Trevor Knight or Blake Bell?
J.W. Walsh or Clint Chelf?
If you know nothing about football, and perhaps never been to a game in Norman or Stillwater, your guess for starting quarterback at Oklahoma and Oklahoma State is as good as any.
The secrecy surrounding the quarterback derby at OU and OSU has pushed the issue of starting quarterback to the the top of the rumor mill in the state.
Here’s what we know. Bell ran the “Belldozer” package for the Sooners last year, plays designed for him to throw himself into the line and convert short yardage situations. He might or might not have been the true backup quarterback for Landry Jones the past couple of years. We don’t really know because Jones was very durable and only came out in those short yardage situations.
So, the natural assumption has been to presume Bell would be the starter this year.
However, OU coach Bob Stoops has repeatedly said no one should read anything into anything when it comes to the OU quarterback race. In fact, when asked about it to open the Big 12 Media Days, he chastised a national broadcaster and said assuming Bell was a starter was wrong.
Knight is still very much in it, he said.
Since then he’s maintained the quarterback race remains open. Some report Knight has made a serious push to become the starter.
No one seems to know how to read some of the clues. It wasn’t long ago that OU had a quarterback derby between Keith Nichol and some guy named Sam Bradford. Eventually, just seven days before the opener, Stoops named Bradford the stater after maintaining it was a close race between the two throughout preseason drills.
Bradford went on to win the Heisman Trophy and be the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft. Nichol went on to become a receiver at Michigan State.
So, who knows the real truth in Norman? Well, Stoops and he’s not talking.
Also not talking is OSU coach Mike Gundy.
Gundy has two experienced and successful quarterbacks but it was Chelf who finished last season by playing well down the stretch. Walsh had his moments.
Now, the questions seems to come down to who can make the best quick decisions because the Cowboys want to go even faster than its record-setting offense of recent years.
That would seem to tilt the quarterback race to Chelf, something that Gundy seemed to indicate near the end of spring drills. However, Gundy quickly backed up and said the quarterback race was not settled.
And, he vowed to not talk about it until after the first game, which is now just two weeks away.
Remember that Gundy can be somewhat unpredictable in quarterback decisions. He once picked Alex Cate to start a game over Brandon Weeden.
So who are the starting quarterback at Oklahoma and Oklahoma State?
The educated guess would be Bell at OU and Chelf at OSU.
But, that means nothing. It would not be a surprise to see any of the four take the first snap of the season in two weeks.
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