NORMAN - Oklahoma cornerbacks Eli Bowen and Courtland Guillory will come into the 2026 season with sky-high expectations, and rightfully so.
Bowen, who will be a junior, notched 24 tackles, four pass breakups, two interceptions and a pick-six last year. Guillory broke out as a true freshman and earned SEC All-Freshman Team honors after logging 41 tackles and a team-high seven pass breakups.
But those two aren't the Sooners ' only cornerbacks who could be impactful in the fall.
Jacobe Johnson has flashed his potential in each of the last three seasons and is a reliable option behind Bowen and Guillory.
"If you compare his best plays with anybody in the country, you would say, 'Wow,'" Oklahoma cornerbacks coach LaMar Morgansaid.
A 6-2, 206-pound cornerback, Johnson will be a senior in the fall.
Johnson missed the first two games of OU's 2025 season with an injury, but after that, he was a key backup.
The defensive back appeared in each of the Sooners' final 11 contests and registered two interceptions, which tied for a team-high. He also made nine tackles, seven of which were solo stops.
Last year, it was Bowen and Guillory who dominated the snaps at the cornerback spots. In 2024, it was Bowen and Woodi Washington .
Sign up to our free newsletter and follow us on Facebook and X for the latest news.
Because of OU's year-in and year-out depth at cornerback, Johnson has never emerged as an every-down player. But Morgan believes he is skilled enough to be that.
"If you talk about athletic abilities, I had guys at other schools that I've coached that went on to the National Football League, and I think Jacobe is as good or better than some of those guys that went on and had eight and seven, 10-year careers," Morgan said.
Johnson finished his junior year with a 70.6 Pro Football Focus (PFF) defensive grade, which ranked 16th of the 43 OU players who logged defensive snaps. His grade was below Bowen and Guillory's, but he finished ahead of every other backup cornerback.
Though Johnson was largely efficient in his reserve role, he wasn't perfect.
According to PFF, Johnson missed five tackles in 2025 and ended the year with a dismal 31.9 tackling grade.
Because of Johnson's discipline and his desire to learn, Morgan is confident that he'll clean up the areas in which he needs to improve on.
"There might be a play or two that he needs to do better on, but we all do," Morgan said. "We could coach him better. We can get him better."
As the stars at the position, Bowen and Guillory are unsurprisingly vocal leaders in the cornerback room. But according to Bowen, Johnson's veteran presence has also helped the position group improve.
"I think me, Courtland, and Jacobe are more vocal and helping everyone else learn the defense, learn the plays, learn the checks and calls and all that," Bowen said. "I think that's going to make us better in the end."
In the long run, Guillory and Bowen have legitimate NFL potential. And in the short term, both of them are candidates to take home All-American honors for the Sooners.
But Morgan knows that Johnson is too valuable not to have a role in 2026.
"We're trying to get as many co-starters as we possibly can, so everybody can have roles and everybody knows that they have a role on the team and they're important," Morgan said. "I think that's what (Oklahoma coach Brent Venables) does the best in the defensive course."
This article was originally published on www.si.com/college/oklahoma as Could Oklahoma CB Jacobe Johnson see Larger Role During Senior Season? .
