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Oklahoma OT Wanya Morris Drafted in Third Round

Kansas City scooped up the Sooners' starting right tackle, who transferred to OU two years ago from Tennessee.
John E. Hoover|
Oklahoma OT Wanya Morris Drafted in Third Round
Oklahoma OT Wanya Morris Drafted in Third Round

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Oklahoma Sooners

Bill Bedenbaugh has added another NFL star, and Wanya Morris is joining the Super Bowl champs.

Morris, Oklahoma’s starting left tackle in 2022 after transferring from Tennessee in 2021, was selected by the Kansas City Chiefs in the third round of the NFL Draft — No. 92 overall — on Friday night.

“I’m going to play wherever they need me to play," Morris told Chiefs media Friday. "I can’t tell you how excited I am at this moment. Whatever they need me to play, I’m going to play it. I'm glad I'm a Chief."

This year’s draft is unfolding in Kansas City, so the announcement drew louder cheers than usual from the crowd.

The 6-foot-5, 307-pound Morris started eight of his nine games at right tackle for the Sooners in 2022 before opting out of the Cheez-It Bowl against Florida State. Morris immediately started training for the draft, beginning with the Reese's Senior Bowl. 

Bedenbaugh, who watched left tackle Anton Harrison go to the Jacksonville Jaguars late in the first round on Thursday, now has eight OU players on NFL rosters: Cody Ford, Tyrese Robinson, Ben Powers, Orlando Brown, Creed Humphrey, Marquis Hayes, Harrison and Morris. (All-Pros Trent Williams and Lane Johnson played at OU  before Bedenbaugh arrived.)

Through the first three rounds, the Sooners have three players selected so far. Wide receiver Marvin Mims went to Denver in the second round.

OU leads all of college football with 15!consecutive years of having at least four players drafted. Rounds 3-7 unfold Saturday at 11 a.m. on ESPN and NFL Network, and the Sooners still have a half-dozen players projected to be picked. 

Morris was an SEC All-Freshman performer in Knoxville and made the 247 Sports True Freshman All-American Team as well as The Athletic Midseason Freshman All-American team as he started 12 games.

As a sophomore in 2020, Morris played in nine of the Vols’ 10 games, with five starts at left tackle and two as a jumbo tight end.

After transferring to Oklahoma ahead of the 2021 season, Morris played six games as a backup.

Morris won the starting job in 2022 and earned second-team All-Big 12 accolades after sitting out the first two games for an undisclosed suspension and coming on as a backup in Week 3 at Nebraska.

The Chiefs had two Sooners on their starting five last season as they won the Super Bowl, but Brown, the starter at left tackle, left as a free agent to Cincinnati. Morris has the opportunity to play on the same line as Humphrey, KC's Pro Bowl center entering his third season with the Chiefs. Morris also played with Chiefs right guard Trey Smith at Tennessee.

Morris was a 5-star prospect by ESPN out of Grayson, GA, in the 2019 recruiting class, ranked as the No. 5 offensive tackle in the nation. Rivals ranked him No. 6, and 247 Sports ranked him as the No. 9 player in the state of Georgia. Morris was selected for the Under Armour All-America Game and was a Georgia Class 7A All-State pick.

Last season at OU, Morris played 580 total offensive snaps, according to Pro Football Focus.

His return to the lineup in Week 3 paid immediate dividends as the offensive production picked up. Morris was a key part of that, grading out at 84.7 and 82.5 in his first two games and finishing with a career-best grade of 76.6.

“For me, I just took it as a learning period,” Morris said in September. “Took it as an experience to get better. I got two more extra weeks than everybody else to stay prepared and get ready. All I did was stay in the weight room, stay in the playbook. When I came back, it was like clockwork.”

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John E. Hoover
JOHN E. HOOVER

John is an award-winning journalist whose work spans five decades in Oklahoma, with multiple state, regional and national awards as a sportswriter at various newspapers. During his newspaper career, John covered the Dallas Cowboys, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Oklahoma Sooners, the Oklahoma State Cowboys, the Arkansas Razorbacks and much more. In 2016, John changed careers, migrating into radio and launching a YouTube channel, and has built a successful independent media company, DanCam Media. From there, John has written under the banners of Sporting News, Sports Illustrated, Fan Nation and a handful of local and national magazines while hosting daily sports talk radio shows in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and statewide. John has also spoken on Capitol Hill in Oklahoma City in a successful effort to put more certified athletic trainers in Oklahoma public high schools. Among the dozens of awards he has won, John most cherishes his national "Beat Writer of the Year" from the Associated Press Sports Editors, Oklahoma's "Best Sports Column" from the Society of Professional Journalists, and Two "Excellence in Sports Medicine Reporting" Awards from the National Athletic Trainers Association. John holds a bachelor's degree in Mass Communications from East Central University in Ada, OK. Born and raised in North Pole, Alaska, John played football and wrote for the school paper at Ada High School in Ada, OK. He enjoys books, movies and travel, and lives in Broken Arrow, OK, with his wife and two kids.

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