Brent Venables has already shown what a defensive coach can do at Oklahoma. The question now is whether he can stop the other side of the ball from dragging everything down with it.
That’s the tension hanging over the Sooners in Venables’ fifth season, especially after a month-old contract extension that runs through 2031. His reputation was built on elite defenses, and he has delivered there.
Oklahoma’s defense has gone from one of college football’s worst to one of its most respected units. But the offense has become such a problem this season that it may take a complete overhaul to fix it.
That kind of split is not new in Norman. The last two head coaches have each brought a clear strength and a glaring weakness.
Lincoln Riley’s teams were built around offense and watched the defense fall apart. Venables arrived ahead of the 2022 season to repair that side of the ball, and he did.
But now the Sooners have flipped the script and traded one major issue for another.
There’s precedent for a defensive-minded coach putting together a championship-caliber offense, and Oklahoma’s own history proves it. Bob Stoops inherited a broken program from John Blake in 1999, then turned it around fast.
A year later, the Sooners were winning the BCS National Championship Game. Stoops had spent his entire career playing and coaching defense before becoming a head coach, but he still built a complete team by surrounding himself with the right people.
He brought in his brother, Mike, and Venables from Kansas State as defensive coordinators, then hired Mike Leach, followed by Mark Mangino and Kevin Wilson, to run the offense. From 2000 through 2004, Oklahoma went 60-7 and reached three national championship games.
The numbers from Stoops’ first two seasons tell the story. In 1998, Oklahoma’s offense ranked 101st out of 112 Division I teams and averaged 16.3 points per game.
By 1999, the Sooners had climbed to 8th nationally and were scoring 36.8 points per game. Over the next five seasons, neither the offense nor the defense finished lower than 27th in the country.
That’s the lesson for Venables: a defensive coach can absolutely win with a strong offense if the staff is right. Nick Saban and Kirby Smart have done it at Alabama and Georgia. The head coach doesn’t have to be an expert in every phase, but he does have to build the right structure, hire the right coordinators, and keep the whole operation moving in the same direction.
Venables did that well with Jeff Lebby in his first two seasons as offensive coordinator in 2022 and 2023. Oklahoma ranked 13th nationally in total offense and 32nd in scoring offense in 2022, then jumped to 4th and 3rd, respectively, the next season. Dillon Gabriel was the quarterback in both years, and that mattered a lot for consistency and production.
Since Lebby left after the 2023 season to become head coach at Mississippi State, though, the offense has gone the wrong way. Venables has cycled through three offensive coordinator hires and three starting quarterbacks, and the results have only gotten worse. The unit has become, in the source’s words, almost the laughing stock of college football.
At this point, the accountability sits with Venables. He’ll make it through this season, but what happens after that depends on whether he’s willing to make hard decisions on the offensive staff.
Tight ends coach Jason Witten and running backs coach Deland McCullough should get more than one season to prove themselves, and Kevin Wilson should stay and could even take on a bigger role. Everyone else on the offensive side should be on notice.
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Oklahomas ground game has been grinding through a difficult 2026 season, and the Sooners are still looking for a spark to make it more functional. Through the early going, they have been stuck at 99 rushing yards per game and 2.9 yards per carry, with Lloyd Avant taking on the bulk of the work but finding little room to break through consistently.
Tory Blaylock could be the piece that changes the feel of that offense. The sophomore missed time with an injury and has only had limited carries so far, but his past efficiency and speed have stood out enough to make him a real candidate for a bigger role moving forward. If Oklahoma is going to get its run game moving in the right direction, Blaylock looks like the kind of back who could help it happen. [Read more 🡒]
Brent Venables Just Picked Up More Pressure At Oklahoma
Brent Venables is entering the kind of stretch that can change the mood around a program fast. Oklahoma already has two losing seasons in the last four years under Venables, and even with a contract extension through 2031, the early part of the 2026 season has done little to quiet the unease. A 2-2 start and the offenses uneven play have put the Sooners in an uncomfortable spot, where patience is getting tested against expectations.
The path ahead does not offer much relief. Oklahoma still has a brutal schedule in front of it, with multiple ranked opponents left to navigate, and the margin for error is already thin if the Sooners want to get back to bowl eligibility. They need to win at least half of their remaining games, so the next month will say plenty about whether this season becomes a rebound or another frustration point in Venables tenure. [Read more 🡒]
Jayden Jackson Is Giving Oklahoma Exactly What This Defense Needed
Jayden Jackson has been one of the steadying forces for Oklahomas defense early in the 2026 season, giving the Sooners dependable play in the middle while the rest of the unit works through some uneven moments. The junior defensive tackle has piled up 15 total tackles and backed that up with a strong Pro Football Focus defensive grade, the kind of production that helps explain why the front has stayed effective even as the defense around him has had to keep adjusting.
What makes Jacksons start even more valuable is the timing. Oklahoma has been good on that side of the ball, but the missed tackles have been hard to ignore, with 49 of them over the first four games, and that leaves plenty of room for the Sooners to tighten things up. Senior captain Kip Lewis has pointed to Jacksons consistency and leadership as part of that process, and for a defense still chasing cleaner execution, having a player in the interior who keeps showing up the same way every week matters. [Read more 🡒]