Column: Do Zac Alley's Reasons Even Matter? Oklahoma Has Bigger Problems to Fix

Brent Venables and the Sooners are in the hunt for another defensive coordinator, but it would be wise to address other issues along the way.

Oklahoma defensive coordinator Zac Alley and head coach Brent Venables / BRYAN TERRY/THE OKLAHOMAN / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Under normal circumstances, most days in this space we would be asking who Oklahoma will hire next as its defensive coordinator.

Instead, we’ll ask this: does it even matter?

For whatever reason, Zac Alley left his defensive coordinator job at OU for a defensive coordinator job at West Virginia.

That’s not a lateral move.

Maybe Alley got a bunch more money to go back to work for Rich Rodriguez and call defenses for a program that hasn’t come close to winning a Big 12 Conference championship in its 12 years as a member. In fact, the Mountaineers were tied for second once, tied for third once, and never finished better than fourth. Their league record in a dozen Big 12 campaigns is 53-54.

Maybe Alley got an assurance from Rodriguez that the WVU defense is 100 percent his and his alone — something he would have never received in Norman. Less than a year ago, Alley was brought in by Brent Venables from Jacksonville State (where he had worked for Rodriguez), to run Venables’ defense at OU. Not to run Zac Alley’s defense. Venables’ fingerprints remained all over the Oklahoma defense in 2024 — an obviously critical season in his head coaching tenure — instead of being more focused on fixing one of the worst offenses in school history.

Or maybe Alley realized that with just one more poor season, Venables and his entire staff at OU could be in the unemployment line.

Or maybe Alley just likes coaching for Rodriguez more than he liked coaching for Venables — which is kind of hard to believe, given the content of his first public interview back in August.

“It feels like home,” Alley said.

“He’s like my second dad. I know everybody says I sound like him, I don’t know if I agree with that, but hey, I love him to death and I’m so appreciative of him. He just makes everybody around him better. He’s just one of those guys who you love because how he holds you to a standard and then loves you the same way. It’s just been a phenomenal experience and I’m just looking forward to the future.”

The temptation here is to suggest that whatever Alley’s reason for leaving, Venables and Oklahoma would be better served identifying his replacement — a capable coach, a dynamic recruiter and a fearless play-caller.

But is that just addressing the symptom, rather than the illness itself?

If Venables couldn’t hold onto a talented young protégée like Alley — one who sees him as a mentor and a father figure — and somehow loses him to a program like West Virginia after less than one year on the job, the real question needs to be asked again: 

Does it even matter at this point who Venables appoints as his new DC?

This is where the Oklahoma Sooners have fallen to: regressing to another losing season for the second time in three years, a third consecutive loss in a middling bowl game, and now having to start over with new coordinators in both the offensive staff room and the defensive staff room for the second year in a row. Venables is now looking for his sixth (non-interim) coordinator after just three years. One of those (Jeff Lebby) took a head coaching job. One took a step down (Alley). Two of those (Ted Roof and Seth Littrell) had to be fired.

A 5-star quarterback (Jackson Arnold) flamed out and transferred while last year’s starting QB (Dillon Gabriel) transferred and went on to earn Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year and was a Heisman finalist.

The conference record (2-6) is the program’s worst in nearly a hundred years.

In three years on the job now, Venables has replaced an historically bad defense with an historically bad offense. That’s not progress by any measurable metric — even if we’re taking into account an unprecedented run of injuries at the wide receiver position.

Help for the offense seems to be on the way. Venables landed both Washington State’s offensive coordinator (Ben Arbuckle) and quarterback (John Mateer). Against a soft schedule, the Cougars this year are among the nation’s leaders in offense, and Mateer leads the country in total touchdowns and ranks fifth in total yards.

But the Sooners’ other transfer portal additions consist of a lot of lower-division players from FCS and Division II. Can Mateer’s FCS receivers get open against SEC defenses? It’s a significant concern. 

And Arbuckle returns a stockroom of offensive linemen and running backs who struggled in 2024.

While the Oklahoma offense doesn’t rank well in any category (114th overall, 119th in passing, 97th in scoring offense, 130th in sacks allowed, 101st in passing efficiency, 76th in rushing, 132nd in yards per pass completion), the OU defense wasn’t too bad in Alley’s one season.

The Sooners rank 19th in total defense, 30th in scoring defense, 34th in takeaways, 10th in tackles for loss, 25th in sacks, 23rd in rushing defense and 44th in passing defense.

In retrospect, Alley looks like Venables’ best coordinator hire.

So why did he leave?

Did Alley simply peer into the future and realize that Danny Stutsman and the rest of the 2024 OU seniors would be missed too much for the 2025 unit to have success? Did he just want to stamp his own identity on his own defense at WVU? Did Venables (like dads sometimes do) meddle too much in the defensive game plan? Did Alley get that big a pay bump to coach the Mountaineers (he was paid $850,000 this year and was scheduled to get $900,000 next year; early reports out of Morgantown suggest he might get $1.5 million)?

Or was it something deeper?

Again, Oklahoma has fallen so far, the real question is much more profound.

Does it even matter? 

Whether it’s a troubling net yield from the transfer portal, an NIL war chest that falls short of OU’s peer programs, a compliance department that’s famously unwilling to push the feckless NCAA’s dwindling boundaries, an accomplished athletic director who may be struggling to adapt to the rapidly changing landscape of college sports, an increasingly unforgiving conference schedule, or all of it rolled together and more, Venables’ efforts at turning around the Oklahoma program must start with an intense introspection.

If he really is the right man for the job, what can he do to be a better head coach to his players, and a better boss to his staff? What can he and AD Joe Castiglione and NIL collective 1Oklahoma and the evolving structure of OU athletics do to not only bring in and keep better players but also land and retain better coaches?

Venables has far bigger problems to solve than just hiring another defensive coordinator.