Elite TE Davon Mitchell is a Sooner: “We’re gonna change the game”
His recruitment wasn’t without some eleventh-hour theatrics, but when push came to shove, Davon Mitchell couldn’t pass up the opportunity to be a Sooner.
The elite 2025 tight end prospect, who’s intent on reclassifying into the 2024 cycle, picked Oklahoma on Saturday afternoon despite late surges from Miami and Alabama. A couple of days before going public with his decision, the 6-foot-4, 251-pound tight end dove into the process that led him to Oklahoma with OUInsider.
“Coach Finley’s been recruiting me for a while, and I just love the coaching staff,” Mitchell remarked. “I’ve been up there hella times. I just like it, man. Coach Venables is a cool guy. He won titles when he was at Clemson, so I feel like he’ll come turn it around over there.”
Though his reclassification can’t become official until August, Mitchell is widely expected to rank among the nation’s top tight ends in the 2024 class when he does officially reclassify. For the moment, he’s regarded as the No. 1 tight end and No. 33 overall player in the Rivals rankings.
Pivotal in Mitchell’s decision was his relationship with four-star 2024 QB and fellow Oklahoma commit Michael Hawkins. The pair played together for two seasons at Allen High School in Texas, but this past offseason, Mitchell transferred to Los Alamitos (Calif.) High and Hawkins headed down the road to play at Frisco Emerson. Throughout their recruitment process, the duo took multiple unofficial visits to Oklahoma together, and Mitchell freely acknowledges that his former quarterback played a big role in recruiting him to the crimson and cream.
“Most definitely a lot,” said Mitchell of Hawkins. “That’s my dawg. We talk every day. It excites me a lot, man — I miss playing with Mike. Wish I could have played with him this year, too. But it’s really exciting for me. I feel like his dad plays a big part in everything too [for OU]. His dad’s from Oklahoma, and he just wants to restart that legacy. He’s gonna tell you what’s real.”
Mitchell grew up in Alabama, not too geographically far from the dynasty that Nick Saban has built in Tuscaloosa. As a program, Miami has produced a legion of NFL tight ends over the years. But for Mitchell, the opportunity that exists for him at Oklahoma outweighed the allure of either of those programs — plus the dozens of others that recruited him.
“I like to get the ball, and that’s good that they get the tight ends the ball and stuff,” Mitchell observed. “And with me coming in, a bigger mismatch, that’ll be perfect. I want to be a freshman All-American. I just want to get drafted and get developed.”
That’ll be more than possible at Oklahoma, where Mitchell has the chance to be the program’s highest-rated tight end signee in the modern recruiting era. And now that he’s locked in with the Sooners, he’s ready to help Hawkins and the rest of the OU class in peer-recruiting efforts. He crossed paths with plenty of Oklahoma’s top targets at last month’s ChampU BBQ, where he was easily the most notable unofficial visitor on a weekend that saw the Sooners host over two dozen prospects for official visits.
“Man, it was great,” said Mitchell of the BBQ. “I had fun. It was one of the best times I’d had when I went up there. You know I’m trying to get Stoney (David Stone) over there, Zina [Umeozulu], Nigel [Smith] — we’re gonna try to get everybody, man.”
Mitchell’s belief in the direction of the Oklahoma program is palpable, and his commitment is cause for major celebration on multiple fronts. It’s a feather in the cap for tight ends coach Joe Jon Finley, and Hawkins can revel in the addition of a familiar — and elite — target. And in a broader sense, a top-flight pickup at a position of need is yet another boost to OU’s long-term championship aspirations. And Mitchell isn’t prepared to settle for anything less.
“We already got some dawgs that’s coming in right now,” he laughed. “We’ll go in there, we’ll get developed. Man, it’s gonna be great, bro. We’re gonna change the game.”