Notebook: Tre Brown ‘stacking days’

Oklahoma’s secondary saw one of the most dramatic one-year improvements as you’re ever going to find in 2019.

Cornerbacks coach Roy Manning won’t get another year to continue to transform Parnell Motley, but it appears as though Tre Brown keeps making moves in becoming the leader of the 2020 secondary.

“I’m really excited about the steps that he’s taken from January until now,” said Manning in a Zoom call Wednesday afternoon. “To his credit, he looks completely different than a year ago. He’s as committed right now as I’ve seen since I’ve been here to his technique and it’s allowing him to make plays and make plays consistently.”

That echoes what defensive coordinator Alex Grinch said last week about Brown practicing at a different level. But it can’t be one or two good days. The consistency has to be there.

No better time than now as Brown can showcase his abilities to prepare for next year’s NFL Draft by having a sensational senior season.

Brown gets that, and Manning is happy to see Brown stepping up to the challenge.

“He’s leading the charge right now. I’m not afraid to say that,” Manning said. “He is leading by example in everything that he does and a big part of that is his urgency and his ability to stack days. He even uses that term, let’s keep stacking days, but he understands that he can’t have a roller-coaster year, one good period, one bad period of practice, one good quarter, one bad quarter during a game.

“He understands for this team to be successful, in particular on defense, he has to play at a high level and stay there.”

Norwood still Mr. Versatility… and it’s needed

One of the common themes for OU so far has been the need for versatility and the need to adjust at a moment’s notice because you never know when a COVID-19 outbreak will occur and deplete a position group.

OU already started recruiting versatility in its secondary for the 2020 class, and it will get a huge piece returning who can do it all in Tre Norwood.

After tearing his ACL during preseason camp last year, Norwood has been the player OU anticipated he was going to be heading into last season.

“It’s huge, and probably this season as much as anywhere you kind of anticipate needing to move guys around,” Manning said. “You just don’t know week to week who you have and who you’ll want to have. And so guys that can play more than one position are premium.

“Tre is one of those guys who has played all three of the spots in the secondary for us. He’s healthy, feeling good, running around, flying around. That’s one of the challenges of developing some other guys that can also do that not knowing how the season is going to play out on a week to week basis for who you have available.”

The cross training will be at an all-time high this season. Safeties playing nickel, nickel playing corner, corners playing safety – you get the idea.

It has been preached in recruiting and now being practiced in camp.

“I think where the benefit is that is how our recruiting is built,” Manning said. “It’s already built that way to recruit guys who have multiple position flexibility. And so anyone that we’ve recruited here in the secondary already by nature should be able to play other spots. It’s just a matter of teaching it to them, getting them repped at it. We went into this camp with that in mind and been able to do that.”

Davis taking the next step

It was a wild freshman season for Jaden Davis. Toward the halfway point, there were only three available scholarship corners in Davis, Brown and Motley.

It led to a lot of opportunities, and probably led to some growing pains as well. Davis was going to be someone who really benefited from having a spring practice, but obviously, that didn’t happen.

Still, no excuses and will be up to Davis to climb that next rung of the ladder when it comes to his development.

“The message is ‘so what, now what.’ The message is there’s no dropoff in the expectation,” Manning said. “For a second-year guy like a Jaden Davis or Woodi Washington, some of those guys, the expectation is really high. Especially for a guy like Jaden who played in a good amount of games last year. That’s been one of our focuses with him in particular.

“You can’t look like a freshman again in year two, you know what I mean? Albeit you didn’t have spring and all those things, but that’s just the expectation and the standard here. If you’re going to be on that field, you’re going to have to elevate your game.”