NFL Scout Says OSU’s 2016 Team Has More Prospects Than In Recent Years

Carson Cunningham and I talked a lot last year after the Baylor-OU-Ole Miss disaster for Oklahoma State to end the season about how OSU needed to accumulate more horses (athletes, studs, Justin Gilberts if you will). This is primarily done through recruiting of course, and takes years, but maybe we undersold the short-term future of OSU as a horse-generating D1 school.

Robert Allen wrote on Tuesday that NFL scouts were starting to roll through Stillwater to check out some of OSU’s stars. Presumably Jordan Sterns, Blake Jarwin, Mason Rudolph, James Washington and Vincent Taylor are at the top of that list.

Here’s what Allen wrote.

It helps when you have good players and today’s practice saw the NFL scouts start their parade through Stillwater. The Green Bay Packers, Detroit Lions, and the Super Bowl 50 teams of the Carolina Panthers and world champion Denver Broncos had scouts at practice. One scout said Oklahoma State has more NFL-caliber prospects than they’ve had in several seasons.

I like that. Here’s a look at all the players drafted out of Oklahoma State in the Mike Gundy Era (I don’t believe I missed any but I might have).

It sort of shocked me to realize that OSU has only had four players drafted since the Weeden/Blackmon duo left (and one of those was a transfer). That’s not particularly compelling as evidence for horse-accumulation. But I do think this team has some studs on it. Guys who could play their way into the third or fourth round or even higher (depending on how talent evaluators view No. 2).

It’s one scout and it’s anecdotal, but it’s also encouraging that OSU seems to be moving the right direction towards building a legitimate powerhouse football program. It will likely never be OU or Florida State or Ohio State, but it can at the very least become a variation of one of those programs which can absolutely win you Big 12 titles in the future.