All Sooners

Oklahoma Coach Brent Venables Discusses Dillon Gabriel, Jackson Arnold Bowl Situation

There have been endless questions about who will quarterback the Sooners in the Alamo Bowl since starter Dillon Gabriel announced he was entering the transfer portal.

John E. Hoover

In this story:

Dillon Gabriel? Or Jackson Arnold?

Who will quarterback the Oklahoma Sooners when OU plays Arizona in the Alamo Bowl on Dec. 28?

That’s the question Sooner Nation has been asking ever since Gabriel announced on Monday that he’s entering the NCAA Transfer Portal after two years in Norman.

On Thursday, OU head coach Brent Venables addressed the question from AllSooners.

"That hasn't been finalized yet, so I'll comment on that when it's the appropriate time,” Venables said during a press conference from San Antonio to promote the Alamo Bowl.

Venables later added an interesting nugget.

"Dillon knows he was more than welcome to stay and compete and be the quarterback at the University of Oklahoma," Venables said.

With Arnold as his backup, Gabriel passed for 3,660 yards and 30 touchdowns this season while completing 69.3 percent of his passes. He also rushed for 373 yards and 12 touchdowns and was among the NCAA leaders in almost every statistical category, including No. 3 in the nation in points responsible for per game (21.0). Gabriel ranks No. 4 in NCAA history with 154 total touchdowns passing and scoring.

With Dillon Gabriel in the Portal, It's Finally Jackson Arnold's Time at Oklahoma

But Arnold is a former 5-star prospect from Denton (TX) Guyer High School who was the 2021-22 Gatorade National Player of the Year. He committed to the Sooners in January 2022 and enrolled in January 2023 and quickly ascended the depth chart to Gabriel’s backup.

Gabriel, who transferred to OU in January 2022 after three seasons at Central Florida and passed for 3,168 yards and 25 touchdowns in 2022, never directly addressed his future before Monday, even though it was widely presumed he would only play two seasons at OU. His hope was to forego his final season of collegiate eligibility and enter the 2024 NFL Draft.

But the 5-foot-11, 200-pound Gabriel said on a radio interview with The Franchise this week that he was “bummed” about the draft projection he received from the NFL’s College Advisory Committee, and decided to utilize his final season of college football — but would play somewhere else.

Venables was also asked about whether Arnold's arrival last year predetermined the length of Gabriel's stay in Norman.

"Well, the only thing I would say, you know, it didn't have anything to do with Jackson," Venables said. "I think Dillon had every intention to go to the NFL in his mind. This was going to be his last season. He's going to have a great year, put himself in position to go chase his dreams, you know, in the NFL."

As of Thursday morning, Gabriel hasn’t announced his new destination, though Oregon is likely on his list, as well as a few other former Pac-12 programs. Before he took the call from ex-OU offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby and decided to come to Oklahoma, Gabriel was close to boarding a flight to Los Angeles, where he had already announced his intention to transfer to UCLA.

"But Dillon has been amazing. He's obviously played his best football this year," Venables added. "We wouldn't have put ourselves in this position and had the kind of success we did, certainly the turnaround that we did from year one to year two, without Dillon and all of his hard work, his leadership, his commitment. He made everybody around him better. So, really, really thankful and proud of Dillon and he's going to have, whatever is next for him, I promise you he'll have his hands all over it. It's going to be a really successful transition for him.

" ... He's the best person to to testify in regards to how he came to the decision to play another year collegiately but, quite frankly, we did plan to go into the '24 season without Dillon Gabriel. And Dillon I think, one of the things that he'll comment about, is he went through something similar at UCF with a quarterback there and he knows the uniqueness of the situation. So Dillon knows he was more than welcome to stay and compete and be the quarterback at the University of Oklahoma. But that's the decision he came to."

Arnold’s first season at Oklahoma was mostly good but also included some ups and downs.

Arnold completed 18-of-24 passes for 202 yards with two touchdowns and zero interceptions, and he ran the football 20 times for 78 yards with one touchdown.

Arnold hit 11-of-11 passes for 114 yards and threw for one touchdown and ran for another in the Sooners’ 73-0 win over Arkansas State in the season opener.

But his playing time over the next three games dwindled to short-yardage runner, as he carried four times for 11 yards against SMU, one time for zero yards against Tulsa and two times for four yards against Iowa State — an average of 2.0 yards per carry. He also got mop-up duty late against Tulsa and hit 2-of-4 throws for 55 yards and a touchdown.

OU played close games after that, so Arnold didn't get to play, until beating West Virginia 59-20. But when Arnold didn’t play against the Mountaineers, Venables said the coaching staff’s intention had evolved to wanting to redshirt him, effectively ending his season at the NCAA’s 4-game redshirt limit and bringing third-stringer Davis Beville into the mop-up role.

That changed the following week, however, when Gabriel sustained a concussion at BYU.

Arnold came off the bench in the second half in Provo and helped lead the Sooners to an important road victory by completing 5-of-9 passes for 33 yards and rushing eight times for 24 yards. His exploits included two massive third-down conversion throws in the fourth quarter that helped secure the victory.

Published
John E. Hoover
JOHN E. HOOVER

John is an award-winning journalist whose work spans five decades in Oklahoma, with multiple state, regional and national awards as a sportswriter at various newspapers. During his newspaper career, John covered the Dallas Cowboys, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Oklahoma Sooners, the Oklahoma State Cowboys, the Arkansas Razorbacks and much more. In 2016, John changed careers, migrating into radio and launching a YouTube channel, and has built a successful independent media company, DanCam Media. From there, John has written under the banners of Sporting News, Sports Illustrated, Fan Nation and a handful of local and national magazines while hosting daily sports talk radio shows in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and statewide. John has also spoken on Capitol Hill in Oklahoma City in a successful effort to put more certified athletic trainers in Oklahoma public high schools. Among the dozens of awards he has won, John most cherishes his national "Beat Writer of the Year" from the Associated Press Sports Editors, Oklahoma's "Best Sports Column" from the Society of Professional Journalists, and Two "Excellence in Sports Medicine Reporting" Awards from the National Athletic Trainers Association. John holds a bachelor's degree in Mass Communications from East Central University in Ada, OK. Born and raised in North Pole, Alaska, John played football and wrote for the school paper at Ada High School in Ada, OK. He enjoys books, movies and travel, and lives in Broken Arrow, OK, with his wife and two kids.

Home/Football