Oklahoma’s transfer-portal era has delivered plenty of useful pieces, but it has also come with a few expensive misses. For every addition that helped the Sooners, there were others that never came close to matching the hype - or the price tag.
John Mateer drew plenty of frustration from Oklahoma fans after last season, but even he isn’t the biggest portal disappointment the Sooners have taken on. He still has another year to show what he can do. The real cautionary tales are the players who arrived with big expectations and never fully delivered.
Dasan McCullough fit that mold. Oklahoma reportedly paid $300,000 to land the linebacker after he earned Freshman All-American honors at Indiana in 2022, hoping he would become a key piece of Brent Venables’ defense at cheetah.
Instead, injuries and inconsistency kept him from becoming the impact player the Sooners were buying. McCullough played in 17 games over two seasons and made eight starts, with just one start coming in 2024.
He finished with 47 total tackles in two seasons at Oklahoma, fewer than the 49 he posted in one year at Indiana. After the 2024 season, he left for rival Nebraska.
Jaydn Ott stands out even more. He arrived as the top running back in the transfer portal last year after three seasons at Cal, and Oklahoma still spent big to get him despite already having a loaded backfield.
The expectation was simple: he would step in as the lead back and make an immediate impact in the SEC. That never happened.
Ott ended up fourth on the depth chart, appeared in fewer than half of Oklahoma’s games in 2025, and finished with just 21 carries for 68 yards. For a player brought in to be a difference-maker, that’s the definition of a swing and a miss.
He’s the biggest transfer bust in OU history, and hopefully it stays that way.
Austin Stogner’s case is a little different, but it still belongs on the list. He began his Oklahoma career with real promise, catching 26 passes for 422 yards and three touchdowns as a sophomore in 2020 before a severe knee injury ended his season.
He wasn’t the same in 2021, when he managed only 14 catches for 166 yards and three scores, and then he moved on to South Carolina with Shane Beamer for a reset. After one year with the Gamecocks, it was clear he still wasn’t back to that earlier version of himself, yet Oklahoma brought him back to pair with Dillon Gabriel in 2023.
He started every game, but produced only 196 receiving yards and one touchdown. Whether the knee injury or tight ends coach Joe Jon Finley gets the blame, the result was the same: the Sooners didn’t need to bring him back, and the return never paid off.
In Other News...
Oklahoma Fans Still Hate How These Portal Losses Aged
The portal has a way of making old decisions look louder with time, and Oklahoma has plenty of reminders scattered across the sport. Dillon Gabriel settled in at Oregon, Cayden Green found a bigger role at Missouri, Hollywood Smothers has grown into a featured back at NC State, and Brenen Thompson has turned into a real threat at Mississippi State. For Sooners fans, it is less about any one departure than the collective feeling that the roster lost too much talent too fast, with each exit carrying a different kind of what-if.
Theo Wease Jr. adds another layer to that frustration because his time in Norman never quite matched the promise that made him such a coveted recruit. He flashed in 2020 and then left behind the sense that Oklahoma had only begun to tap into what he could do, which is exactly the sort of unfinished business that tends to linger when a program is trying to build around continuity. And while one high-profile name was left out of the discussion for obvious reasons, the broader point remains the same: the Sooners have spent plenty of time watching former players become bigger stories elsewhere. [Read more 🡒]
Oklahomas Offensive Line Faces Its Biggest Test Since The 2024 Mess
Oklahomas offensive line took a real step forward in 2025, especially in pass protection, after the mess that defined the previous year. The run game still lagged behind, but there was enough improvement to give Brent Venables some reason to believe the group could keep building, particularly with the continuity and experience that had started to settle in.
Now the Sooners have to answer their biggest personnel question of the offseason without one of the units most dependable voices. Febechi Nwaiwu is gone, and with him goes a veteran presence Venables viewed as part of the lines leadership backbone, leaving Oklahoma to sort out which returning blocker can fill that glue-guy role as the 2026 season approaches. [Read more 🡒]