Remember those years when Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray were launching passes downfield to speedy, open Sooner receivers in full stride for huge gains, even touchdowns, and Oklahoma running backs were gaining six yards a pop and producing 1,000-yard seasons?
Those Oklahoma offenses were among the very best in college football. Flash forward nearly a decade, and we have a complete role reversal between the Sooner offensive and defensive units.
Not all that surprising, really, that when you bring in Brent Venables, one of college football's most respected and accomplished defensive minds, to replace the offensive genius but defensively challenged Lincoln Riley, the Oklahoma defense would rise to similar levels of superiority on a national scale.
The problem for the Sooners and their fans is that Oklahoma can't seem to have it both ways. The transformation of the defense into one of the country's best sadly has come at the expense of the once high-powered Oklahoma offense.
OU has had elite offenses and equally great defenses, but can't seem to meld the two together at the same time
From 2016 through 2018, the Oklahoma offense ranked in the top three nationally all three seasons, including No. 1 in 2018. Those were the same years that Sooner fans were lamenting: "If OU only had a defense that was just average, think what might have been." Perhaps more national championship hardware in the trophy case at the Switzer Center.
Riley was the architect of those Oklahoma offensive juggernauts that could outscore virtually everybody. They just couldn't stop anybody from scoring. An over/under of 100 points was more the norm than the exception for those offensive-minded Oklahoma teams.
Bad defense, and I use that adjective loosely, was the prime reason Oklahoma didn't play in a couple more national championship games this century. The 2018 season, for example, the Sooners led the country in both scoring offense (48.3 points per game) and total offense (570 yards per game). At the same time, the defense allowed opponents 33 points and yielded 454 yards per game, which ranked 101st nationally.
Five years ago, the Sooners rubbed the genie bottle and asked for much better defense. Enter Venables, returning to Norman in 2022 after a decade-long hiatus as defensive coordinator at Clemson.
It took a couple of seasons, but last year's 10-2 Oklahoma season was largely the result of a defense that ranked No. 6 in the country overall and No. 7 in scoring defense. This was despite an offense that ranked 92nd overall and 113th among FBS teams in rushing.
Venables and his staff spent a busy offseason focusing on ways and means, as well as personnel additions, to improve the team's offensive efficiency and effectiveness. It's just three games into the 2026 season, but so far it appears that all the offseason work and changes have been for little avail.
The Sooner offense is actually performing worse this season than it did a year ago, and that's through the easiest part of this year's schedule. Oklahoma is averaging 330 yards of offense a game, 115th nationally, and 123rd in rushing (110 yards per game).
Venables was asked at his weekly press conference on Tuesday what it's going to take to get the Oklahoma offense to the level of success the program has known historically.
"Let's continue to demand them to do what we know they can do," he said. "We know they can do it at a higher and more consistent level. ...
"I know that's not dramatic enough for some people, and that's OK. Becoming excellent is a very boring thing. It's really hard. It's methodical. It's consistent. It's the smallest things, not the big things. And it's not flinching when it isn't working. It's about working and demanding better."
No one expects the Oklahoma offense to return to its high level of performance or become a world-beater overnight or in the matter of just a few games, but the performance definitely needs to change, and the players within the offense need to be more consistent in executing the things they already know how and are capable of doing.
Add us as a preferred source on Google