Brent Venables didn’t just help define Clemson’s best run under Dabo Swinney - he may have exposed what’s been missing since he left.
That contrast was impossible to miss in Week 1. On the night after Venables sounded irritated about Oklahoma’s 51-0 shutout of UTEP in the No.
10 Sooners’ opener, Swinney watched Clemson get hammered 51-10 by LSU in Lane Kiffin’s LSU debut. One program looked like a College Football Playoff contender.
The other looked like it had been caught flat-footed on opening weekend.
Venables walked away from Clemson after the 2021 season to return to Oklahoma and take over for Lincoln Riley. It was a homecoming with serious history behind it.
Venables had already been the Sooners’ defensive coordinator before, including for their last national championship in 2000 under Bob Stoops. He then headed to Clemson in 2012, when Swinney had the Tigers climbing but not yet sitting among college football’s true powers.
The numbers from that stretch tell the story. Clemson went 29-19 from 2009 through 2011, Swinney’s first three seasons.
Once Venables arrived and took charge of the defense, the Tigers went 121-18 from 2012 through 2021 and won two national titles. Venables also picked up the Broyles Award in 2016 as college football’s top assistant.
For a long time, it looked like Swinney had helped shape Venables into a future head coach. But the way things have played out since then, the argument can be flipped.
Venables had some early questions to answer when he took over a program, but once he leaned into the part of coaching he’s always owned - running a defense - Oklahoma stopped feeling like a punchline. Clemson, meanwhile, has kept sliding.
The Sooners are back in the conversation now. Their defense used to be a running joke across the sport, but since Venables took full control of that side of the ball before last season, Oklahoma has turned into one of the country’s better defensive teams. That 2025 defense helped carry OU to a 10-3 finish and a CFP berth, and expectations are even higher in 2026 because the offense is now built to work with it.
Clemson’s trajectory has gone the other direction. Swinney’s reluctance to fully embrace the transfer portal has hurt the Tigers’ ability to keep pace in today’s game, and that decline has lined up with Venables’ departure. Since Venables left, Clemson is 37-17, a .685 winning percentage that reflects the drop from elite status.
The split is even starker when you stack the eras side by side. Before Venables arrived, Clemson won 60 percent of its games under Swinney.
With Venables on staff, the Tigers won 87 percent. In other words, Clemson was at least 20 percent better with Venables coordinating the defense.
That’s why the same coach can sit at the center of both stories: Oklahoma’s rise and Clemson’s fall. Swinney may have lost the edge that once made Clemson unbeatable. Conveniently for the Sooners, Venables has that edge now.
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Hayden Hansen Just Gave Oklahoma A Needed Answer Before Michigan
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John Mateer spread the ball around to multiple receivers, and that balance was part of the encouraging takeaway for Oklahoma. But Hansens catch may have been just as important in the bigger picture, because it showed the Sooners have another option they can trust when Michigan starts squeezing the field and every possession gets more valuable. [Read more 🡒]