Oklahoma head football coach Lincoln Riley was back addressing the media Wednesday, a day before the start of spring practice. Here are the three biggest takeaways from the 38-minute session.

As always, spring begins talking about guys who won’t play because of injury and position changes. Plenty of both for the Sooners.

Notables out due to injury:

*Creed Humphrey

*Robert Barnes

*Jordan Parker

*Jalen Redmond

*Starrland Baldwin

“Those guys will all miss spring practice,” Riley said. “They’re all able to do quite a bit physically right now but getting out full speed in a football practice here, they’re not ready for that right now. But expect all of them back soon. They’re all on schedule. None of these were unexpected.”

Notable position changes:

*Michael Thompson moves from defensive tackle to offensive line

*Brayden Willis moves from inside receiver to H-Back

“When we first offered Michael it was as an offensive lineman,” Riley said. “We ended up recruiting them at the end from a defensive perspective. We always felt like he had the ability to play O-line. When we got down to it our numbers have been a little better on the defensive line than the O-line.”

And one surprising announcement that wide receiver A.D. Miller will be rejoining the program. Miller entered the transfer portal following the season and had appeared to have picked Illinois. Never became 100 percent official, and Miller is back in Norman for his redshirt senior season.

“He should be on the practice field with us pretty quickly,” Riley said. “As has been well documented, he explored the transfer portal and looked around a couple of spots, but in the last several weeks he has made a decision that he wants to be back at Oklahoma and finish what he started here.”

“I give the kid a ton of credit because it’s not easy to come back. At the end of the day, this is where he wanted to be. We’re thrilled to have him back. His teammates are thrilled to have him back.”

No doubt a huge point of emphasis this spring is defensively with first-year defensive coordinator Alex Grinch calling the shots.

His system is going to look a lot different. He’s recruiting a different defensive player, especially in the secondary. And if you want a name, a defining characteristic? It’s speed.

“Defensively, as far as what you want to call it, Coach Grinch breaks it down with the defense every time he talks to them. They've used the Speed D. That's been one thing for us, is getting more speed on the field,” Riley said. “That has been a huge point both with our current players, with what we're doing with our guys as far as how we train them, their bodies, and certainly been a big change, not to say a big change, not that we haven't recruited speed in the past, but I would say it's a bigger emphasis right now in our evaluations of potential players before they come in here.”

It has been about balance. If the speed is there, maybe helping them gain or lose weight. Riley said some defensive linemen have been trained to actually drop some pounds during winter.

Riley announced the official position changes, but defense is an open book. If you’re a safety but a better fit at cornerback or vice versa, options are open.

“No question. That’s why we try not to pigeonhole these guys in positions,” Riley said. We’re gonna be open-minded about it. We’re gonna look at guys in different spots. We’ve got to piece into what we have right now, and then certainly guys we have coming in.

“But absolutely, there’s gonna be a lot of that throughout the spring, guys at different positions. We’ve told them as coaches, ‘We’re gonna have an open mind and then we need you guys to do the same.’”

Knew going in that four pieces from last year’s offensive line puzzle weren’t going to return. But with the news of Humphrey being down, yep, zero returning starters this spring at the position.

It’s a big challenge, but it’s just as big of an opportunity as well.

“It’s actually, not having Creed there maybe is going to be good for a lot of these young guys, because that crutch of having a center that knows everything that’s going on and just a guy that’s an experienced good football player, when you take him away from the group, you’re going to really find where these guys are at individually,” Riley said. “So it’s absolutely going to make it tougher on our group. But that’s what we need right now.”

Names being mentioned have included Marquis Hayes and Tyrese Robinson at guard and Brey Walker and Adrian Ealy at offensive tackle. But seriously, any name could end up being the surprise of spring and earn a spot. That’s how good OU feels about the talent on campus right now.

“But it’s going to be a good thing, because a million reps for those guys, a lot of chances to work,” Riley said. “And again, you see the talent there. We’ve just got to get them playing at the level we expect both individually and as a group.”

There’s no question OU did everything it could last year to make spring game weekend a huge deal. Riley is looking to duplicate that this time around, if not make it even bigger in recruiting.

“We had a lot of big-time recruits on our campus last year at our spring game and I want our fans to know that 11 of those guys right now are Oklahoma Sooners and a lot of them were some of the most highly recruited guys in the country,” Riley said. “You go back and ask, like we do with these guys when we sign them, what made the difference, what did we do well? You always try to find out what we can do better.

“Every single one of these guys listed the atmosphere and the experience that they had on their official visit last April at our spring game. It was a major factor. We don’t get all 11 of those guys without the great atmosphere and the great work that so many people did.”

Riley wouldn’t let the cat out of the bag just yet about what OU has planned for the weekend, but it sounds like it’ll be something pretty special.

“We have some really great things that will be announced in the coming days,” Riley said. “It’s going to be a big-time event for us. We had 52,000 last year. We need more than that this year, period. We are going to make sure we do our part to make it better for every single fan. We need our fans to be here to show our team and our recruits why this is the absolute best place to do it in the country.”