SEC Day: Why Oklahoma's Brent Venables is High on QB Jackson Arnold, Optimistic About Defense

The Sooners' head coach told Paul Finebaum on Monday that OU isn't a "Johnny Come Lately" program and that there's plenty of reason for excitement.

Oklahoma coach Brent Venables / BRYAN TERRY/THE OKLAHOMAN / USA TODAY

SEC or no SEC, Oklahoma coach Brent Venables seems excited about 2024.

Venables met with SEC frontman Paul Finebaum on Monday as the Sooners were formally welcomed into the Southeastern Conference, and expressed why his team is ready for the new league.

After Finebaum met with the Texas Longhorns in Austin on Sunday and asked the Sooners’ coach why Texas is getting so much attention this offseason after making its first ever College Football Playoff appearance and winning just its fourth-ever Big 12 title last year, Venables focused instead on his own program.

“This is not a program that’s Johnny Come Lately,” Venables said. “This is a program that’s been established for a very, very long time. We don’t look at other programs to try to compare ourselves. Doesn’t do us any good. We focus inside out. That’s what we need to do to be an SEC championship-caliber football program. So that’s where our focus is.”

To that end, Venables also fielded a couple of questions about the makeup on the Sooners’ 2024 roster. 

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Again, the head coach projected only optimism.

“I love where we’re at (offensively),” Venables said. “We’ve got tremendous experience coming back at the skill positions. Certainly Jackson (Arnold), this’ll be his first full season — Jackson is as talented a player as there is in college football. He’s a winner. He’s won his whole life. Smart guy, great instincts, he’s got tremendous skill, he’s got great toughness to him. He can run it, he can throw it. 

“And again, this is a game of development, so wherever he ended the season — we had a lot of opportunities to win that (Alamo Bowl) game — wherever he ended the season in his first collegiate start, he’ll be on another planet. My expectation of where we start at the beginning of the year, he’ll develop and get better. He’s tough, he’s got great self-awareness to him. He’s got all the traits that allow you to have to kind of go through it, both the good and the bad, and he responds to adversity. Just a tremendous leader and players play hard for him.”

Finebaum said he’s wondered in recent years what Oklahoma could achieve with a defense, and now the Sooners have one.

“We’ve made steady improvement,” Venables said. “It’s been incremental. It can’t ever happen fast enough. You’re never satisfied. But this will be year three. First time that we’ve had third-year players in our system, give or take seven or eight starters back, so we have some experience within our schemes. 

“We’ve developed in the weight room, this’ll be going on our third year, so that’s the weight room, that’s nutrition, that’s recovery — all those areas that are incredibly important. But I love our buy-in, the investment that our players have in that locker room. This is a very highly invested team. Several guys chose to come back. They wanted to help lead us. There’s multi-layered reasons guys want to come back, but one of the reasons is to leave your mark. And so (they) have an opportunity to do that going into the SEC with a group of guys that are tough, hard-working guys. Really exciting.”