NORMAN - Oklahoma has been here before: a home loss to South Carolina, an offensive coordinator out the door, and a road trip to a ranked opponent waiting in the next chapter.
The Sooners are back in that exact spot, only this time the new voice belongs to Jason Witten, who will call plays for the first time at the collegiate level Saturday against No. 24 Florida at 6:45 p.m. on SEC Network.
If Oklahoma is looking for a template, the clearest one comes from Oct. 26, 2024, when the Sooners went to No. 18 Ole Miss and, in Joe Jon Finley’s first game calling plays after Seth Littrell’s firing, found a brief spark before the offense faded away.
That night started with promise. On Oklahoma’s opening drive, the Sooners showed a pulse that had been missing in the two games before it - blowout losses to Texas and South Carolina. They marched 74 yards, leaned on Jackson Arnold in the run game and got a key 20-yard catch from Arnold to tight end Bauer Sharp.
The drive still ended empty-handed. Facing third-and-2 from the Ole Miss 3, Taylor Tatum was stopped for a one-yard gain, then Arnold’s fourth-down pass fell incomplete and the Rebels took over on downs.
Even so, the Sooners kept building. The defense forced a three-and-out, the field flipped, and Oklahoma answered with an eight-play, 60-yard touchdown drive. By halftime, the Sooners had a 14-10 lead and had outgained Ole Miss 265-162.
That’s the kind of early jolt Oklahoma could be chasing again against Florida. But the Ole Miss game also showed the danger: the good start didn’t last. Oklahoma was blanked in the second half and fell 26-14.
The bigger question now is whether Witten can help the Sooners sustain whatever lift the offense gets. Under Finley, Oklahoma finished 2-4, though one of those wins was the stunning 24-3 victory over Alabama.
A lot of that answer starts with John Mateer. When he was at his best last season, the quarterback run game was a major part of Oklahoma’s offense. He ran for 60 or more yards four times last season, and all four came in Sooners wins.
That hasn’t been the case this year. Mateer’s high mark on the ground is 45 yards, and that’s the only game in which he’s topped 37 rushing yards.
The offensive line has played a big role in that. It hasn’t given Mateer much time to operate, and while the return of Michael Fasusi at left tackle two weeks ago helped, the unit struggled again in last week’s loss to South Carolina.
How that group handles Florida will shape everything else. If the line holds up, Oklahoma can at least try to recreate the kind of run-heavy, early momentum it found at Ole Miss. If it doesn’t, the Sooners may have to turn elsewhere.
Should that happen, the options would be junior Whitt Newbauer or freshman Bowe Bentley. Bentley brings the most mobility of the two, after rushing for 474 yards and 11 touchdowns in his senior season of high school.
Brent Venables made it clear the standard hasn’t changed, no matter who is calling the plays.
“No. 1, we wanna win,” Sooners coach Brent Venables said of the expectations for the offense under Witten. “And that takes everybody.
It takes everybody. That expectation hasn’t changed whatsoever.
We wanna win this week, and then we wanna win the next week and the week after and so forth. What comes with that?
You would expect that you’ve gotta play well. You’ve gotta take care of the football, score touchdowns, play complementary football.
So that’s what we’re focused on.”
In Other News...
Oklahoma Defense Suddenly Has A Brent Venables Problem
Oklahomas defense took a jarring step backward in the loss to South Carolina, surrendering 521 total yards in a game Brent Venables called uncharacteristically poor. The Sooners were exposed in the basics, most notably in space, where missed tackles piled up and the unit never found the kind of edge it usually tries to bring under Venables.
The tackling issues were especially hard to ignore because they cut across the entire defense, with 25 misses showing up on the film and linebacker Kip Lewis among the players hit hardest by the grading. Even with the offense getting a lift from Ivan Carreons career-high 88 yards and two touchdowns, the defensive breakdowns left Oklahoma with a much bigger concern to sort through moving forward. [Read more 🡒]
OU's Record Looks Different Once You See What They've Faced
The first College Football Playoff rankings of 2026 offered a reminder that Oklahomas record has to be viewed through the lens of who the Sooners have been playing. A 4-4 start looks ordinary on paper, but the schedule has been anything but, with seven ranked opponents on the slate and several of the sports heavyweights already on the resume.
Georgia, Texas and Ole Miss are part of the list of top-25 teams Oklahoma has already faced, which helps explain why this season has been so difficult to read from the standings alone. The Sooners came in with preseason expectations of being much better positioned, but with the CFP picture already looking remote, the bigger question now is whether they can steady themselves enough to finish with a winning record against what remains. [Read more 🡒]
Oklahoma Heads To Florida With One Huge Offensive Mystery
Oklahoma heads to Gainesville for a matchup with No. 25 Florida that carries a little extra weight for a program still trying to settle its offense. It will be the Sooners first regular-season game on Floridas campus, and it comes at a time when the staff has already made a major change by firing offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle and elevating tight ends coach Jason Witten into the play-calling role.
The bigger question now is what the offense looks like under that new arrangement, especially with quarterback decisions still hanging in the air. For a team trying to find stability on the road against a ranked opponent, the Sooners are not just dealing with a new voice on the headset, but possibly a different look under center as well. [Read more 🡒]