“The three that played last year, I don’t need to talk about,” Stoops said. “DeMarco Murray, probably out of all our offensive players, is the biggest big-play threat we have.

“Mossis Madu is a good player … Mossis does a lot of things well and shouldn’t be discounted because he is going to be a factor, too.”

How the Sooners are going to get snaps for all those backs is anybody’s guess. Not wanting to waste the talent on hand, the coaches seem confident it can be done.

“I don’t know how they’re going to do it,” Madu said. “It’s going to be hard to divide all the snaps.”

Brown, Patrick, Murray and Madu are all around 6-foot, 190 pounds.

Brown and Patrick are more straight ahead runners with speed, while Murray and Madu are more shifty and elusive.

And there seems to be no rivalries — no hoping someone gets hurt so another can get more playing time.

“We’re real close. It’s a tight-knit group,” Madu said. “That’s what’s cool about it, we all root for each other.”

It’s a crowded position and snaps might be hard to come by.

Having learned the offense while redshirting last season and then missing the spring, Madu is anxious to get the ball in his hands and show what he can do this fall.

“I guess I just have to prove myself to everybody outside that doesn’t really know me or saw me in the spring,” Madu said. “I just have to do my thing and show them.”

Scott Moore

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sports@normantranscript.com