Oklahoma football is not in a good place. Those words are extremely rare when speaking about the storied history of the blue blood program.
But the brutal truth is, in three seasons as head coach, Brent Venables' Sooners have suffered two losing seasons. To put that into perspective, there have been only 14 sub-.500 seasons in 130 years of OU football history.
Venables is just one of three of the 23 head coaches in the Sooners' illustrious gridiron history to have as many as two losing seasons.
Here's another stark fact -- and some Sooner fans aren't going to like hearing this -- the performance by the 2024 edition of Oklahoma football was even more troublesome than its 6-7 overall record might indicate.
From feast to famine
To begin with, the Oklahoma offense, which historically has been among the best in college football, was as anemic as it has been in nearly three decades. The fall off in production from 2023 to this season was dramatic. With Dillon Gabriel at quarterback and Jeff Lebby as offensive coordinator in 2023, the Sooner offense was the third best in the country, averaging 507 yards per game. This season, Oklahoma ranked 114th in total offense with 331 yards per game.
Meanwhile, the defense, which has gone from being one of the worst in college football under Venables' predecessor, Lincoln Riley, and was one of the reasons the former was brought back to Norman as head coach, has shown considerable improvement under Venables, finishing 19th in the nation and fifth in the SEC this season in total defense.
So, in effect, it appears Oklahoma has traded offense for defense under Venables, and the grand result is a team that isn't even as good as the Sooner team he inherited from Riley, which was already in decline.
The Armed Forces Bowl loss to Navy served as an exclamation point on the 2024 season as a whole and all the troubles that plagued the Oklahoma football team all season. No one expected all the injury problems that decimated the Sooner wide receiver corps for the entire season and also contributed to eight different starting offensive lines.
Those are unintended consequences that every head coach has to deal with -- albeit not necessarily to that extent -- but at this time last year, Venables also had to replace an offensive coordinator and a starting quarterback that had directed the country's third-best total offense and fourth-best scoring offense. Unfortunately, Venables misfired on both of those critical offensive decisions.
Failed coaching decisions
The Sooner head coach elected to stay in-house in replacing offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby, who himself was an OU alum when Venables hired him ahead of the 2022 season. Seth Littrell and Joe Jon Finley, both former Sooner players, were promoted to co-offensive coordinators. Littrell was fired after seven games, with Finley assuming play-calling duties on an interim basis for the remainder of the season.
Venables also gambled at the quarterback position. Former five-star recruit Jackson Arnold took over the role this season for the departed Gabriel, who allegedly transferred to Oregon to make room for Arnold, who was being billed as the next great Sooner quarterback. We all know how that turned out.
The talented but untested Arnold had problems with turnovers and was replaced four games into the season with backup Michael Hawkins Jr., a true freshman. Hawkins started the next three games, but was benched after two interceptions and a fumble in the Sooners' first three possessions at home against South Carolina and led to a 21-0 deficit a little more than five minutes into the game.
To be totally fair, I'm not sure that any quarterback could have found much success given the inconsistency with a patchwork offensive line and a wide receiver group that was down to 3s and 4s on the depth chart.
Little margin for error in hiring of two new coordinators
Earlier this month, Venables hired former Washington State offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle, who comes with a strong resume of developing quarterbacks, and whose offenses at WSU and Western Kentucky before that were ranked among the top 20 in the country.
Arbuckle is bringing with him his quarterback at Washington State, John Mateer, who was considered the top player in the transfer portal. With Mateer at the position, Washington State improved from 38th in the nation to 11th this season in scoring offense (36.8 points per game) behind a nation-best 44 total touchdowns. He also gained 826 yards on the ground, attacking opposing defenses with his legs.
Venables and the Sooners are betting on Arbuckle's ability to get the slumping Oklahoma offense back on its feet and moving productively in the right direction.
While the defense is vastly improved over what it was during Riley's tenure at Oklahoma, it was not good enough to overcome all the problems the team experienced this season on offense. Although the Sooners are losing their top two defensive players to the NFL and others to the transfer portal, they return enough talent to remain strong and continue to improve on the defensive side.
They will have to do so, however, with a new defensive coordinator. Zac Alley is leaving OU after just one season to be the assistant head coach and defensive coordinator at West Virginia.
The Sooners are expected to again work the transfer portal to fill in position needs on both offense and defense, but they've gotten off to a surprising slow start. Oklahoma has 10 transfer commitments so far, which ranks 28th among FBS teams, according to 247Sports.
On the other end of the transfer equation, however, the Sooners have lost 26 players to the transfer portal, a number of which can realistically be attributed to the new potential NCAA rule reducing roster sizes from 120 to 105 before next season.
It's pretty obvious that things have to change and that two losing seasons out of the last three is nowhere near an acceptable result for Oklahoma football.
As Bob Stoops expressed when the OU administration was looking for the head coach to replace Riley, no head coach is bigger than the program itself. While the Sooners are going to have to put a better product on the field and deliver a better result if Venables is going to remain the Oklahoma head coach, the Sooners don't necessarily have to produce a four-win improvement like they did in Year 2 under Venables for him to remain in the role.
The 2025 schedule will be just as daunting as it was this season (the only thing that changes in the SEC portion of the schedule is the location where the games will be played). And Michigan is one of OU's nonconference opponents next season.
The expectation, of course, is that the Sooners will win more than just two conference games in 2025 and end up on the plus side of .500 overall.
But say Oklahoma does not better than replicate its 2024 record or wins just one more to reach seven, just barely enough to finish above water. Does that summon the posse to usher Venables out of town? No, and here's why.
Venables' contract calls for a payout estimated at $35 million dollars after next season. Some might say, in the new era of NIL tied to the recruitment and retention of top talent, that money might be put to better use, as Tulsa World sports columnist Berry Tramel suggested in a recent article, on wide receivers and edge rushers, cornerbacks and offensive tackles.
It's not just the contract buyout, though, that's at work here in determining Venables' future at OU. He is a quality person with high integrity and the ingrained desire to do things the right way. He was a popular hire as a previous member of the Oklahoma football family and remains in high standing and support from OU athletic director Joe Castiglione and president Joseph Harroz.
The runway for Venables' time at Oklahoma might not be as short as it would be for other head coaches, but he is clearly on notice that things need to be better and relatively quickly.
The ultimate timeline is up to him, but it is immensely important that he gets the two coordinator positions right moving forward. All the other remedies should flow from those critical decisions.