{"id":553948,"date":"2026-03-30T09:37:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T09:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/553948\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T09:37:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T09:37:11","slug":"will-ou-return-more-kicks-in-2026-special-teams-coordinator-doug-deakin-says-absolutely","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/553948\/","title":{"rendered":"Will OU return more kicks in 2026? Special teams coordinator Doug Deakin says &#8216;absolutely&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>OU was not a team that threatened opponents in the kickoff return game last season. <\/p>\n<p>The Sooners returned just two kickoffs all of last season, which was the lowest number in the entire FBS. A big reason for that was that they weren&#8217;t good at it, averaging just 8 yards per return, and because their offense didn&#8217;t need any more setbacks than it already was facing. <\/p>\n<p>But that sounds like it will change in 2026. Special teams coordinator Doug Deakin told reporters on Saturday that OU will &#8220;absolutely&#8221; return more kickoffs in 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OU was not a team that threatened opponents in the kickoff return game last season. The Sooners returned&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553949,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[246213,399,398,396,397,6344,12921,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-553948","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-doug-deakin","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-ncaa","11":"tag-ncaa-football","12":"tag-ncaafootball","13":"tag-oklahoma-sooners","14":"tag-plus","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}