3 coaches who could’ve replaced Lincoln Riley at Oklahoma instead of Brent Venables

When Lincoln Riley made the surprising announcement that he was leaving Oklahoma to take over as the head coach at USC in late November of 2021, the administration in Norman had to scramble to find a replacement for Bob Stoops’ successor who led the program to three College Football Playoff appearances across his five seasons. 

Oklahoma leaned on its familiarity with former assistant coach Brent Venables, hiring the Clemson defensive coordinator as Riley’s replacement, but now as Venables is leading the Sooners through their first season in the SEC, regret could be creeping into Norman. The Sooners are 4-3 and 1-3 in conference play after a blowout 35-9 home loss to South Carolina. 

Venables team has been gutted by injuries on the offensive side of the ball, with its top five wide receivers all missing time. However, Venables made a questionable quarterback change in the team’s SEC opener against Tennessee, benched former five-star sophomore Jackson Arnold for true freshman Michael Hawkins Jr. In Week 8, Venables went back to Arnold, who also struggled to operate an offense that looks lost with injuries at receiver, with a subpar offensive line, and without former quarterback Dillon Gabriel who left for Oregon, and former offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby who is now the head coach at Mississippi State. 

Venables signed a contract extension that ties him to the program through the 2029 season after his 10-3 record in 2023, so he still has plenty of time to fix the problems and turn the program around, but if you offered Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione a time machine to go back and make a different hire, he might take it. Here are the three options he’d likely consider. 

Now in his third season at SMU, first-time head coach Rhett Lashlee has successfully navigated his program’s transition from the AAC to the ACC. The Mustangs are ranked at 5-1 and have a chance to make the ACC Championship game. At a program that was left for dead years ago, the former Miami offensive coordinator managed to win 11 games in 2023 after a 7-6 season in 2022. 

While Venables can call a defense as well as anyone in the country, Lashlee is an offensive innovator which may be most administrators preference in hiring so they can avoid losing talented offensive coaches like Lebby. 

While Lashlee could have been a good option, coaching changes are like breakups, if you dated a quiet blonde, I’ll bet your rebound will be a bubbly brunette, and if your last head coach was an offensive guru, I’ll bet your replacement is going to come from the defensive side of the ball. That’s often how it works and Oklahoma would’ve had some compelling defensive options. Dan Lanning replaced Mario Cristobal at Oregon in the 2021-22 hiring cycle and Mike Elko went to Duke. Lanning and OU may not have been a fit, though the former Georgia defensive coordinator has built a juggernaut up in Eugene, however, Elko could have been excellent if the decision-makers in Norman believed he was ready for the SEC level.  

Duke was Elko’s first head coaching job after serving as Texas A&M’s defensive coordinator from 2018-21, and after just two years he’s back in College Station, this time in the boss’s chair. Elko is a quality recruiter, and he’s one of the few defensive game planners who can rival Venables. Also, from his loyalty to Conner Weigman at A&M this year after his injury, he may not have welcomed a quarterback controversy as Venables did by flip-flopping between Arnold and Hawkins.

Kalen DeBoer impressed so much in his two years at Washington after leaving Fresno State in the 2021 hiring cycle that he was the first choice to succeed Nick Saban at Alabama. DeBoer has been an FBS head coach for three full seasons, one at Fresno State and two at Washington, and has posted a record of 34-6 with a national championship game appearance. 

DeBoer was available for Oklahoma in 2021, though he was hired just one day after Riley fled for LA.