Brent Venables Says Oklahoma Has 'a Small Army' to Coach Quarterbacks

The Sooners' quarterbacks have struggled overall this season, leading fans to question who Venables has coaching the position.

Oklahoma offensive coordinator Seth Littrell stands on the field before the Sooners took on Tulane. / BRYAN TERRY/THE OKLAHOMAN / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Oklahoma coach Brent Venables has assembled an army to accomplish one role on the coaching staff. 

Co-offensive coordinator Seth Littrell is labeled as the Sooners’ quarterbacks coach on top of his play-calling duties. The argument against Littrell having that job is that he never played the position as a former fullback at OU. He had also never coached the position until Venables promoted him from offensive analyst this past offseason to replace Jeff Lebby, who left to become the head coach at Mississippi State. This is Littrell’s 22nd season coaching college football in some capacity and the only positions he had coached until now, at least in his job description, were running backs and tight ends. 

The fact Littrell is coaching a position he has no real prior experience with has emerged as a glaring issue as the Sooners have struggled at the position. First, heralded 5-star recruit Jackson Arnold was the presumed future of the program and next quarterback to continue a great lineage the Sooners have at the position as five former OU quarterbacks started for NFL teams on Sunday. Arnold, a sophomore, was then benched during his fifth career start against Tennessee. He was replaced by freshman Michael Hawkins Jr., a 4-star dual-threat quarterback with speed that was compared to Kyler Murray by teammates. 

Hawkins was solid in his first start against Auburn, leading his team to a road victory while completing a clutch deep ball and putting his body on the line for a two-point conversion. But against Texas, he was 19-of-30 for 148 yards while failing to lead his offense into the end zone. The struggle, although only one game, not only stirred questions of another QB shakeup, but also influenced the fan question on Venable’s weekly coach’s show on Monday. 

The question: “Would it benefit to have a coach dedicated to the quarterback position, a quarterbacks coach who played that position?”

Venables answer: “Well, I mean, yeah, you want somebody that can be a great teacher – the fundamentals of it, the scheme part of it, the decision-making part, the development piece. On our staff, we've got Coach Littrell, that he's coached quarterbacks for a long time, and a lot of the best coaches, they coach several positions on both sides of the ball and that helps them be a better teacher at what they're doing. He's had high-level success coaching quarterbacks.”

Venables went on to also mention offensive analysts Jack Lowary and Kevin Johns. Lowary is in his first season at OU after spending 2023 at Tennessee under Josh Heupel in the same position. He also played for Heupel at Missouri. 

Johns is also at OU for his first season. He’s an experienced coach with stops at Duke, Memphis, Western Michigan and Indiana as a quarterbacks coach. He was also offensive coordinator at all those places, including at Texas Tech in 2018, when current Oklahoma State quarterback Alan Bowman started as a freshman for the Red Raiders. 

“We got a small army of those kind of coaches,” Venables said. “And then, hey, if you have somebody that's also a coordinator that coaches those quarterbacks, that could be a great thing, too.”