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Another Key Oklahoma Defender Announces His Plan to Return in 2025

Kendal Dolby won the job at cheetah linebacker and was playing well when he was struck down by a season-ending injury.

John E. Hoover

Oklahoma defensive back Kendel Dolby
Oklahoma defensive back Kendel Dolby / SARAH PHIPPS/THE OKLAHOMAN / USA TODAY NETWORK
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Oklahoma’s success on defense in 2025 might be measured best not by who came through the transfer portal, but by who didn’t leave.

The Sooners got some more good news on that front on Friday when Kendel Dolby announced he intends to return to Norman for his senior year.

Dolby posted his news Friday afternoon on Twitter/X.

Dolby, a senior from Springfield, OH, who signed with the Sooners in December 2022 as a junior college transfer from Northeastern Oklahoma A&M, played in all 13 games in 2023 but only appeared in three games in 2024 before suffering a severe ankle dislocation and fracture in the SEC opener against Tennessee.

The 5-foot-11, 185-pound Dolby came to OU as a slot cornerback but eventually began to take more and more snaps as Brent Venables’ cheetah linebacker, where coaches put his aggressive ball-hawking and elite instincts to good use. 

He got three starts in 2023 and had broken into the starting lineup this season when he went down. Dolby played 36 snaps against Temple and 54 against Houston but didn’t play against Tulane. In the Week 4 loss to the Vols, Dolby got just 17 snaps before going down in a tangle near the Tennessee goal line. He finished the year with 10 tackles and a quarterback sack to go with one QB hurry and one pass defensed. 

“My heart breaks for him,” Venables said after Dolby’s injury. “He'll be fine, he'll recover and he'll continue to have an opportunity to play this game a long time. But he's a guy that I've been bragging on for several months, for obvious reasons, and just hate that is a part of the game. You hate that for him.”

As a junior last season, Dolby totaled 49 tackles, five tackles for loss, two sacks, two interceptions and four passes defensed.

Dolby’s return comes on the heels of announcements by defensive tackle Damonic Williams, linebacker Kip Lewis, safety Robert Spears-Jennings and defensive end R Mason Thomas that they would be coming back to OU in 2024 (Thomas’ return was announced on social media by OU’s NIL collective and was quickly deleted, although it’s widely presumed he’ll make the announcement official soon on his own social media channels).

That core group, with the expected returns of middle linebacker Kobie McKinzie, cheetah linebacker Sammy Omosigho, safety Peyton Bowen, cornerback Eli Bowen, defensive tackle Jayden Jackson, cornerback Jacobe Johnson, linebacker Jaren Kanak and defensive linemen David Stone and P.J. Adebawore, among others, gives Venables and his new defensive coordinator an experienced, dynamic foundation upon which to build the Sooner defense in 2025 and beyond.

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John E. Hoover
JOHN E. HOOVER

John is an award-winning journalist whose work spans five decades in Oklahoma, with multiple state, regional and national awards as a sportswriter at various newspapers. During his newspaper career, John covered the Dallas Cowboys, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Oklahoma Sooners, the Oklahoma State Cowboys, the Arkansas Razorbacks and much more. In 2016, John changed careers, migrating into radio and launching a YouTube channel, and has built a successful independent media company, DanCam Media. From there, John has written under the banners of Sporting News, Sports Illustrated, Fan Nation and a handful of local and national magazines while hosting daily sports talk radio shows in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and statewide. John has also spoken on Capitol Hill in Oklahoma City in a successful effort to put more certified athletic trainers in Oklahoma public high schools. Among the dozens of awards he has won, John most cherishes his national "Beat Writer of the Year" from the Associated Press Sports Editors, Oklahoma's "Best Sports Column" from the Society of Professional Journalists, and Two "Excellence in Sports Medicine Reporting" Awards from the National Athletic Trainers Association. John holds a bachelor's degree in Mass Communications from East Central University in Ada, OK. Born and raised in North Pole, Alaska, John played football and wrote for the school paper at Ada High School in Ada, OK. He enjoys books, movies and travel, and lives in Broken Arrow, OK, with his wife and two kids.

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