Oklahoma Early Enrollees: Why Ashton Sanders Expects to Make More Strides This Spring

After losing 80 pounds and graduating high school early, the deep-thinking Sanders steps into a position where the Sooners need immediate help.

John E. Hoover | Jan 29, 2023

In this story:

Oklahoma Sooners

Editor’s Note: This is Part 11 of a 14-part series on Oklahoma’s early enrollees in the 2023 recruiting class.

Many times, graduating high school early and launching one’s college football career pays off. Many times, it doesn’t.

While early enrollees are navigating new realms of pain and commitment, a lot of their friends are back home — playing basketball, running track or just hanging out and taking full advantage of the affliction known as “senioritis.”

In Oklahoma’s case, 14 newcomers have chosen to make that sudden transition from boys to men. Jerry Schmidt’s winter workouts might seem impossible at first, and then the summer grind is even harder. In between, the coaching staff takes over, and spring football practice puts them ahead of their summer counterparts.

In this series, AllSooners examines each of the 14 newcomers and projects their impact on Brent Venables’ football team in 2023.

— — — —

The strides a player like Ashton Sanders can make in his first semester at Oklahoma are almost immeasurable.

He lost some 80 pounds over the past year or so, so this winter, he’ll seek to put some of that back on in the form of muscle.

He was a three-year starter at Cathedral High School, but he’ll get a taste of Division I coaching in the upcoming individual coaching stations now available to college football players.

And when spring practice starts, he’ll get 15 days to grasp the frequently complex nuances of Brent Venables’ defense.

Ashton Sanders / Ashton Sanders via Twitter

“It’s mainly — you just gotta learn the language,” Sanders told AllSooners. “Yes, there’s like a quarter of the playbook … that I really have to like, ‘OK, I need to learn this in practice.’ It’s not the easiest.

“But it’s only hard if you don’t study.”

By studying before he got to Norman, Sanders already did some of the hard stuff. Now it’s just repetition and retention. Sanders has a high football IQ, so learning the complexities of Venables’ scheme hasn’t been just mind-numbingly difficult.

DL Ashton Sanders

6-1, 275
Los Angeles
247 Sports: 3-star, No. 589 overall, No. 65 Defensive lineman
Rivals: 3-star, unranked overall, No. 55 Defensive tackle
On3: 3-star, unranked overall, No. 73 Defensive lineman
ESPN: 3-star, unranked overall, No. 27 Defensive tackle
Background: At Cathedral High School in LA, Sanders was actively recruited by Cal, Washington, Wisconsin, Arizona State and others. He actually committed to Cal in July, then decommitted in August. Maryland offered in September, but it wasn’t until he got an offer from Oklahoma on Oct. 31 that he really felt he knew what he wanted to do. A consensus 3-star prospect, Sanders played between 340 and 350 pounds as a sophomore and junior. He said he cut out sugar and now weighs around 275 — OU defensive coordinator Ted Roof even called him “twitchy.” He committed to the Sooners on Nov. 20.
2023 Projection: At 275 pounds, Sanders would be a candidate for immediate playing time in the old “Speed D.” Under Brent Venables and Todd Bates, however, he’s going to need a little time to add the kind of muscle and mass that will take him to a good 300 pounds. That means a lot of weightlifting and protein supplements over the next several months. Sanders will certainly learn new techniques under Bates, but he has quick feet, violent hands and a good football IQ. That’s why, at a position that loses Jeffery Johnson, Josh Ellison and Jalen Redmond, Sanders might have a good chance to play in 2023.

Now he just has to play — and that’s the easy part.

“He’s so versatile,” said defensive coordinator Ted Roof. “You look at what happened with his play on tape, he’s really, really explosive as far as getting off the ball. He can play a lot of different techniques for us.”

Sanders will get his chance. The Sooners lost three front-line players on the defensive interior and need immediate help. Can that help come from a true freshman whose closest thing to college football experience next fall will be the Red/White Game?

Sanders thinks so. That’s why he committed to losing all that way, why he chose to graduate high school and enroll early, and why he’s studied Venables’ playbook so stringently.

“His defense is amazing,” Sanders said. “I noticed that (during his official visit for) the Oklahoma State game. The offense kind of got shut out for three quarters, but Coach Venables’ defense was able to hold on and stop ‘em. Yes, they scored a few times, but that’s just football. His defensive scheme is, in my opinion, one of the best in college football. From what I saw, they highlight the d-line. It’s very technical, but it’s not as hard as it looks. It’s simple.”

From Roof’s perspective, Sanders has the right approach.

“The main thing we want to do is attack and get vertical off the ball from the defensive line,” Roof said. “He can do that. He’s really, really twitchy and explosive.”

“Really excellent athlete,” Venables said. “He's a bigger guy … tremendously agile with great feet.”

Sanders also writes poetry — one reason he gets along so well with OU defensive line coach and self-described poet Todd Bates — and is planning to major in business.

Oklahoma’s 2023 early enrollees

“It’s a good foundation,” Sanders said, “because the way the world is elevating, business is gonna be one of the degrees that will never have any drought, only incline. Also, with that business degree, I’m able to learn about entrepreneurship, trading, stocks, investing, stuff like that. That will never die down because businesses are rolling through, in and out every day and every year, and a lot of ‘em just need that extra hump of money and you’ve got to find someone to invest in. There will be an Amazon to come by, and I want to be the one to catch it.”

See? Football really doesn't need to be all that hard.

Sanders plans on getting the whole experience out of his time away at college. He just feels fortunate it’ll be at OU.

“Once they called, that was my sign from God telling me to always believe and always keep pushing,” he said. “Because that’s what I told every coach this year. I wasn’t really too much worried about recruiting. I was just trying to win a ring. Unfortunately I didn’t do that. But I was just focused on playing with my guys in high school, and doing my job and being a leader out there and trying to be able to showcase my talent alongside them — and get the opportunity to go off to Oklahoma.”

Want to join the discussion? Click here to become a member of the AllSooners message board community today!

Sign up for your premium membership to AllSooners.com today, and get access to the entire Fan Nation premium network!

Follow AllSooners on Twitter to stay up to date on all the latest OU news.

Get your OU tickets from SI Tickets HERE.

Published Jan 29, 2023

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.