Column: How Oklahoma QB Coach Kevin Johns Quickly Got the Most Out of Jackson Arnold

The Sooners' new quarterback coach has a "natural, easy, organic way" of maximizing a player's talent within a game plan, which helped Arnold have "his best game" at Ole Miss.

Oklahoma Sooners quarterback Jackson Arnold / Petre Thomas-Imagn Images

NORMAN — At the very least, maybe Brent Venables has found Oklahoma’s next quarterbacks coach moving forward.

It’s certainly possible — even likely — that whoever Venables hires as his offensive coordinator in December will also coach OU quarterbacks. But there are early indications that the new OC will have the flexibility to coach another position because of the work Kevin Johns has already gotten done with Jackson Arnold and the rest of the Sooners’ QBs.

It was another loss — OU’s third in a row, dropping the Sooners to 4-4 with this week’s home game against Maine coming up — but Arnold had “his best game” of the season, Venables said, in the Sooners’ 26-14 loss at Ole Miss last week — thanks to a big assist from Johns.

After Venables made the decision to fire Seth Littrell, he needed both a new OC (he gave the play-calling duties to tight ends coach and co-OC Joe Jon Finley) and a new QB coach (he called up Johns from the analysts bullpen). 

With Arnold reinstated as the starter after losing his job and sitting for three weeks behind Michael Hawkins, Johns immediately went to work on getting to know Arnold and identifying his strengths and weaknesses, and then working closely with Finley to implement those things into (or out of) the Ole Miss game plan.

Arnold responded by completing 22-of-31 passes (71 percent) for 182 yards and also running 15 times for 103 yards (before sacks). Against one of the SEC’s most ferocious units — No. 1 in the nation in rushing defense and No. 2 in scoring defense — Arnold endured nine sacks and lost a fumble, but didn’t throw an interception and guided the laboring OU offense to its best performance in conference play so far.

Johns, 48, hails from Piqua, OH, and played quarterback for the Dayton Flyers, where he was a two-year starter, earned NCAA Division I-AA All-America honors and was picked as the Football Gazette Player of the Year in 1996. He was a two-time first-team All-Conference QB and set the school’s career record for total offense with 5,425 yards, as well as a passer efficiency rating of 151.1.

Playing the position at a high level set him on a coaching track that started at his high school alma mater, then got him a college GA job at Northwestern, where he worked for Kevin Wilson under Randy Walker from 1999-2001. Johns spent two years at Richmond, then rejoined Northwestern to coach running backs for two years, receivers for two years, and in 2008-10 was the Wildcats’ passing game coordinator. In 2011 he was hired by Wilson to coach quarterbacks and receivers at Indiana and added the co-offensive coordinator title, and in 2014 he was promoted to full-time offensive coordinator for the Hoosiers for three seasons. One-year stints as OC and QB coach at Western Michigan and Texas Tech preceded a three-year stay at Memphis (2019-21) where was Mike Norvell’s offensive coordinator and coached Tiger quarterbacks. Then from 2022-23 he was OC and QB coach at Duke, where he worked for Mike Elko.

Venables brought in Johns last March as an offensive analyst based on deep references.

“I’ve known Kevin Johns for a long time, as far as his career, because he's worked with people that I know,” Venables said Tuesday during his weekly press conference. “ … I’ve watched him at Duke, being in the ACC for a decade and watching the transition and the coaching there on that staff. And then watching them after we got to Oklahoma, watching them beat Clemson a year ago and have a really good year with that quarterback (Riley Leonard). And again, knowing that they did more with less there as well. 

“And Kevin Wilson always bragged on him as being a really good football coach, and I really value Kevin's opinion. And then Seth had a relationship with him.” 

Johns will have at least five games to coach Arnold and Hawkins, and if last Saturday was any indication, the OU quarterback room is trending up.

It’s no surprise that Arnold had his best game in such a tough road environment Saturday. Venables remarked last week that watching Johns transition from the background role of analyst to the very front-facing role of quarterbacks coach, he saw something special in Johns — and something immediate. So much so that he said Johns was “like a pig in the mud” as he stepped back onto the practice field for the first time.

“I just, every play, I want to coach. I coach every play like it's the biggest play in the world,” Venables said.  

“ … You can still be an incredibly effective, successful coach not coaching that way. But that's how I was raised in the profession, and so I like it when I see it.  And I saw that immediately. 

“I like answers. I like details. I like not taking anything for granted at practice. And every opportunity is an opportunity to teach, grow and learn and get better. And so I saw that piece.”

Littrell had served as an offensive coordinator at several stops before he became head coach at North Texas, but he had never coached quarterbacks until Venables appointed him last winter. For Johns, jumping back into it last week — after coaching QBs for 13 seasons — was an easy fit. 

“Sometimes you can over-coach,” Venables said. “I believe in not wasting a day. Not wasting a practice rep, no matter what it is. That’s what I saw him do, in a really natural, easy, organic way. And you would’ve expected it if he was the analyst every day all season long, all spring and all summer, where he’s working with him intimately — but he wasn’t. And so that’s what I thought. 

“I thought, because of Kevin’s ability to make it that easy, a transition that — who the hell would think that would be easy? There’s nothing easy about it. There’s nothing easy about it if the staff was the same, getting ready week in, week out. There’s nothing easy about that, either. There certainly isn’t when you have a coaching change at that position — maybe the most important position on the whole team, touches the ball and makes decisions and all those things. 

“For me to undervalue what a fantastic job that he and the rest of the staff did would not be appropriate.”