Top 20 NFL Sooners, No. 18: Jordan Phillips
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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Jordan Phillips didn’t have the kind of impactful career at Oklahoma that Sooner fans hoped for.
But in 2019, in his fifth NFL season, the massive defensive lineman from Towanda, Kansas, finally displayed the potential everyone had seen all along when he had 9 1/2 quarterback sacks for the Buffalo Bills.
Phillips arrived at OU in 2011 as a Scout 5-star prospect and an Under Armor All-American.
But he redshirted his first season, made just 12 tackles as a redshirt freshman in 2012, then injured his back in 2013 and played in just four games.
Phillips delivered in 2014 with 39 tackles, 7 tackles for loss and 2 QB sacks.
At that, the 6-foot-5, 330-pound Phillips left for the NFL, where he was drafted with the 52nd overall pick in the second round by the Miami Dolphins.
Phillips played three full seasons with the Dolphins but his impact there was also minimal. Before being waived early in 2018, Phillips played in 48 games with 26 starts and made 58 tackles with just 5 1/2 sacks.
But Buffalo claimed him off waivers in 2018, and Phillips began to find his role.
In 12 games in 2018, Phillips contributed 19 tackles, and then last year he broke out with career highs in tackles (31), solos (25), tackles for loss (13) and sacks (9 1/2).
This offseason, Phillips signed a three-year, $30 million deal with the Arizona Cardinals that includes $14.5 million guaranteed. The team has an option to bring Phillips back in 2023 for another $10 million.
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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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