Oklahoma obviously whiffed on 2024 O-line portal pickups

Oklahoma has scored one touchdown in the last eight quarters and has averaged just 13.5 points against its first four SEC opponents.

If you take away the two late touchdowns the Sooners scored in the comeback win over Auburn (one of which was a defensive touchdown on a pick six, that average drops to 10 points a game.

There is a lot of unpredictability associated with the game of football, but one thing we know for certain, if you can't put points on the scoreboard you're not going to win many games.

No one would have ever imagined just a couple of years ago we would be saying such things about an Oklahoma offense. Once a strength -- among the very best in college football -- the Sooner offense is now a broken down engine that has Brent Venables and company struggling mightily to keep its head above water in the snake pit that is the SEC.

So, where does the fault lie in how fast the drastic decline in Oklahoma's offensive capability has occurred.

There are a lot of moving parts that contribute to the effectiveness and efficiency of an offensive game plan. It only takes one player not executing his job on any given play to result in a breakdown and missed offensive opportunity. Advantage to the defense.

Clearly, the quarterback is the most important moving part of every offensive unit. But if the quarterback is under constant pressure and is unable to get through his downfield progressions and get into a rhythm and if the running backs have no run lanes to attack, the offense ultimately grounds to a halt. In the case of Oklahoma this season, there is one central reason for the vast majority of these negative outcomes -- sometimes morphed into five -- the performance of the offensive line.

Many football experts will tell you the game of football is won or lost up front by the big guys on the offensive and defensive lines. And this football maxim rings especially true in the SEC.

It is easy to side step the main issue, as Venables seemingly is inclined to do, of why the Sooner offense is having such a difficult time by casting universal blame and saying Oklahoma needs to get better in every aspect of the offense.

Let's not beat around the bush, the 2024 offensive line is probably the worst Oklahoma has put out there in the last 25 seasons. The Sooners' beyond disappointing performance on offense is the cumulative effect of deplorable offensive line play. All things considered, that is and continues to be the root cause of what has gone wrong with the OU offense this season.

Mason Young of the Tulsa World summed up the ineptness of this year's offensive line group this way:

"They've created little push in the run game, which has resulted in the Sooners rushing for 3.07 yards per carry this season, good for 124th in the country. (This same group) has been even more abhorrent in pass protection. They've allowed 29 sacks, the second most in the FBS this season."

Against South Carolina this past weekend, the group allowed nine sacks, an all-time record for sacks given up in a single game by an Oklahoma team. Hard to imagine that any quarterback could be effective and mistake free under that kind of pressure. I'm not sure it would have made that much of a difference if OU had some if not all of its top wide receivers on the field

Oklahoma lost all five offensive line starters from last years team due to graduation and declaring for the NFL. They also lost a couple of O-linemen to the transfer portal, which is where the Sooners had to turn to replenish all the attrition experienced among the offensive linemen. Five new offensive line starters were acquired via the transfer portal.

The problem is -- and please excuse the bluntness -- the OU recruiting staff did not do itself any favors in the selection process. Offensive line coach Bill Bedenbaugh, widely recognized as one of the best on the business, swung and missed with the five transfers he brought in. The Sooners missed out on several of the elite offensive linemen that were available in the 2024 transfer class and were forced to get whomever they could to fill out the immediate need.

It's not going to matter to cry over spilled milk at this juncture of the season. The Sooners are stuck with what they've got. Both the good news and the bad news is that four of the five O-line transfers who have started this season have just one year of eligibility and will be gone after this season. That's why development and retention of the freshmen backups and making sure the O-line commits in the 2025 recruiting class needs to be priority one right now.

The Sooners have several promising freshman who have seen little or no playing time this year, and the 2025 class has at least four elite offensive line commits, headed by five-star prospect Michael Fasusi, rated by 247Sports as the No. 3 offensive tackle in the class nationally and the No. 6 player overall.

Sooner fans are hoping that the erratic and too often horrid performance of the offensive line group this season is just a one-season anomaly and that able bodies are on the way to remedy the situation for the future. Bill Bedenbaugh is too good a recruiter and position coach for this not to be the case.