Players who will define OU's season: Kendal Daniels
Editor’s note: With Oklahoma’s 2025-26 season just a few weeks away, OUInsider will examine the players who will have the biggest impact on the outcome. This article centers around redshirt senior wide receiver Kendal Daniels, the fifth player to be featured in this series.
Oklahoma went into the winter portal window with a lot of boxes to check. Mainly, they had to bring in high-caliber players on both sides of the ball who could make an immediate impact.
Former Oklahoma State linebacker Kendal Daniels fits that bill.
The Sooners made a big splash bringing in Daniels from their rival in Stillwater. On paper, Daniels is a versatile defender who can be moved all around Brent Venables’ defense. He’s also an important depth piece for a linebacker room that lost Danny Stutsman, Dasan McCullough and Lewis Carter, and Jaren Kanak as he moved to tight end. He also offers much-needed experience — he’s entering his fifth season of college football and played nearly 2,300 snaps over the last three seasons at Oklahoma State.
Linebacker depth was (and still is) a question mark heading into the fall. Daniels being an impact player would go a long way towards mitigating any issues.
Here’s an overview of Daniels’ outlook for the 2025 season:
Career stats
Tackles: 240
Tackles for loss: 24
Sacks: 7.5
Interceptions: 5
Forced Fumbles: 2
2025 Outlook
The biggest reason the Sooners added Daniels was for his versatility.
He went into college as a safety before transitioning more to linebacker. But he played all over the defense with the Pokes. Here are his alignment snap counts for his career, per PFF:
Defensive line: 187 snaps
Box: 1,165
Free safety: 448
Slot corner: 483
He played almost exclusively in the box as a linebacker last season, but he certainly has experience in coverage. That — plus his 6-foot-5 frame — makes him an ideal candidate to play at the cheetah spot. He’s also graded out pretty well as a coverage defender, but his experience blitzing the quarterback or acting as a run stopper should be helpful, too.
Daniels saw work both at cheetah and as a traditional linebacker during the spring. It’s all going to be about where he’s most effective, and where the Sooners need him most. If Kip Lewis and Kobie McKinzie prove they can handle the bulk of the workload at linebacker, then sliding Daniels over to cheetah would make the most sense. Plus, the Sooners need different looks at cheetah. Even if players like Sammy Omosigho and Reggie Powers prove they’re ready for real snaps, the Sooners enter next season with Kendel Dolby as the other primary option at cheetah. Dolby, of course, is returning from a season-ending injury.
But Daniels can currently handle some snaps at traditional linebacker, too. The only questions about him have involved his tackling and his motor. He’s piled up tackling stats, but he hasn’t graded out well. (No, PFF data should not be treated as gospel). He’s never had a tackling grade higher than 57.2, and he accounted for 17 missed tackles and a 48.2 grade last season. But Oklahoma State was also just a bad team last season, and Daniels knows the Sooners have higher expectations and need him to make an impact.
“Once you love something and really want to dive into it and you put time into it, it kind of makes it easier — when you want to learn and you don’t have to learn,” Daniels said during the spring. “And so I just put it in that perspective. It’s been fun to learn more than anything. Just being around guys like Kip and Kobie, just being with those guys, meeting with coach Venables — it’s been fun.”
There’s no doubt that Daniels will play a key role next season. But there is some variance. Will he earn the starting job at cheetah? Could he even compete for one of the linebacker spots? Or will he be utilized more as a key reserve player, depending on the matchup and the formation? He’s proven he can handle a heavy workload, starting nine games while playing at least 40 snaps in each contest last season.
Daniels was a worthy flier for the Sooners during the portal. At worst, he can be a reserve player who has an impact in certain formation. But his ceiling is clearly as a marque player that the Sooners can’t take off the field.
OUINSIDER PLAYER SERIES
RB Jaydn Ott
LB Kip Lewis
WR Deion Burks
LB Kendal Daniels