Will Dejuan Miller be defacto Ryan Broyles? Maybe not but says, 'I don't have any regrets'
Published: 11/19/2011 6:08 PM
Last Modified: 11/19/2011 6:08 PM
WACO, Texas — Standing in the Red Room last week, watching Dejuan Miller smile at an endless stream of interviewers, answer question after question, with his shoulder pads still strapped on under his practice jersey, it struck me.
This is a senior who is savoring every moment.
Miller has never been anywhere near shy with the media. He’s always been engaging, insightful and accommodating. But this was different.
With three weeks left in the regular season — he’s going through warm-ups as I type, 60 minutes from kickoff at Baylor — he had been elevated to No. 1 on the Sooners’ depth chart after the season-ending injury to Ryan Broyles.
He truly was enjoying being interviewed.
Consider Miller’s arrival four years ago. He was nearly an afterthought by those who follow recruiting, the least-heralded of three wide receivers the Sooners signed, behind high school All-Americans Jameel Owens of Muskogee and Josh Jarboe of Georgia.
Jarboe turned amateur rapper and never made it to two-a-days. Owens spent two years at OU, a year at Tulsa and now is out of football.
“It’s crazy just how I’m the last one and our receiving class was touted as the best in the country and I’m basically the sole survivor,” he said. “It is pretty crazy.”
Everyone has been waiting for Miller to have his big breakout. He had a solid sophomore season, catching 36 passes for 434 yards and a touchdown. He started eight games and seemed ready for stardom. But halfway through last season, Miller suffered a knee injury that ended 2010 and slowed him in 2011.
To his credit, Jarboe hasn’t quit. He got kicked out at Troy and landed at Arkansas State, where this season he ranks 89th nationally in receiving yards per game (60.7) and 91st in receptions per game (4.6).
Miller, from Metuchen, N.J., did not bring prep accolades like Jarboe and Owens. But he clearly brought something better.
The things that held him back at are the knee injury and the level of talent among the Sooners’ receiving corps.
“But that’s what you expect when you come to Oklahoma,” Miller said. “When you come to Oklahoma, you expect for coaches to recruit great players to come in. It’s one of the top five programs to play football in America. So I knew that coming here. I knew coming here was a competition in training camp with some of the best receivers in their class. I knew that coming in.
“Nothing has held me back. The only thing that might have held me back from something is myself and the guys that play here. But I don’t use that as an excuse. I’m a hard worker. I come in every day, practice hard, work hard and I’ve done that for four years. So nothing I can really turn back to and say, ‘I wish I could have did this, I wish I could have done that.’ I don’t have any regrets playing football here. It was a good time.”
— John E. Hoover
Written by
John E. Hoover
Sports Columnist
