freshmen who got virtually no playing time last season — left tackle Logan Howland and left guard Heath Ozaeta — are top backups at their respective positions.

Four true freshmen — left guard Eddy Pierre-Louis, center Josh Aisosa, right guard Eugene Brooks and right tackle Spencer Autry-Dent — are listed third at their respective positions.

Bedenbaugh has recruited a lot of talent from the high school ranks (four 4-stars and four 3-stars in the last two classes), and he’s also landed a lot of experience from the NCAA Transfer Portal (97 career starts, 164 career games among this year’s five newcomers). 

Developing chemistry has been the priority since way back in spring practice, but many times that can only happen in games. 

If quarterback Jackson Arnold and his wildly talented receivers and running backs are going to stay clean and move the football effectively this season, it has to start Friday with the five new faces up front.

Oklahoma’s offensive roster is scattered with young, talented players who will no doubt be eager to impress their coaches and a hungry fan base.

Start with Jackson Arnold, the 5-star quarterback who played only a handful of games as a true freshman last season and didn’t look particularly conscientious about ball security in his one start — a four-turnover performance and double-digit loss to Arizona in the Alamo Bowl.

The top returning wide receiver, Jalil Farooq, lost two fumbles in that game as well, including a costly fourth-quarter giveaway.

After a strong true freshman season in 2022, running back Jovantae Barnes labored through most of last year with a foot injury and will be eager to make something special happen now that he’s fully healthy again. And behind him are FCS transfer Sam Franklin, true freshman Taylor Tatum and redshirt freshman Kalib Hicks — all of whom might just go into the game feeling like they have something to prove. That can often lead to being loose with the football.

If Arnold simply plays within the structure of the offense, follows the game plan and takes what the defense gives him — including any deep shots that may come open — then he can be turnover-free. And if the running backs and receivers adhere to their fundamentals and simply trust their blocks, there shouldn’t be any issues.

The defense is supposedly the strength of this team. At Oklahoma, that’s really saying something.

The Sooners have some impressive tools to use throughout every level of the defense. The edge rushers are talented and deep. The interior linemen are stout and come with talent, experience and youth. The linebackers are probably the heart and soul of the defense. The secondary is loaded with athleticism and savvy.

Venables’ only shutout in his first two seasons was a 73-0 route of Arkansas State in last year’s opener. Four games in, OU had given up just 28 points and was among the national leaders. But things went mostly downhill from there as th Sooners allowed 23.5 points per game.

Linebacker Danny Stutsman’s health is paramount. So is safety Billy Bowman’s. So getting a big lead early and getting them to the sideline quickly might be a sound strategy. At most other positions, the Sooners are actually deep enough to withstand a few minor injuries if it should come to that.

Most everyone agrees that Venables has done a great job restoring talent and depth to the OU defense. Posting another shutout and putting forth a wire-to-wire domination of Temple would go a long way toward furthering that narrative and serving notice to the rest of their new conference that the Sooners are indeed SEC-ready.