COLUMN: Now That Michael Hawkins Has Altered Oklahoma's Plan, OU Fans Need to Be Patient

The Sooners were going to ride Jackson Arnold for two seasons as the starting quarterback, and it might still turn out that way, but the true freshman has other ideas.

Oklahoma quarterback Michael Hawkins Jr. / NATHAN J. FISH/THE OKLAHOMAN / USA TODAY NETWORK

The plan was always for Jackson Arnold to be Oklahoma’s starting quarterback in 2024 and 2025. Then he would go prospect for gold in the NFL.

That’s why Dillon Gabriel ended up at Oregon without so much as a going-away party.

But that was never Michael Hawkins’ plan. And now it could be that Arnold’s plan, too, has taken a drastic turn.

Hawkins threw a wrench in things Saturday night when he came off the bench and sparked the OU offense to two fourth-quarter touchdowns in a 25-15 loss to Tennessee.

Actually, it was Arnold who threw the wrench when he turned the football over three times and fell behind the Vols 19-3 in the first half. It was the Sooners’ grand SEC debut, a red carpet premier three years in the making, a night in which 84,000 OU fans came early and stayed late and left crestfallen. 

Poor Arnold was the trigger man of one of the program’s worst offensive performances in the last 25 years.

Brent Venables had no choice but to go to his Plan B.

Despite coming into the game with all of 13 collegiate snaps in the Week 1 blowout of Temple, Hawkins showed moxie, grit and a willingness to lead even though he’s just a true freshman. He also showed elite athletic ability, superb focus, and a readiness to perform against a defense that was wound up and in a foul mood.

So Sooner Nation greeted a new day on Monday thanks to Hawkins’ precocious performance, but they also should proceed with caution about OU’s first road game at Auburn (and beyond) knowing this: the Jackson Arnold Era at Oklahoma isn’t exactly over yet, and any expectations placed on young Mr. Hawkins should be tempered with a dose of harsh reality.

However exciting he may have been against the Vols, Hawkins is still a freshman. He’s going to make mistakes. Against this gauntlet schedule, he’s probably going to make a lot of them.

“He showed that he can make some plays,” Venables said Saturday night. “And then there’s some plays out there that we had opportunities and we didn’t execute. Throws that we didn’t (make). But that’s the game of football. In his first real action, there’s some things that you liked about it and certainly some things you didn’t.”

If Hawkins drops the football on the goal line and throws into coverage and skips a lateral across the field, Auburn’s defense — which isn’t on Tennessee’s level — will eat him up. 

So will No. 1-ranked Texas in a couple weeks. To be sure, a veteran Texas defense would welcome a true freshman into the fires of the Cotton Bowl.

So what do Venables and offensive coordinator Seth Littrell do if Hawkins stumbles? Sit Hawkins and reinsert Arnold? Or turn the keys over to veteran Casey Thompson, himself a former Longhorn? Or give Hawkins a handful of games to prove himself like they did with Arnold? 

Arnold has given the football away nine times in his five starts, dating back to the Alamo Bowl. It doesn’t matter how many stars he had as a high school recruit, that kind of sloppiness is not sustainable at a place like Oklahoma. 

It wasn’t sustainable for Spencer Rattler, who got benched in back-to-back games against Texas because of turnovers. It wasn’t sustainable for Caleb Williams, who struggled at Baylor and got pulled, for Rattler, then went back in. 

It wasn’t sustainable for Paul Thompson almost 20 years ago, when Thompson beat out Rhett Bomar in the preseason but then suffered too many turnovers in a season-opening loss to TCU. Bomar, a redshirt freshman, wasn’t immediately better, but he did show growth over the next two months and might have been destined for greatness in Norman if he’d had his act together off the field. Thompson showed superior mettle the following year anyway.

Now think about those two scenarios. The first one happened in 2005. The next one happened in 2020-21. That’s 15-16 years with essentially no real complaints about OU quarterback play. From Thompson to Sam Bradford to Landry Jones to Baker Mayfield to Kyler Murray to Jalen Hurts, that group either produced ridiculous stats or championships or both.

Well, there was a little stretch in 2013-14, when Bob Stoops and Josh Heupel tried a number of different combinations at quarterback that just didn’t pan out. In fact, the last run of turnovers that an Oklahoma QB suffered to this degree was 10 years ago, when Trevor Knight threw seven interceptions in a four-game stretch at the end of  2014.

That same year, Mayfield transferred from Texas Tech and OU quarterback play has been at a zenith since 2015. 

Jeff Lebby, however, complicated things a bit when Venables hired him to run the offense and coach quarterbacks. 

After Rattler left for South Carolina and Williams eventually left for USC, Lebby brought in Gabriel, a 2 1/2-year  starter at Central Florida with whom Lebby had worked in 2019. Then Lebby landed Arnold, a 5-star prospect at Denton Guyer (TX), with the full knowledge that Arnold would back up Gabriel in 2023 and then take the reins in 2024. 

But Lebby left to take over at Mississippi State and Gabriel went to Oregon, and it was eventually revealed that Venables told him he was welcome come back for one more year in Norman but the competition would be open between him and Arnold. 

That competition would have most certainly been won by Gabriel, a two-year starter in Crimson and Cream. And in this age of college football quarterbacks flitting hither and yon, it’s entirely likely the Sooners would have watched another prized 5-star QB — Arnold this time — enter the transfer portal. Gabriel didn't want that for OU.

That would have thrust Hawkins into the backup role this year anyway. Only now, because Arnold didn’t develop quickly enough and can’t take care of the football, Hawkins is the starter.

Arnold may have lost his job against the Vols. Hawkins may have taken over — for now, or forever. Who knows what, if anything, this all does to 2025 QB Kevin Sperry’s commitment, or 2026 QB Jaden O’Neal’s?

OU’s QB picture was clouded when Arnold arrived, and four games into his first year as the starter, it may have become more so. 

But as has become the norm in the Oklahoma quarterback room, nothing is truly set. Everything, it seems, is in motion.