Why Brent Venables Says Oklahoma's TE Room is 'Not a Weakness'

The Sooners' new tight ends are stepping up into SEC play, but they're expected to be much more dynamic this year.

Oklahoma tight end Davon Mitchell / John E. Hoover / Sooners on SI

This time last year, Oklahoma’s current tight end room had played at North Texas, Southeastern Louisiana (at quarterback) and Allen (TX) as a high school sophomore.

And yet it seems the Sooners have only gotten better at the position in 2024.

“I'm very confident in that tight end group,” said OU quarterback Jackson Arnold. “We've got a bunch of guys that can go, and dudes we got from the portal that can go.”

After a bit of a down year at the position last year, Arnold could be throwing to his tight ends a lot more this year despite so much big-time talent at every wide receiver position.

Is that group ready to step up? Are Oklahoma’s tight ends SEC-ready?

“Well, we know it's going to be a high level of play in the SEC,” said senior Jake Roberts, a Norman North product who played three years at North Texas before transferring last year to Baylor. “I think the biggest difference going in is every week it’s going to be a challenge. I guess what I'd say I'm most curious about — I'm excited to just play against the best competition every day, so that's why I chose Oklahoma.”

The 6-foot-4, 252-pound Roberts is among three newcomers at the tight end spot that are expected to upgrade the talent overall and give Arnold more options in his first year as a collegiate starter. Roberts transferred from Baylor in January and missed spring practice with an injury, but he’s contributed nicely during the first week of preseason training camp.

“It's been a long time coming, some adversity that you don't always expect,” Roberts said Saturday night after practice, “but it's really good to be back out there with the guys flying around.

“It's a blessing. I'm really happy to be back home and playing for my dream school. For every step of my career to lead me back to Norman, I'm super excited, super blessed and ready to get this thing rolling this year.”

Last year in Waco, Roberts caught 23 passes for 231 yards and a touchdown. During his three years in Denton, he totaled 22 starts and caught 44 passes for 542 yards and three scores, including 29 for 394 and three TDs in 2022.

Another transfer, Bauer Sharp, a 6-4, 247-pound converted quarterback, was one of the top FCS tight ends in the country last year at Southeastern Louisiana, catching 29 passes for 288 yards and three touchdowns and also carrying the football 25 times for 133 yards and five TDs.

Those numbers are fine on the FCS level, but Sharp was immediately one of the Sooners’ most dynamic offensive players early in spring practice and apparently has made the transition to FBS football.

"The biggest thing for our tight ends room right now is just having (Roberts) back, finally practicing and pushing (Sharp),” Arnold said. “ … Having those two guys and rotating them around is versatile for us. Jake's played a lot of ball. Bauer has played a lot of ball and it shows.”

The tight end with the greatest potential, however, is a true freshman — and one who reclassified his graduating class a year ahead of time and still enrolled early. 

Davon Mitchell should be just now starting his senior year at Los Alamitos (CA) High School. Instead, he’ll be catching passes against SEC linebackers and blocking SEC edge rushers. He was a MaxPreps Sophomore All-American at Allen (33 catches, 731 yards, 9 TDs) before relocating out west to Los Al, where he helped his team to a deep playoff run by earning first-team All-Sunset Conference accolades, district Offensive Player of the Year honors and Under Armour All-America credentials (45 catches, 748 yards, 7 TDs).

Mitchell might need another year to get bigger and stronger — but he also might be a key contributor in Seth Littrell’s offense right now. The 6-3, 250-pound Mitchell is fast, explosive, a natural athlete and has good hands. The former 5-star recruit (he’s a 4-star in the 2024 class) seems destined for college football stardom, and maybe more.

“Yeah, to have the kind of balance we want, both running and throwing the ball, I think that’s got to be a position that is not a weakness,” head coach Brent Venables said.

Last year Austin Stogner came back from South Carolina for his final season and contributed 17 catches — seventh on the team — for 196 yards and a touchdown. Other tight ends — Blake Smith, Kade McIntyre, Josh Fanuiel, Kaden Helms and Hampton Fay — combined for three catches for 56 yards and one touchdown.

“Last year, Stog did a great job,” Venables said, “but we just didn’t have much behind him.”

It wasn’t necessarily Jeff Lebby’s offensive scheme that de-emphasized tight end usage. In 2022, Brayden Willis was second on the team with 39 catches, compiled 514 yards and scored seven touchdowns. Lebby had also shown a tendency to utilize the position at his previous stops. But things just didn’t work out for OU tight ends in 2023.

The 6-6, 258-pound Stogner’s productivity was a letdown, as he’d been a tantalizing weapon for much of his first four seasons, catching 7 passes for 66 yards and two TDs as a true freshman, 26 for 422 and three scores as a sophomore, and 14 for 166 and three touchdowns as a junior. Stogner’s dropoff came after he sustained a leg injury that turned into a deadly infection. It cost him muscle and strength and made him miss the back end of the 2020 season, and he never quite returned to that level of play — even after he transferred top South Carolina, where he caught 20 passes for 210 yards and one TD in 2022. 

Stogner put up solid numbers in his five collegiate seasons: 84 catches, 1,060 yards and 10 touchdowns. But last year’s statistical dip at the position set the Oklahoma offense back.

Now the tight ends coach Joe Jon Finley seems to have both experienced playmakers and potential at the position.

“Bauer and Jake Roberts and those guys, they’re gonna be huge for us this year,” Arnold said. “They're gonna be very dynamic for us, be very good in the passing game and also be very good in the run game too.”

“I think us being healthy, myself included, I think we have a lot of depth and a lot of the younger guys have come on,” Roberts said. 

The others at the position will compete for playing time this season. 

McIntyre, a 6-3, 221-pound redshirt freshman from Fremont, NE, is the only tight end on the roster who caught a pass for OU last year and finished with just 21 snaps in two games thanks to an injury.

“I think like a guy like Kade McIntyre's playing really good,” Roberts said.

Helms, a 6-5, 239-pound third-year sophomore from Bellevue, NE, has fought through a multitude of injuries after playing just one game (31 snaps) in 2022 and has apparently had a strong camp so far.

“I’m really excited,” said wideout Nic Anderson. “He’s been on the sidelines for a long time. I can’t wait for him to show what he can do to everyone else.”

Fay, a former transfer from Michigan State and another converted QB, is a 6-5, 245-pound junior who’s made impressive strides.

And Fanuiel, a 6-3, 250-pound former basketball player at Division II Cameron University in Lawton, OK, got 56 snaps last season and could be settling into a place where he gets more playing time this fall.

“I think we’re in a much better position that way between Bauer, Jake, Kaden Helms, Davon Mitchell, Josh (Fanuiel). Kade McIntyre is close to 230 now; he’s done a great job as well, more comfortable. That’s a group that can execute, and they can block. Good group of guys catching the ball, too, big targets, attack the middle of the field. 

“ ... All good offenses have that ability. Through three days (of preseason camp), that’s a group that has had a real transformation from where we were the last couple of years.”

“I think getting myself back and taking some of the reps off the guys that were having to do a lot in the spring, I think it's added a lot of depth,” Roberts said, “and I think we can just throw bodies at these guys. It's been good.

“I think our role is just to be a versatile group, someone that can do everything. The tight end in this offense, you're going to be asked to block, you're going to be asked to run around, so get out in the pass game, you're also going to be asked to pass protect. So I think the strength is the ability to do a lot of things at a high level, so I think you can expect us to do a lot of that this year.”