What does it say about you as a tenured employee when you lost your job to a younger, taller, leaner, hungrier version of yourself?
It can mean many things, but what it means most is you are no longer good enough at your job. Someone’s been found who can not only do it better than you can, but better than you did.
According to Monday’s football two-deep depth chart, that’s exactly what has happened to Jimmy Stevens, the Sooners’ starting place kicker the past two seasons.
Stevens was once one of the most athletic high school specialists in the country. He runs a 4.6 40-yard dash. Show me another college place kicker that can do that and I’ll show you a guy who is no longer his team’s place kicker.
Scout.com ranked Stevens the 11th best high school kicker in the nation.
According to Rivals.com in the fall of 2007, he was considered one of the best 30 high school football players in Oklahoma, where storied programs like Tulsa Union, Jenks, Booker T. Washington, Carl Albert and Ardmore produce future Heisman candidates and Super Bowl champions.
Rivals also ranked him as the 13th-best high school kicking specialist recruit in the country. He had to be to play ball at OU.
Stevens came in as the man to fill the void left by Garrett Hartley, the clutch kicker who has since helped the New Orleans Saints win a Super Bowl ring.
While at OU, Hartley was named to two All-Big 12 second teams and was a Lou Groza award finalist in 2006.
After redshirting his freshman year, Stevens got the starting nod and accounted for 116 of OU’s points in the 2008 season, converting 92 of 97 point-after attempts.
His point total is the second-highest single-season mark put up by a kicker ,and his 97 PATs is the highest mark ever in a season.
In 2009, he was able to hit a gaudy 84.6 percent of his field goal attempts, an amazing feat considering he was kicking at a 66.7-percent clip in 2008. He also made his second-straight All-Big 12 Academic Team in 2009.
Stevens’ career long field goal was 42 yards. He’s hit 21 of his 27 field goal attempts and 121 of his 128 point-after attempts.
So, with all of this going for him, why in the name of all things Crimson and Cream has the 5-foot-6, 167-pound Stevens lost his starting job to a 2009 walk-on sophomore who never played a down of football in high school, yet has a career long of 47 yards, hit six of nine field goals last season and has been perfect so far in extra points?
Oh, I see.
You may think it doesn’t make a difference that Patrick O’Hara is bigger, leaner, has a stronger leg and is 100 percent in PATs, but I assure you the OU coaching staff does.
Last year, the Sooners lost huge games to Texas, BYU and Nebraska that could have easily been won by not great but just competent place kicking.
With competent place kicking, OU’s 8-5 record last season could easily have been an 11-2 record. You know the rest.
Too many games are loss or won by place kickers. Who can forget Xavier Beitia’s miss that would have likely sealed a victory for Florida State in the 2004 Orange Bowl? Even if you don’t remember it, Bobby Bowden and those FSU players sure do.
Coach Bob Stoops and his staff are making it clear right from the start: Walk-on or scholarship player, the player who gives the team the most chance to win is the one who’s going to play.
Fans have got to love that. Players have a choice:
1. Suck it up, learn from it, grow through it and fight;
2. Give up, throw a pathetic pity-party and remember better times.
But for a true Sooner, the latter isn’t even an option.
— RJ Young, journalism grad student
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suckermom 1 year, 9 months ago
Amen Brother! I love Stevens, but he broke my heart last year and I had to put up with the stigma of the choke sign for OU at work for months. So, whomever is going to BRING IT this year...Let's play 'em. But keep working hard O'Hara, you could be Stevens... next year. Great column.