Both staffs leaned hard on the transfer portal to fix what broke. Tulsa added receiver David Wells Jr., who caught 44 balls for 466 yards a year ago, plus running back Trequan Jones off a 7.5 yards-per-carry season and edge rusher Kyran Duhon, who racked up 7 sacks at UTSA before landing in Tulsa via Oklahoma State. Sam Houston went shopping mostly on defense, bringing in pass rushers Jayden Fry from Boston College and Zion Taylor from Houston, along with beefed-up interior linemen in Justin Terrell (NC State) and Dimitry Nicolas (Maryland) to try to shore up a run defense that got shredded weekly.
The Bearkats' offense is the bigger question mark. Sophomore quarterback Landyn Locke completed just 50% of his throws with four touchdowns against four interceptions as a freshman, and center Josiah Chenault, a Kennesaw State transfer, is being counted on to stabilize a line that couldn't protect anybody last fall. Longo has been blunt that this offense goes only as far as that group up front takes it — which is a fair way to describe a team still searching for its floor.
For Tulsa, the bigger swing factor might just be continuity. Lamb's staff didn't blow things up after year one, and a defense that can build off flashes like the Oklahoma State performance has a real path to being competitive against a Sam Houston offense that struggled to move the chains against anybody in 2025. This is an early-season measuring-stick game for two programs trying to prove last year wasn't the ceiling — or the floor.