Oklahoma football: Five best Oklahoma defenses since 2000

Defense has been Oklahoma football’s Achilles heel in recent seasons. While the Sooners’ history has been more about offensive firepower, there have been past seasons in which the Oklahoma defense has actually been among the nation’s best.

I know that’s hard to fathom given what we witnessed the last eight to 10 years. They say great offense will win you a lot of games, but great defense wins you championships.

As an example, the Oklahoma offense in the 2000 season was as prolific as ever, ranked No. 18 among NCAA Division I teams, yet it was the Sooner defense that was responsible for Oklahoma winning the national championship. The Sooners defeated Florida State, the nation’s No. 1 offense that season, 13-2 in the BCS National Championship game.

In 2022, the Oklahoma defense ranked 122nd out of 131 FBS teams in total defense, as bad as it has ever been. And this was with Brent Venables, who has one of the best defensive resumes in the college football over the past decade, as the Sooners head coach. All is expected to get better going forward defensively for OU, but it was an inauspicious first season, nevertheless, for Venables as the Sooners’ head coach.

All of this got us thinking about the Oklahoma defenses much earlier in this century when things weren’t nearly this bad. What were some of the best Oklahoma defensive teams of the past two decades. Here are the five best, ranked in ascending order, five through one.