Top 20 NFL Sooners, No. 9: Chris Chester

In the past 20 years, the Oklahoma Sooners have experienced arguably their most productive era ever in the NFL Draft.

From the 2000 to 2019 drafts — the entirety of the Bob Stoops and Lincoln Riley years — OU has had 95 players drafted.

Using today’s 7-round comparison, that’s more than any other two-decade era in school history. In the 1970s and ‘80s, OU had 131 players drafted, but only 88 were selected in the first seven rounds.

In the last 20 years, the Sooners have produced some historically good players. Every day leading up to this year’s NFL Draft (April 23-25), SI Sooners presents the Top 20 NFL Sooners of the last 20 years.

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Chris Chester played 11 seasons in the National Football League. He earned upwards of $25 million dollars, drew the adulation of millions of pro football fans and helped lay the foundation for one Super Bowl champ and should have celebrated his own.

But to Sooner Nation, Chester will always be the third-string tight end who caught a touchdown pass from a defensive back — with his elbows.

Chester’s miraculous catch of Matt McCoy’s miraculous throw on Bob Stoops’ miraculous gamble at Missouri in 2002 will forever stand as one of the defining plays of the Stoops era.

OU trailed the Tigers 25-24 with 6 1/2 minutes to play. Instead of a 31-yard kick by Trey Di Carlo, Stoops opted instead for a fake field goal.

On fourth-and-8 from the Mizzou 14, McCoy caught the snap, rose up, rolled to his right and threw the ball into the end zone.

The 6-foot-4 Chester was well covered. There were Tiger defenders seemingly everywhere. But Chester, a redshirt freshman tight end who played mostly in short-yardage blocking situations, reached up and snagged the football, finally gaining possession as the ball nestled between his elbows.

"I knew that if I threw it up, Chris is a big, physical guy and he'd go up and catch the ball," McCoy said after the game.

Nate Hybl’s 2-point conversion pass pushed the Sooners’ lead to 31-24, and OU’s defense withstood one last assault from Missouri QB Brad Smith.

It helped create the image of Stoops as a riverboat gambler, but for Chester — and McCoy — it gave fans another enduring taste of “Sooner Magic.”

For Chester, it also allowed fans to know his name as he played two more years as a jumbo tight end and transitioned to offensive line in 2005.

OU’s rebuilt offense struggled in Chester’s senior season, but he showed himself a nimble 300-pounder and drew the attention of NFL scouts. He ran a 4.83-second 40 at the scouting combine, became a second-round draft pick of the Baltimore Ravens (56th overall), and quickly went from key backup to starter.

Chester made 47 starts in five seasons with Baltimore, then became a 16-game starter with Washington for four seasons before playing his final two seasons with Atlanta, in which he started all 32 games.

In all, Chester played in 169 NFL games, made 143 starts — including the last 110 in a row — and just missed two Super Bowl titles.

He left Baltimore after the 2010 season, and the Ravens won the Super Bowl in 2012. His final pro season, he started for the Falcons in the Super Bowl as they built a 28-3 lead over New England, but Tom Brady and the Patriots instead made history.

Chester was one of the least penalized offensive line starters in the NFL during his career. He saved his offense a handful of times by jumping on fumbles. He was as reliable as it gets in the NFL.

But it was that off-balance catch at Missouri almost 18 years ago — one of just two receptions in his Sooner career — that OU fans will never forget.

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Our Top 20 list was chosen by five voters: SI Sooners publisher John Hoover, deputy editor Parker Thune, long-time OU fan and amateur Sooner historian Anthony Jumper, OU school of journalism student Caroline Grace, and OU history and stats expert Steven Smith (aka Blinkin Riley).

The criteria was simple: former Sooners who played at OU during the last 20 years and went on to an NFL career. The rest, i.e, their NFL career, was purely subjective. Players received 20 points for a first-place vote, 19 for second, etc., down to 1 point for 20th. A total of 28 players received votes.

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