College Football

Kyler Murray, Jackson Arnold and an Oklahoma spring game that's all about hope

Updated Apr. 22, 2023 8:10 p.m. ET

NORMAN, Okla. — On third-and-9 with 1:53 left to play and his team trailing by six inside the 40-yard line, Jackson Arnold threw a dart over the middle.

It was caught by Oklahoma City native Gavin Freeman against freshman safety Peyton Bowen and would tie the score, 82-82. But a late two-point score led to the Red Team — led by Arnold and Freeman — falling to Bowen's White Team, 84-82, on Saturday afternoon in front of 54,409 fans.

None of those details from Oklahoma's spring game really matter that much, because spring games don't matter that much. But we love watching players who might.

Arnold is one of those, and he follows yet another.

Hours before the heralded five-star freshman Arnold took the field at Memorial Stadium in his most important capacity to date, a statue of Kyler Murray's likeness was unveiled across the street in recognition of his winning the 2018 Heisman Trophy.

Dignitaries included former Oklahoma coaches Barry Switzer and Bob Stoops, as well as Baker Mayfield, Brent Venables, athletic director Joe Castiglione and President Joe Harroz. Between those made men of Oklahoma, a sea of crimson-and-white-clad fans stood between Jenkins Avenue and Heisman Park.

At halftime of Oklahoma's spring game, Murray told fans how grateful he was for his career to end the way it did, especially given the way it started.

After becoming the best Texas high school football player ever, Murray signed and played the first half of his career at Texas A&M, his father Kevin Murray's alma mater, before choosing to transfer to Oklahoma.

Once there, he knew he was going to have a chance to succeed.

"I kind of got off to a rocky start in my college career," Murray said. I picked the wrong school. I told my pops I should've been here the whole time."

Granted, he said that before knowing Mayfield would start ahead of him for three years. But he only needed one year to seal his legacy in Norman and in college football.

Heisman Park — a space OU gets to have because it has so many of them — is where all seven Heisman winners are bespoke in bronze, Murray looked legitimately surprised by the number of people who braved an unseasonably cold morning to join him in a celebration of his crowning accomplishment as a Sooner.

Of those seven winners, only one is a contemporary: Mayfield, a man who is still playing in the NFL like Murray.

But none of those winners have as much in common with Murray as Arnold does. After all, those are the only two men in Norman — perhaps the state — who have both won Gatorade National Player of the Year and earned recognition as five-star high school quarterbacks in the state of Texas.

When he takes the field, that's how Arnold will take it — following in the shadow of Murray and a quarterback tradition at Oklahoma that harkens back to Jamelle Holieway, who guided the Sooners to the national championship in 1985 as a true freshman, a feat accomplished by only one other person since integration — Trevor Lawrence at Clemson.

In all likelihood, Arnold will begin the 2023 season behind redshirt senior Dillon Gabriel on the depth chart. But an untimely injury could thrust Arnold — who grew up watching OU just across the Red River in Lantana, Texas — behind center sooner rather than later.

One of the lessons Venables took from his first losing season as a football coach (6-7 last season) is just how important it is for him and offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby to have a talented and capable No. 2 at quarterback. A lot of Oklahoma's weaknesses were laid bare in their 49-0 whooping at the hands of hated rival Texas, but none was more obvious than how significant the drop-off at quarterback was with Gabriel out due to injury.

Backup Davis Beville was so bad that OU opted to run a wildcat offense for a number of plays, with tight end Brayden Willis at quarterback. Bevo had not stuck the horns to the Conestoga land thieves like that since skewering Oklahoma 47-0 in 1945.

Following a beat down Arnold — nor anyone else under the age of 77 — could remember, Arnold could've reneged on his commitment to Oklahoma. He did not, even when programs that finished above .500 last season undoubtedly came calling.

With his commitment came the kind of hope fans feel when they know that a potential change-agent stomps about their practice facilities, hits the weight room hard, honors them with his work and humility.

Remember, USC quarterback Caleb Williams decided to leave the plains of Oklahoma for the lights of Los Angeles just eight days after Arnold committed to OU.

But let's not be coy.

No one in or about Oklahoma would care as much about who Arnold could be if not for who he was: an Elite 11 MVP, 28-3 as a starter, Under Armour All-American, a quarterback who fell just 24 passing yards shy of 3,500 and 79 rushing yards short of 1,000, with 33 TDs and just two picks as a high school senior.

His ability to move about the pocket, flip his wrist and send a football 60 yards through the air on a rope, to avoid pressure and turn a tackle-for-loss into a TD, recalls the man whose shadow he debuted beneath on Saturday afternoon.

He is, in accolades won, one of the best freshmen in the sport. That's what it means to be at OU, according to Venables.

"The focus is for us to be the best," Venables told me earlier this week. "Being the best is a byproduct of everybody in the organization being focused on showing up and doing their best. And Jackson has been the epitome of that."

Surely, he knows Murray not only won the Heisman but won a conference championship and took OU to the College Football Playoff in his only season there. Surely, he knows Murray was selected No. 1 overall in the NFL Draft.

Surely, he knows that three of the last six OU quarterbacks who started multiple games — Mayfield, Murray, Caleb Williams — won the Heisman; that the ones who didn't — Spencer Rattler and Jalen Hurts — beat the best (No. 5) Tennessee team to ever play in the CFP era (Rattler, at South Carolina) and played in the Super Bowl in February (Hurts, with the Philadelphia Eagles).

Surely, he knows these aren't just expectations but are the standard markers for success at Oklahoma.

Surely, he knows this is the reason, in Norman, why they say "There's only one."

Arnold's first carry on Saturday looked like a Tecmo Bowl trot through the middle of Ted Roof's defense, going 53 yards to the house. It didn't count, not even in the sometimes fantastical statistical score keeping that comes with a spring game.

Officials called the play back, this being a spring game, because a defender put a hand on his jersey, just nipping it on his way by.

But folks watching saw what Arnold is capable of, briefly, the No. 10 on his jersey flashed to No. 1 as it creased, stretched, shifted and briefly blurred.

They'd seen it once, and they ache to see it again.

RJ Young is a national college football writer and analyst for FOX Sports and the host of the podcast "The Number One College Football Show." Follow him on Twitter at @RJ_Young and subscribe to "The Number One College Football Show" on YouTube.

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