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COLUMN: Realistically, How Soon Can Brent Venables Fix What's Wrong at Oklahoma?

Players, coaches and recruits say they have his back, but the first-year head coach presides over a program wracked with both injuries and catastrophically bad defense.

John E. Hoover

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It’s certainly a big week for Brent Venables.

Actually, it’s a touchstone moment in the Venables era, a moment that could ultimately define how Sooner Nation remembers the coach tasked with leading a proud football program.

It’s OU-Texas week, and the Sooners are coming off a blowout loss — and their second straight defeat.

Oklahoma hasn’t lost three in a row since 1998 — pre-Bob Stoops, and certainly pre-Venables — when John Blake’s final team dropped five in a row.

“We’re not very good, obviously, right now,” Venables said minutes after the Sooners were slaughtered 55-24 at TCU. “We’ve got a lot to get better at and a lot to improve.”

It starts, of course, this week in the Cotton Bowl. Whether wearing Crimson and Cream or Burnt Orange, 90,000 fans will be curious to see what’s next for Venables — specifically, how he and his team respond to a crushing turn of a once-promising season.

Venables has been in the spotlight since he took over the program in December. Now, that glare is brighter than ever. How will he respond?

“Coach V isn’t going to flinch,” said offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby. “He’s not going to flinch. He knows what’s gotten him to this point. It’s probably what I admire about him most through five weeks of our first season together in year one. He’s not going to flinch. He is a leader in every sense of the word.”

Current players and, just as importantly, future recruits have spent time on social media Saturday and Sunday expressing their support for Venables.

Answering questions in Saturday’s postgame interviews, they said much the same thing. Every week, Venables is experiencing something new as a head coach. How will he respond to his first blowout loss?

“He's gonna step right up in that A-gap, and he's here for us,” linebacker Danny Stutsman told me. “He's a fighter and he knows what we have to do. And he's right there. The commitment is there from him. We’ve just got to trust everything he does, everything he says, which we do, and we're gonna respond next week.”

Texas is no juggernaut. But the Longhorns in this game — regardless of coach or quarterback or players on the field — are seldom easy. OU goes into Saturday’s game as a 4 1/2-point underdog. It’s the first time since 2009 that Texas is a betting favorite to win the Red River Rivalry. A handful of times in that span, the Sooners were a double-digit favorite.

Throw the records out the window, right?

“Talent doesn’t win games,” Venables said Saturday afternoon. “Teams win games. We’ve got a lot to get better at to become a good football team.”

Take a walk with me down Reality Road.

The national championship isn’t possible. It was, actually, never much of a reality.

The College Football Playoff is history.

The Big 12 Championship is still a possibility, of course. The league’s top two teams go to Arlington, and OU can still finish in the top two.

But let’s ask a more relevant question: can Oklahoma — the Oklahoma we saw play on Saturday at Amon G. Carter Stadium, or the Oklahoma we saw wilt against Kansas State last week in Norman — even win another game?

It’s seems ridiculous. But this year, the Big 12 has no floor. At this stage, everyone is middling to good. And if Oklahoma doesn’t fix the problems that popped up against UTEP and resurfaced against Kent State and then exploded against Kansas State and TCU, which game are the Sooners definitely going to win? In Ames? In Lubbock? In Morgantown?

Nothing is guaranteed this year.

“We’re just not playing with great cohesion right now as a football team,” Venables said. “We’re giving up big plays on defense and turning the ball over or just not being efficient on offense — a recipe for disaster.

“If there's a hole in the fence," Venables said, "people are gonna find it.”

All is not lost. The Sooners are 3-2. They have seven games left to play. This program’s DNA is built on winning and winning streaks. But starting a new streak this week with the likelihood that quarterback Dillon Gabriel is out with a concussion seems daunting. Doing so with a defense gutted by mobile quarterbacks two weeks in a row and giving up more than 300 yards on just six plays seems impossible. 

“Just stay tight,” said tight end Brayden Willis. “There’s gonna be a lot of outside noise, a lot of outside distractions. Don’t let that break us up, because we’re better together.”

Lebby said “of course” the numerous maladies can be fixed. Defensive coordinator Ted Roof said the team “will be” better. Wideout Marvin Mims said these things can be fixed “in one week.”

Are we still on Reality Road? Hey, stranger things have happened at the State Fair of Texas.

“We have a great locker room,” Lebby said. “We have guys committed to getting better. We have tough guys. We’ll be ready to play.”

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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.

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