The Football Brainiacs

– Defensive Line Coaching Search: As most of you probably know by now, Mississippi State defensive line coach David Turner has accepted the defensive tackles coaching position at Texas A&M. Turner was one of OU’s top targets for their defensive line coaching vacancy prior to reportedly accepting the job with the Aggies.

And despite reports to the contrary, TFB was able to confirm through two independent sources there were at least initial conversations between OU and Michigan State’s Ron Burton. However as we previously reported, Burton informed Oklahoma that he was ‘happy where he’s at’ and OU moved on to other candidates.

It was reported yesterday by FootballScoop.com that Turner had already interviewed with Oklahoma, although TFB was told that interview was conducted over the phone. We were also told by a source close to Turner that he made the trip to College Station yesterday for an in-person interview and made his decision last night to accept the job with TAMU.

As TFB and several others reported yesterday, Kansas defensive line coach Calvin Thibodeaux interviewed with Oklahoma on Monday. And one source shared with TFB regarding said interview that Thibodeaux was “very impressive” and that he “knocked it out of the park.”

On the Kansas side of things we’re told the staff is in the very early stages of beginning to put together a list of possible replacements for Thibodeaux. Which would be a smart thing to on the part of any staff, but could also be perceived as their belief the likelihood of Thibodeaux being offered and accepting the OU job as a distinct possibility. However at the time of this post our source close to the KU program says they have yet to be informed of a decision from Thibodeaux either way.

One interesting note that may ultimately prove to be irrelevant at this point, but we were recently told Houston defensive line coach Oscar Giles was another one of the names under consideration for the Sooners. How much interest either side had in the other is unclear,  but we were told Giles’ name was definitely “on the list.”

For now, however, we are simply waiting to see if there is final word on Thibodeaux from either side of things, or if the Sooners will continue to vet some additional candidates. – (Brandon & Super K)

– UPDATE (4:28 pm): This was originally posted in the comments, but in an effort to make sure no one who wanted to be made aware missed it figured we might as well throw together a quick update.

Source close to #KUfball told me about an hour ago that Thibodeaux to OU was not a done deal yet. Seems inevitable, but you never know…

— Matt Tait (@mctait) February 23, 2016

We’ve basically been waiting since around 7:30am this morning to confirm Thibodeaux’s hiring through a second source. So this tweet is why you’ve yet to see TFB report things were a done deal. Which is not to suggest we believe Thibodeaux won’t eventually be introduced as OU’s next defensive line coach, because we do believe that will be the case (as several others have already reported).

Every indication seems to be his acceptance of the job is all but a formality at this point. But based on what we’ve been able to confirm thus far, and as Mr. Tait suggests in the tweet above, until things are “official”, i.e. some type of statement from OU, it might be a tad premature to go calling things a done deal (again, at least for now).