Transfer Talk: What Oklahoma is Getting in LB Kendal Daniels

Oklahoma is starting over on offense in 2024, and the Sooners have some holes to plug on defense and special teams as well.

So Brent Venables and the OU staff landed another impactful haul out of the NCAA Transfer Portal for 2025 — 14 players so far, with the possibility of more still to come.

This series begins Sooners On SI’s inside look at what OU is getting out of the portal for next season. Next up: linebacker Kendal Daniels.

Whatever Brent Venables needs Kendal Daniels to provide as Oklahoma’s cheetah linebacker in 2025, Daniels will have already done it.

Range as a safety? Two years experience there. Run fits? A full year doing that. Rushing the passer? Absolutely.

Variety and productivity are two words that best describe Daniels’ three seasons at Oklahoma State, and four years after flirting heavily with OU in the recruiting process, Daniels is finally a Sooner.

Daniels, the consensus No. 1 high school player in Oklahoma in the class of 2021, originally wanted to go to OU out of Beggs High School near Tulsa. But whatever conversations he had with then-defensive coordinator Alex Grinch always seemed to end with him playing linebacker in Norman. So Daniels signed with Texas A&M. After a coaching change in College Station, Daniels got out of his letter of intent and signed with OSU instead.

After three big seasons in Stillwater, Daniels now wears the Crimson and Cream — and he’s the perfect fit in Venables’ hybrid linebacker position that is asked to do so many different things on the football field.

Sooners on SI Transfer Portal Tracker

“I think that he was definitely a kid that liked the idea of of staying close to home, staying in his home state,” said Scott Wright, who covers OSU for The Oklahoman. “So when those programs, OU and OSU, were involved, I think it piqued his interest a little bit more so. And … I could see the idea of him, when he was 185 (pounds) coming out of Beggs, thinking that he needed to be a safety at that point. I think it took him some time. And I don't know that anybody really projected that he was necessarily gonna blossom into this 240-pound beast that he's become physically. So I think it took him some time to understand that, ‘Yeah, I'm heading toward being a linebacker eventually.’ ”

Versatility was Daniels’ calling card at OSU. He earned Freshman All-America honors and was the Big 12 Defensive Freshman of the Year as a redshirt freshman safety in 2022, and in 2024 he posted career-highs of 10.5 tackles for loss and 6.5 quarterback sacks as a linebacker in 2024.

Although OSU’s defense overall was a train wreck last year as the Cowboys fell to 3-9 on the season, Daniels led the Cowboys with 715 defensive snaps, according to Pro Football Focus. His PFF grades were all solid, but his pass rush grade of 71.6 stood out as he totaled 64 tackles.

Daniels played 931 defensive snaps in 2023, when he posted a career-high 105 tackles. As a redshirt freshman, he played 652 defensive snaps and made 71 stops.

Daniels was all over the field in his career as a Cowboy, with 240 total tackles, 24 tackles for loss, 8.5 sacks, five interceptions, 13 passes defensed, two fumble recoveries and two fumbles forced.

“He enjoyed getting to do a variety of things,” Wright told Sooners On SI. “You know, it became obvious toward the end of his redshirt sophomore year, really the middle of that year, that he was growing out of just a traditional safety role. You know, 240 pounds, you can't do everything a safety needs to do. … obviously, you don't want him on a 5-9, 180-pound slot receiver that can run a 4.3. He's not going to be able to keep up with a guy like that, but you get him in the right matchups, he's good in coverage.

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“So it became pretty clear that he was going to have to find other ways. And I think getting the chance to be a linebacker was something that he welcomed, because he is a physical player that plays well in the box. There were aspects of the linebacker role that that were new to him and took him some time to adapt to, but overall, I think it he understands the skill set necessary to to be in a variety of roles and he has the athletic ability to do multiple things well.”

Tackling wasn’t necessarily a strong suit for Daniels during his time in Stillwater. According to PFF data, he missed 21 tackles as a freshman, 26 as a sophomore and 17 as a junior. Despite his game experience (2,298 snaps), Daniels’ season PFF grades as a tackler were 48.4, 57.2 and 40.1.

His pass rush grades, however, were solid: 71.6, 64.8 and 66.2.

“One thing that he's got a real knack for is rushing the passer. Yeah, like, legit,” Wright said.

“He's really effective rushing the passer when you give him those opportunities, and he can be physical at the line of scrimmage. So he's got the skill set to be very versatile. It's just getting him in the right situations and, you know, not getting him in a position where a team can attack some of his weaknesses.”

Those who watched Daniels play over the last three seasons saw more of a big-play specialist rather than a steady, consistent presence.

“He did have some consistency issues — this past season in particular, as he adapted to the full scope of what a linebacker has to do,” Wright said. “But he had several moments when he came up really big in important situations. You go back and watch the end of the Arkansas game in overtime, he makes two big plays down in a late goal-line stand that helped them win that game, including the last play, which was just his natural ability.

“He always seems to come up in big moments and make big plays, particularly around the line of scrimmage. That even goes back to when he was just a safety as a redshirt freshman, redshirt sophomore. He would find a way to be involved in really important plays and make an impact in that way.”

That’s something Venables has occasionally asked of the cheetah position. Over the past two seasons, both Kendel Dolby and Dasan McCullough got opportunities, but were felled by injuries. McCullough’s best plays were similarly on the goal line against Texas in 2023, while Dolby delivered takeaways.

McCullough transferred, but if Dolby is able to recover from a severe ankle injury, he provides a big-play presence in pass coverage and a fearless hitter in run support. Sammy Omosigho developed into a steady performer at the position over the second half of 2024.

But Daniels brings the kind of size, power and game experience that could help Venables’ defense reach another level — whether it’s collapsing the pocket, providing run support or covering downfield. His two years at safety made him a better football player, but playing exclusively at linebacker last season showed Daniels his path forward in football.

“He would get into some coverage, on, like, a tight end at a decent rate, or, you know, a running back out of the backfield,” Wright said. “But he almost never lined up in what I would call a safety type of role.”

Daniels’ evolution from safety to linebacker at OSU was pronounced, per PFF: In 2022, he got just 36 snaps on the defensive line, 275 in the box, and 341 as a free safety or slot corner. In 2023, he got 14 snaps on the line, 398 in the box, and 517 at deep safety or slot corner. And in 2024, he got 137 snaps on the line, 492 in the box, zero at free safety and 86 at corner or slot corner.

Daniels posted six PFF single-game grades over 63 — the Cowboys’ first three games, when they went undefeated, and their last three games, when they had been eliminated from bowl contention.

“The last three weeks of the season, when they had nothing on the line, he was their most consistent defender,” Wright said. “You know, I don't put a ton of weight in PFF, but I think it's a good baseline for understanding some things. And two of the last three weeks, he was their best-graded defender on PFF. So that, to me, backs up the fact that, yes, he had some lapses in effort, but overall effort was not a concern with this guy. I never got that impression from coaches.”

Leadership was a big part of Daniels’ game as frontline players like Collin Oliver and Nick Martin suffered injuries, and Daniels was forced to step up.

“It seemed to be pretty natural for him, from what I could tell,” Wright said. “Now, he's not a loud, vocal guy. He is a vocal guy, but he's kind of soft spoken in that way. So his leadership probably looks a little bit different on the field. … From a leadership standpoint, it seemed to be pretty natural for him to elevate himself, whether it was with what he was doing on the field or just, you know, the relationships he had with his teammates. It seemed like a pretty good fit for him to step up and be a guy that was looked to in those type of situations.”

Wright said Daniels’ leadership was more by example, a process that often happens away from game days.

“Yeah, particularly this last year, as they were making this transition from safety to linebacker, a lot was discussed about, you know, the work that he was doing in the film room to understand the mistakes that he was making early in the season,” Wright said. “Because he was relying a lot on just his physicality and his natural gifts early in the season, and was playing well. But there were things about the position that he was really seeing for the first time and comprehending how to make himself better, and the improvement that he was making because of that over the first few weeks of the season was something that Mike Gundy, in particular, really talked a lot about — you know, the work that he was putting in to make himself better, to make himself into a linebacker, because he'd been doing it since spring.

“He realized there was a lot he still had to work on, and he put in that work.”