Why Oklahoma OT Spencer Brown is 'Thankful for Everything'

The Sooners' offensive tackle transfer from Michigan State is starting now and playing better every week, and goes into the season finale at LSU feeling profound gratitude.

Oklahoma wide receiver Deion Burks and offensive tackle Spencer Brown. / Kevin Jairaj-Imagn Images

Oklahoma offensive tackle Spencer Brown has a lot to be thankful for today.

For one, the senior transfer from Michigan State has made his way into the Sooners’ starting lineup.

For another, his coaches and teammates are offering up nothing but praise.

But on this Thanksgiving Day, Brown’s gratitude is much more personal than just football.

“I’m thankful to be here,” Brown said. “Thankful for my daughter. Thankful for my family, my support team. Thankful for the opportunity to be here, be talking to y'all. So I'm thankful for everything. I feel like everything comes from God. I'm nothing, you know what I mean? I'm blessed. Everything I've got comes from Him, so give thanks to Him.” 

As Oklahoma’s offensive line this season has struggled like never before — the Sooners (6-5 overall, 2-5 SEC) are still among the leaders in sacks allowed (3.82 per game, tied for 130th nationally) and are still among the nation’s least explosive offenses (4.78 yards per play, 123rd nationally) — Brown was essentially castoff, a backup who chose to transfer to OU but couldn’t even crack the lineup of an historically bad o-line.

Brown started 24 games at right tackle at Michigan State the previous three seasons, and after the Spartans endured a midseason coaching change last year, he finished the season thinking he might go to the NFL. Instead, he received counsel telling him transferring would be better, and he immediately knew of an offensive line coach that could help him reach his potential: OU’s Bill Bedenbaugh.

“I wanted to be with the best o-line coach in the country,” Brown said last spring. “… I felt like he had that track record, and really put my hand in the pile, get to work and better my craft.”

So he left Michigan State, entered the transfer portal and committed to Oklahoma on Dec. 6 — the Sooners’ first verbal pledge of the 2024 portal cycle.

As the Sooners prepare to close the regular season on Saturday night at LSU, Brown told reporters this week that even though his playing time at OU has been uneven and the season has been largely disappointing, he’s glad he came to Norman.

“The expectation was to win it all, win a championship,” he said. “The expectation is number one, you know what I mean? But you can't look in the past. We can only look for this Saturday and the bowl game. We can just look to the future.” 

The 6-foot-6, 315-pounder from Canton, MI, spent four years in East Lansing from 2020-23 and logged 1,485 offensive snaps.

But after spring practice and this year’s preseason camp, Brown was relegated to backup and simply wasn’t expected to play a big role. Then injuries struck the o-line, like sudden lightning storm. That immediately shuffled things, and Brown found himself playing 58 snaps in the opener against Temple. 

But Brown didn’t play great against the Owls, giving up a quarterback sack, a QB hurry and two pressures on 32 pass blocking plays, and he got into only one game — five total snaps — over the next six weeks.

More injuries, however, and dreadful blocking everywhere necessitated Brown’s reinsertion at right tackle against South Carolina. Again, not good: he logged 46 snaps and gave up a sack, two hurries and three pressures on 32 pass plays.

He didn’t play the following week at Ole Miss, but then after more injuries, he finally made his first start as a Sooner against Maine, recording 54 snaps and allowing zero sacks, zero hurries and zero pressures on 23 pass plays. He’s been in the starting lineup ever since.

He played 62 snaps at Missouri, giving up just one hurry and one pressure on 36 pass plays, then played 62 snaps again last week in the victory over Alabama, with one hurry and one pressure on 19 pass plays.

According to Pro Football Focus, Brown recorded grades of 62.2 against Temple, 45.1 against South Carolina, 75.4 against Maine, 69.0 against Missouri and 57.3 against Alabama. As a pass blocker, he registered a PFF grade of 81.6 against the Black Bears and 82.7 against the Tigers, then posted a very respectable 65.4 against the Crimson Tide. As a run blocker, his last three games have produced grades of 70.6, 61.0 and 55.5.

For the season, Brown has played 287 offensive snaps and 46 on special teams.

Those numbers are down significantly from his last two seasons at Michigan State, when he played 781 snaps in 2022 and 541 in 2023. 

But Brown’s PFF grade this season is actually better than it was the last two years in East Lansing, improving from 61.7 to 62.1 as a Spartan to 63.4 as a Sooner.

In 140 pass blocking snaps this year, Brown has allowed just two quarterback sacks (none in the last three games), five QB hurries and seven pressures, per PFF. His last two seasons at Michigan State, Brown was credited with six sacks, seven QB hits, 32 hurries and 45 pressures.

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“He really stepped up,” said right guard Febechi Nwaiwu, a transfer from North Texas. “We had some guys go down, and when his time was needed and he was called on — that’s a guy I came in with, a guy I’m really close with. He’s really reliable. I can call him for anything, and he’s always there for me.”

The Sooners only threw the football 12 times against Alabama but rushed 50 times for 274 yards and dominated the Crimson Tide at the line of scrimmage.

In his postgame press conference, head coach Brent Venables seized the context of all the criticism aimed at Brown this season and fired it back.

“Old, raggedy Spencer Brown,” Venables said with a big smile. “You know? From Michigan State. You know, he got in some guys’ way tonight. And, helped set edges and climbed to the second level.”

It was a moment that settled over Brown like a warm blanket on a crisp Thursday in November.  

“I’ve grown a lot,” Brown acknowledged. “I’ve been working on myself for about a year now, just a whole change year — coaching, technique, fundamentals, scheme. I'm just trying to soak up as much as I can from the coaches. We've got a tremendous coach, and just trying to get better day-by-day. Win the day, you know what I mean? I try not to be seduced by success and just do what I'm coached to do and everything else will show up.”

LSU on Saturday is another opponent in an other game on another day. But there’s no denying that Brown and his linemates — once the butt of jokes on a laughingstock offense — are playing better right now than they have all season.

“I mean it's just the standard, you know what I mean? It's been a long time coming,” Brown said. We've been grinding for the last few weeks and the work finally showed and the work showed on Saturday night. 

“It's a confidence builder. But I mean, we knew what we could do anyway. We wasn't really surprised by that because we've been putting the work in. So that day just showed what we really could do and what we're really capable of.”

And now that Brown is finally getting his chance to contribute — starting three weeks in a row, beating Alabama and possibly turning the season around — his gratitude for everything has only grown deeper and more profound. 

“It's a blessing, you know what I mean?” he said. “I just want to help the team and contribute the best that I can and just play to the Oklahoma standard, play to the o-line standard here and just be the best that I can be.”