Brent Venables says Dillon Gabriel not forced out at OU

Even though former Oklahoma quarterback Dillon Gabriel did not declare for the NFL Draft as most college football experts expected he would after last season and decided instead to remain in college play one final season, Brent Venables said on Tuesday Gabriel was not pushed out of the program.

The Oklahoma head coach voluntarily brought up the issue at the end of his regular weekly press conference on Tuesday. Referencing several news stories that appeared earlier this week and even before that suggested Gabriel was only expected to play two seasons at most at Oklahoma, making way for five-star recruit Jackson Arnold to take over as the starter in the 2024 season.

Venables said that was not at all the way the process played out.

The Sooner head coach said Gabriel approached him ahead of the Alamo Bowl game and let him know that he was going to opt out of playing in OU's bowl game against Arizona. Venables said that did not catch him by surprise because he had already learned that several of the offensive lineman had decided not to play in the bowl game.

The general feeling at that time was that the players who were opting out of the bowl game, including Gabriel, were doing so because they would be declaring for the NFL Draft. That is the general assumption when players opt out of postseason play. Venables said that when Gabriel spoke with him, the head coach did not know that his starting quarterback was not going to the NFL.

Venables said they had a great conversation. I was disappointed he wasn't going to play in the bowl game, he said, but with offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby leaving to become head coach at Mississippi State, the OU head coach thought Gabriel wanted to get closer to his home in Hawaii.

"I didn't even know I had to fight this fight. I didn't realize you were even considering coming back," Venables said about Gabriel's decision to forego the NFL and play one final college season. Venables said Gabriel's response was, "Yeah, but I just wanted to get closer to home."

There has been plenty of speculation in the mainstream media and social media reported inaccurately that Gabriel was forced out to make room for former five-star recruit Jackson Arnold.

"You can't make a guy stay," Venables said during the Tuesday press conference. "The guy's trying to find the next thing, the next chapter for him. I'm sure there was probably some disappointment that he wasn't more highly thought of in the NFL. But nobody was running was running nobody off or anything like that."

After throwing for over 3,000 yards and 25 touchdowns in his two seasons at Oklahoma and leading the Big 12 in passing in 2023, Gabriel is now at Oregon, where he is a leading contender for the 2024 Heisman Trophy.

That's the rest of the story, and now Oklahoma is in the midst of making another quarterback change, Backup true freshman quarterback Michael Hawkins Jr. will get the starting assignment, his first as a collegian, at Auburn this weekend, replacing Arnold.