Oklahoma DC Zac Alley's Debut Was a Success, But That Wasn't the Fun Part

The Sooners got six takeaways, six sacks and nine tackles for loss in their season opener against Temple, and then their new coordinator got a game ball and a fun ride.

Oklahoma defensive coordinator Zac Alley / John E. Hoover / Sooners On SI

NORMAN — Oklahoma’s new defensive coordinator had quite the debut on Friday night.

His players dominated Temple in a 51-3 route. The Sooners nearly pitched a shutout, allowed less than 200 total yards, had six takeaways, six quarterback sacks and nine tackles for loss.

And that wasn’t even the fun part.

After head coach Brent Venables awarded Alley a game ball, the players surrounded him, lifted him onto their shoulders and tossed him into the air.

“It was pretty cool,” Alley said. “I got lifted off the ground afterward and got thrown up about seven times, about flipped on my head.”

 

“He was just getting a little crunk,” said defensive back Kendel Dolby.

“Swag-surfed,” Venables said. “I think that's what it's called.”

“At first he didn't want to go up in the air, but we didn't care,” Dolby said. “We threw him up anyways.”

“They got me up there,” Alley said. “I thought I was going to flip on my head about halfway through. They were trying to lower me down. I was vertical backwards for a minute, but I think Bauer Sharp caught me, lowered me back to the ground. So it was good. It was fun.”

Outside observers of OU football only knew of Alley what he had done at his previous stops, what the press releases and bio pages reported, and what Venables and the players said about him after practice.

But Friday night, they got to hear Alley speak, answer questions, tell stories, reflect on his success and profess his gratitude.

“It’s just been a phenomenal experience,” Alley said, “and I’m just looking forward to the future.”

Players say he relates to them better than most coaches. That tracks. When he took the DC job at Louisiana-Monroe, he had just turned 28. When Venables brought him on in January, Alley was but 30 years old.

Alley remarked that he grew up the social media age, that he took online classes when he was in college at Clemson. Probably not a lot of college coaches have lived that experience yet.

“I’ve been a part of that more recently than a lot of (coaches) have,” Alley said. “So, it just creates a natural bond and understanding, kind of, of what they’re going through and what it looks like.”

Players say Alley is a Venables clone, and that’s spot-on. On the sideline, he gestures and gyrates and shouts and never stops moving. It’s much the same in his postgame press conference — maybe a little less shouting.

“He's an incredible coach,” said linebacker Jaren Kanak, “and he makes things easy to understand and explains and coaches very well and genuinely makes us better as a defense and better players. And he really knows how to how to get into the nitty gritty of it and find ways to make us better.” 

“Man, he's a great coach,” Dolby said. “He's a great coach. A lot of energy. A young guy. So we feed off of him. He did a great job of calling plays tonight, he did a really good job.”

Venables described the game plan as intentionally vanilla. There’s lot of football still to play, with Houston coming to Norman next Saturday night, Tulane after that and then Tennessee, followed by one of the nation’s most demanding schedules. So there was no need to bring out any exotic blitz packages or coverage schemes.

And still the Owls averaged just 3.2 yards per play and 1.9 yards per rush.

“Things went like we hoped it would go,” Venables said. “I loved the aggressiveness. We forced a lot of turnovers, excellent positioning and depth of guys that knew what to do. All the coaches did a nice job of getting guys ready. It was great for Zac.”

Alley hadn’t been made available to the media before Friday, so a lot of questions during his postgame press conference were less to do with the game and more to do with his coaching background.

Of which Venables plays a major part.

“It feels like home. He’s like my second dad,” Alley said. “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.”

Alley recalled the first time he met Venables, in January 2012, as a Clemson student. Alley had joined Dabo Swinney’s staff as a freshman the year before, and when Venables came in, Alley quickly introduced himself.

“He had got there three or four days after we got back to school that January,” Alley said. “I walked in the room, shook his hand — he probably thought I was a player at the time, because I looked like it. I said, ‘Hey, I’m a student assistant, I’m just volunteering, I’ll move chairs for you. Whatever you need.’ 

“He gave me an opportunity to stay around, and I’m obviously — I don’t know how many years later, but here we are.”

Alley left Clemson in 2019 to coach linebackers at Boise State. He went to ULM as Terry Bowden’s defensive coordinator in 2021, then was hired by Rich Rodriguez at Jacksonville State in 2022.

Alley went to high school in Charlotte, NC, but in seven years with Venables at Clemson, he  learned a lot — about coaching, about football, and even about Oklahoma. 

Alley said he had only seen “a couple of (OU) games” and didn’t know much about the “recent era,” but learned quickly.

“We still got film from Rufus (Alexander) going out there and smoking guys at linebacker,” Alley said. “So I had seen a lot of that.”

Alley said he was “excited” when OU brought Venables back. Even though it was Venables’ first time as a head coach, he was confident Venables would have success.

“Always thought, ‘Man, if Coach V ever had an opportunity, he could really come back and make a defensive stalwart out of Oklahoma.’ I think that’s what he wants to do, and we believe we’re working towards that at Oklahoma.

“He just found the right fit. Coach V’s definitely not somebody that jumps at every opportunity. He’s going to do things for the right reason, all the time. That’s just how he is as a man. As a foundation of who he is as a person. When he got the opportunity to come here, I was like, man, that’s the right fit. Obviously, being here for a long time, he knows the people. The community. All those things. So I was just really excited for him, just happy to see him get a chance to be a head coach, because he’s really good at it.”

Alley has now had one spring, one offseason, one training camp, one week and one game as Oklahoma’s defensive coordinator. He’s the one making the calls now — all the calls — but he’ll always defer to whatever Venables says on game days.

“I mean, he’s been the best defensive coordinator in the country for 20-plus years, so he just sees the game slow for him,” Alley said. “He can see it all before it happens. So just the opportunity to have him on the headset and talking to me the whole time, just, ‘Hey, this is what I’m thinking. This is where we are,’ that’s always a benefit, no doubt about it.

“Every now and then, he’ll be like, ‘That was a good call,’ and I’ll always feel good about that. So, that means that he agrees. It was good. I really enjoyed it.”