Why Brent Venables is Sticking with Michael Hawkins as Oklahoma's Starting QB

Hawkins struggled in his second career start Saturday against Texas, but Venables assured the freshman is still the Sooners' QB1.

Oklahoma quarterback Michael Hawkins Jr. / Aaron E. Martinez/Austin American-Statesman / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

After Oklahoma’s dismaying loss to top-ranked Texas in the Red River Rivalry on Saturday, the lack of offensive production, as usual, spurred the question if there was any change looming at the quarterback position for the now unranked Sooners. 

OU coach Brent Venables was asked during the postgame press conference if during the 34-3 loss he ever considered a quarterback switch. He replied bluntly, “No.” 

Freshman Michael Hawkins Jr. made only his second start after leading the Sooners to a road victory over Auburn two weeks prior in his first start. Hawkins replaced sophomore Jackson Arnold, who was benched in the second quarter against Tennessee in his fifth career start. 

Hawkins struggled against Texas, which entered the game with a top-five defense, completing 63 percent of his passes for 148 yards while failing to get his team into the end zone. 

Two days after the loss, on his coach’s show Monday night, Venables elaborated on why Hawkins will continue to be QB1 for the Sooners as they prepare to host South Carolina at 11:45 a.m. Saturday. 

“You want to give guys a real opportunity to show what they can do and have a body of work, not be so quick to judge,” Venables said. “Let's see if we can make, you know, improvement on the things that are, in our world, super easy. So we got to do a great job, and we did that today, of identifying what those things are. And like, this isn't an either/or, this is an easy one, and it's whether, how many ever that it is, and if we do that, we feel like that'll give us the rhythm that we ultimately need. 

“Jackson had a fantastic week of practice a week ago, and just didn't feel that that's what we needed to do under the circumstances. Mike has shown a lot of really good stuff, both in his limited time against Tennessee, and he had some really good moments and good stuff against Auburn and even in this game he did some good things. Now let’s see if we can learn from it going into the South Carolina game.” 

Although reassuring his faith in his quarterback, Venables was still critical of Hawkins’ performance and OU’s offensive issues in the rivalry game. 

​​”The first drive of the game we got a guy wide open, we throw the ball on the first drive and we don't connect,” Venables said. “But we push it down right out the gate, and then some other times we have lots of space – we felt they would give us some space – and we had some other opportunities that weren't going to be necessarily behind them, but they're deeper balls that were now all of a sudden you convert on a couple of those and they tighten up the coverage and you can run by them like we did on the first drive. I mean, we're two yards behind a guy on the first drive and we're in the end zone behind them, and we don't connect. 

“You do that early, and you have an opportunity to, not only to build confidence and create the explosive plays and don't let them do what they want to do on defense, and now you got them on their heels. And, again, those are opportunities. How many opportunities do you want? How many do you want until you get it right? And so we got to get it right. And that's our responsibility as coaches, but we had some of those opportunities, particularly, again, on the first drive of the game.” 

Venables has said he doesn't expect perfection from his freshman quarterback, but he does anticipate improvement.