It continues to be a new day for OU football. The first national honor of the 2024 season comes from the defense.

That was unheard of in years past, but not now. And it wasn’t even from one of the expected guys like Billy Bowman or Danny Stutsman.

Instead, defensive end R Mason Thomas was named the Bronko Nagurski National Defensive Player of the Week after his career performance in OU’s 34-19 win over Tulane on Saturday, the Football Writers Association of America announced Tuesday.

Thomas was sensational in the final six minutes of the game to preserve the victory. He served as one of the captains for the game

“He’s got incredible faith,” head coach Brent Venables said. “Comes from a single mom. Very spiritual family, great support. Great foundation. His perspective is pretty strong along the way. Through the frustration, he’d be the first to tell you very frustrated.

“High ankle sprains, sometimes you wish you’d rather all things being said, a fracture is better than a high ankle sprain. Because the sprain is every bit as painful but it takes time. Different than you can put screws and a cast on and six weeks you can get out of that thing and be better than ever.”

Thomas had three sacks, a batted pass and one of those sacks became a lineman’s dream. The strip-sack-fumble-recovery combination. All of it came in the final six minutes against the Green Wave.

Heinecke awarded scholarship

More ways of NIL being used for good. Venables announced special teams specialist Owen Heinecke will be on scholarship the rest of this semester.

In a rather different way than usual.

“And then, it caught a little bit of news last night, Owen Heinecke being awarded – not by myself – but the walk-ons chose to basically pay for his school this year,” Venables said. “It was a really cool moment and for them to match Danny’s gift of $50,000 to several walk-ons in a pretty cool thing. I know that is certainly appreciated.”

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