Is it time to turn the page back to Jackson Arnold, or have the Sooners given up on him?

True freshman Michael Hawkins Jr. will start his third consecutive game at quarterback when Oklahoma plays host to South Carolina on Saturday. Meanwhile the player who last season and at the start of this one was looked upon as the Sooner quarterback of the future will be watching from the sidelines.

On his Coaches Show Monday night, Brent Venables made no bones about the fact that Hawkins is still the Sooner quarterback, despite Oklahoma's continued offensive struggles in the past three games.

Makes you wonder if we're seeing a reprise of the Spencer Rattler situation, when he was replaced his sophomore season in 2021 by Caleb Williams. Rattler was also a former five-star recruit. After that season, Rattler transferred to South Carolina.

When Jackson Arnold signed on as the top recruit in Oklahoma's 2023 recruiting class, he was deemed the next great quarterback to don the crimson and cream. The Sooner quarterback of the future, if you will.

Arnold was rated five stars and a top-three quarterback prospect by every major recruiting service and the Gatorade National Player of the Year coming out of Denton Guyer High School in North Texas. There was no reason to believe that his star power wouldn't continue to rise at a program like Oklahoma, which in the 22nd century proudly laid claim to the epithet "Quarterback-U."

The Sooners also had the luxury of not having to throw Arnold immediately into the fire as a true freshman. Instead, he was able to get acclimated to OU and football at the next level and continue to develop his skills and learn behind OU starter Dillon Gabriel. The expectation was that Gabriel would probably declare for the NFL after five college seasons and Arnold would move into the starting role in the 2024 season.

That is how things worked out, only Gabriel did not move on to the NFL. He opted to play another college season -- only not at Oklahoma. The two-year Sooner starter entered the transfer portal and is now at Oregon, which is No. 2 this week in both major polls after defeating then No. 3 Ohio State last weekend.

Arnold got his first start in an Oklahoma uniform in the Alamo Bowl last season against Arizona after Gabriel had opted out. Although he threw for 361 yard, including a pair of touchdowns, Arnold's performance was somewhat mixed and marred by three interceptions and a fumble.

The general feeling among Venables and the Oklahoma coaches was that Arnold would learn from his mistakes in the Alamo Bowl game and be better for it by the time the 2024 season came around. All was well in the 2024 season opener. Arnold threw for 141 yards and four touchdowns in leading the Sooners to a 51-3 blowout over a much inferior opponent in Temple.

As the quality of competition ramped up, however, over the next three games, the flaws in the Oklahoma offense increasingly become exposed, and Arnold himself was an unwitting contributor with bad decisions resulting in interceptions as well as ball security issues, the same problem that negatively impacted his Alamo Bowl performance.

After an interception and two fumbles in the first half against Tennessee, Arnold was benched and replaced by the true freshman Hawkins. That was four games into the season, and Arnold has not seen the field since.

Although Arnold has more passing yards and more touchdown passes (7) than Hawkins in the same number of games, Hawkins has been more error free with no interceptions and just one lost fumble in four games. And that appears to be a big reason Hawkins remains the starter.

During his weekly press conference on Tuesday, Venables said he is not a fan of splitting quarterback duties, but he is not ruling anything out.

"Well, I'm certainly not immune to anything," he said. "I know Steve Spurrier did it for his whole career. But that being said, it'd be great if you had one that you could get behind and do the things that are necessary in order to win."

Arnold has only played in four game this season, which would allow him to preserve a year of eligibility should he or Oklahoma elect to go the redshirt route. Venables was asked on Tuesday if that had been discussed with Arnold.

"It's been discussed between us," Venables said. "What was told to Jackson, 'We put you in, it's because we need you to help us go win.' And we're certainly sensitive to everything." What the Sooner head coach meant by that is that if Arnold plays in another game this season, he will not be able save a year of eligibility and will have just two years of eligibility remaining instead of three.

Venables said Arnold told him he wants to be the starting quarterback at the University of Oklahoma. "He's a great teammate," said the OU head coach. "His focus and priority is with the team, where he is right now. He's practiced extremely well the past couple of weeks. He's taken it in a really tough-minded way, and he's ready to play. If he wasn't, he wouldn't still be here every day."

Venables went on to say that he feels it is only right "to give Mike the opportunity to be the quarterback and to have, again, the body of work that says he either is or isn't the right guy."

All of this creates an interesting dilemma and decision point for Arnold and Oklahoma. If the Sooners play him in any of the remaining games this season, the option of redshirting is gone. If Arnold, on the other hand, believes that his chances of returning to the starting role at Oklahoma are behind him and he would be a better fit somewhere else, it would behoove him to protect his redshirt year and take three years of eligibility with him to another team via the transfer portal

The same option, by the way, is available to Hawkins, depending on how all of this ultimately plays out.

It is a fine line that Oklahoma is going to have to walk regarding its quarterback situation, how and for the future.