Column: Nobody is Laughing at the Oklahoma Defense Now

It took time, but just like he's done everywhere he's been, Brent Venables has rebuilt the Sooners' defense into a fearsome unit.

Oklahoma Sooners defensive lineman R Mason Thomas (32) celebrates beside Oklahoma Sooners linebacker Danny Stutsman (28) after a sack. / BRYAN TERRY/THE OKLAHOMAN / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Almost halfway through his third season as a head football coach, it’s probably OK to say it: Brent Venables has changed the DNA at Oklahoma.

These Sooners can lean on their defense.

As opposed to, you know, the other thing.

“Not being something that people make fun of or laugh at,” Venables said.

Those were his words after OU went on the road and reeled in the first SEC win in program history, a 27-21 victory at Auburn last Saturday.

Venables helped construct some of the best defenses in the history of the sport as he played a key role in breathing life into a dead program at Kansas State, reanimating the corpse that was OU in the late 1990s, and resuscitating a Clemson defense that was DOA.

All three programs had become a joke. K-State was regarded as the worst program in the sport leading up to the Bill Snyder era. Oklahoma had its worst stretch in a century of football before Bob Stoops arrived. And Clemson was going somewhere under Dabo Swinney, but not with a defense that had just given up 70 points to West Virginia in the Orange Bowl and had helped coin a new verb to describe creative ways to lose: “Clemsoning.”

In all three cases, Venables stepped in to a joke of a defense and made everyone stop laughing. 

Now, after Kip Lewis’ game-winning interception return for a touchdown and R Mason Thomas’ two game-clinching quarterback sacks, it’s safe to say that Venables has done it again in Norman.

This Oklahoma team wins games with defense.

It’s been a while since Sooner Nation could make that kind of proclamation.

Even though Auburn had the football last in a six-point game, even though the Tigers had moved the ball against the Sooners earlier in the game, it never felt like they would score on either of their final three possessions.

Spin that feeling back to 2014, or 2018, or even 2022 — would anyone have had any confidence the Sooners would survive Auburn’s last possession?

No way.

Too many times over the past 15 years, the opponent simply marched down the field to win the game. 

Baylor in 2011, Oklahoma State in 2014, Georgia in 2017, Texas in 2018, Kansas State in 2019, Iowa State in 2020, Kansas State, Baylor, Texas Tech and Florida State in 2022, and OSU and Kansas last year — they all needed late scores to pull ahead or first downs to stay ahead, and at the end of the game, those teams simply went out and took what they wanted from the Oklahoma defense.

Maybe those days are done. Maybe teams imposing their will on the Sooner defense is a thing of the past now. Or maybe there are still some bumps in the road ahead.

OU fans won't have to wait long to find out. The team has an open date this weekend, and then No. 2-ranked Texas and its high-flying offense will be waiting in the Cotton Bowl. That game will surely reveal more precisely where this Sooner defense is.

But clearly, things are different now. It’s likely the changes are still happening. It’s certain the defense is still growing, still improving.

A handful of players on this defense, like safety Billy Bowman, linebacker Danny Stutsman, and cornerback Woodi Washington, all seniors, have lived that culture change. 

“I’ve been through it all,” Bowman said. “From my freshman year to my senior year, it’s been big changes — and it’s due to the buy-in of the players, the preparation that our coaches give us, week in and week out, and non-stop.” 

Bowman said, “We let Auburn really get what they wanted,” including too many deep passes and 482 yards of total offense. But that changed in the fourth quarter. 

“We came out here, the defense, and we played solid,” Bowman said. “We didn’t play great today by any means. We know that. Coach Venables, he really got onto us at halftime and after the game, because we know that’s not our standard.”

“I mean, we started in January talking about a fourth-quarter mentality,” Stutsman said. “It’s a different type of mindset where we finish games out. That comes back to our training that we do all the way back in winter workouts, summer workouts. And so in those moments like you saw tonight, we were able to perform at our best.” 

That mindset helped Oklahoma overcome a 21-10 deficit in the fourth quarter and turn it into an historic victory. Even when the scoreboard flipped to 21-10 early in the final period, Venables said he saw signs that a comeback was brewing.

“Just fight. Just fight,” he said. “Nobody was hard to coach. No attitudes. Certainly no finger pointing. Taking hard coaching and corrections along the way. Talking about leaning on standards in the most pressure-filled moments. You have to lean on the standards of this program with your toughness, effort, your execution, your leadership. Our guys did, and they rose to the occasion.”

The Sooner defense has a lot of frontline contributors who’ve been here the entirety of Venables’ tenure, and they’ve lived the changes in real time.

So naturally, nobody is proclaiming that Oklahoma’s defense has “arrived” or should be considered among the elite in the country or even the SEC. Not yet.

Through five games, the OU defense ranks just 48th nationally in total yards allowed (324.2) and is tied for 26th in points allowed (16.0). But they’re also third in the nation in takeaways (13) and sixth in turnover margin (plus 1.60 per game) and they’re 10th nationally in stop rate (79.2 percent), according to The Athletic.

Saturday “is just another step,” said safety Robert Spears-Jennings, “but also it shows that we can fight anything, fight any adversity. So it just brought us close together, both sides of the ball — well actually, all three sides of the ball, special teams included.”

“The coach in me, I always think about, ‘We didn’t play very good.’ But we played amazing when we needed to. It tells you when you put it all together — even at 74 (players on the travel squad) — for all the warts or inexperience or whatever, we can still be a pretty good team when we play together and complement each other. We have enough good players. That’s what, at the end of the day, that’s what it tells me.”