Jim Nagy dishes on scouting, recruiting and his "game-breaker" in Jaydn Ott
On Thursday morning, Jim Nagy kept his media tour rolling with an appearance on KREF.
Since joining Oklahoma as general manager of football over the winter, Nagy has been thoroughly transparent in a litany of interviews with local and national media outlets. His latest public comments came in a conversation with KREF mid-morning host Dari Nowkhah, and Nagy shed light on a variety of pertinent topics over the course of his appearance on the radio airwaves.
Nowkhah, a veteran of the national media scene who also serves as the SEC Network’s lead anchor, first asked Nagy to explain all of the tasks that have consumed his time since arriving at OU.
“We got a new database,” Nagy explained. “The coaches are learning the new grading scale. We got new guys on our staff coming in. And so there’s just a lot of newness and, you know, trying to pull it together and get everyone on the same page before we get rolling into fall camp. I’ll say one thing — the relationship between Coach Venables and myself has really grown a lot since March. I mean, we spend a lot of time together. My office is directly across from his; our scouting operation is down one hallway, coaches down another. But Brent and I, we don’t have any choice but to bump into each other a lot of times over the course of the day. So communication is going to be key in this whole thing between the coaches and the scouting staff, and we’re working hard on that. It’s been really good.”
The grading scale, explained
One of Nagy’s first objectives upon arriving at Oklahoma was to overhaul the grading system that the Sooners used in scouting. It bears basic resemblance to the systems that Nagy utilized over nearly a quarter-century of scouting work in the NFL.
“The new grading scale we came up with, it’s a variation of similar scales that I’ve used in the National Football League,” Nagy disclosed. “It’s a color-based grading scale. NFL teams will do numbers and they’ll do colors. I just thought doing colors would be a little easier to get everybody on the same page. But it’s really detailed. We use specific examples for each one of our coaches. We went back in their histories as coaches [to] the places they’ve been, and the players that have been on those teams, to give examples of every different grade level for them.
“For example, at Clemson, a guy like Dexter Lawrence — our top grade in our scale is a blue,” Nagy continued. “Certainly, Dexter Lawrence was a blue. Adrian Peterson would have been a blue. There’s not too many guys that fit into that category. That category is the guy that’s going to come to OU, play in the SEC, start from day one, be an impact player from day one and be an all-SEC caliber player from day one. There’s not many out there.”
Managing player acquisition
Indeed, truly elite recruits are hard to find in general, and it’s even tougher to land such a prospect when the money factor can swing a recruitment out of nowhere. Managing the Sooners’ budget is a key facet of Nagy’s job, and it’s on him and his front-office staff to determine a given player’s value.
“You need to be disciplined,” said Nagy of his philosophy. “You have to be able to walk away from a deal when you know that it doesn’t make sense. And we’ve had to do that a few times during this offseason.”
At times, the Sooners’ unwillingness to overpay has drawn the ire of a certain contingent within the Oklahoma fanbase. But Nagy’s perfectly comfortable standing by his principles. He’s not inclined to succumb to public pressure and risk making a deal that hamstrings Oklahoma. The Sooners sit outside the top 25 in the Rivals team recruiting rankings for the 2026 cycle; Nagy’s not bothered, though.
“I almost feel like they’d rather win the offseason than the season itself,” Nagy said of hyper-critical fans. “I’ve seen things — ‘It’s like a Moneyball approach.’ I don’t see it that way. I just think it’s scouting. We’ve got a great staff; I trust our guys. If you would have told me back in March that we would have ended up with the group [of recruits] that we have, I mean, it would have been a grand slam… We like all our players, man, and some of our favorite guys in our class are three-stars.”
Nagy’s first splash
When Nagy arrived at Oklahoma, his first major acquisition was Cal transfer RB Jaydn Ott. Running back wasn’t an obvious need for the Sooners this spring, but Nagy saw Ott as the type of player that could help transform the OU offense. So he made it a priority to bring the former Pac-12 first-teamer to Norman.
“He was up on our highest-graded level for how we did [the Senior Bowl],” said Nagy, who served as the executive director of the Senior Bowl since 2018 until taking the Oklahoma job. “He was up there with guys like Omarion Hampton from UNC, who went in the first round to the Chargers in April. He was up there with Ashton Jeanty from Boise, who went in the first round. That’s the kind of talent we think he has. He’s a three-down back.”
Nagy added that he had never seen Ott in person; he had only ever scouted the rising senior running back on tape. Thus, when Ott showed up to Norman, Nagy was encouraged to see an ideal SEC physique.
“He’s up to like 211 pounds, and he’s getting bigger and stronger and faster since he’s been here,” remarked Nagy. “He’s really a game-breaker, Dari. I mean, you can’t have enough guys that can make explosive plays… We were driving back last night on the bus and we’re talking about Jaydn with DeMarco Murray. And Ben Arbuckle played against him a couple years ago when Jaydn had his monster year in 2023. [Arbuckle’s] like, ‘Jim, I think he went for 300 all-purpose yards on us. We couldn’t stop the guy.’”
Provided he stays healthy, Ott is fully expected to be the Sooners’ RB1 throughout the 2025 season. Meanwhile, Nagy and Oklahoma appear to be closing in on another major recruiting victory, as four-star WR Davian Groce has been an OU lean for some time. He’s expected to make a decision in the next few weeks, and his addition would almost certainly help the Sooners re-assert themselves as a contender for a top-15 or even a top-10 recruiting class. Rivals currently regards Groce as the No. 54 overall player in the 2026 cycle.
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