Why Oklahoma fans should be hopeful for Sooners in 2025 despite disappointing 2024 season
Listen, I get it. 2024 was the worst season the Oklahoma Sooners have had since 2014. Heck, it might be even worse. At least Samaje Perine set the single-game rushing record in 2014. Oklahoma's offense looked like it didn't know where the laces were on the football for most of their games this season. The […]
Listen, I get it. 2024 was the worst season the Oklahoma Sooners have had since 2014. Heck, it might be even worse. At least Samaje Perine set the single-game rushing record in 2014. Oklahoma's offense looked like it didn't know where the laces were on the football for most of their games this season.
The momentum that the Sooners had off of a 10-3 season in 2023 has evaporated and Brent Venables enters 2025 on the hottest seat for an Oklahoma head coach in decades.
Despite this and despite the general sense of doom and gloom surrounding fans right now, I still believe there's plenty of reason for optimism for the future of the Sooners next season.
Better Offensive Talent
I firmly disagree with the notion that Oklahoma was "untalented" this season, as that simply feels lazy and lacks any sort of context. Aside from a tight end room put together by the worst coach on the staff, Oklahoma entered the season with the talent to be plenty more successful than they were this season.
Unfortunately, disaster struck in the form of their co-OCs and the injury bug. Name me any other team who lost their starting five wide receivers for virtually the entire season, half of their offensive line, and their leading rusher all in the course of one season to injury. That list is incredibly small, if it's more than just the 2024 Sooners.
I feel confident in saying that the same injury luck won't haunt Oklahoma next season. Injuries are largely fluky and that number of injuries rarely lasts over multiple seasons (unless you are the Los Angeles Chargers, who might have some sort of curse on their training facility). IF the same problems persist going into next season, the Sooners have something far greater and unprecedented impacting their program.
The players they lost in the portal were largely unimpactful in 2024, either due to injuries or being completely passed on the depth chart. I could hear an argument for one, maybe two players who left who would have made a positive impact in 2025, but they each carried injury risks that Oklahoma just couldn't rely on next season.
Much has been made about Oklahoma's portal class being largely from small schools, and it's drawn the ire of Sooners fans online. I find all of that to be hogwash and to be immediately discarded. Oklahoma fans have been begging the Sooners to start doing what other programs have done by raiding small school rosters for talent. The moment they start doing that, fans get upset they aren't taking the five-star rejects from Alabama.
Just because you haven't watched the team a player came from doesn't mean this coaching staff hasn't. They took one of the FCS's best quarterbacks to reinforce the depth of their signal callers and took his talented teammate to boost their offensive line.
They added one of the best punters in the country last season. Yes, he was at Kennesaw State. No, that doesn't mean his kicks suddenly don't count, regardless of where he played.
Their wide receiver class isn't bringing in the likes of Deion Burks, sure, but each of the receivers they added (Keontez Lewis, Isaiah Sategna, and Javonnie Gibson) would have led the Sooners in receiving this year, and none of them were exactly playing in quality systems.
The bar to be better is low, and I believe the Sooners have cleared it so far, and they are still looking to make more additions.
Better Quarterback
By default, the Sooners will enter 2025 with a better personnel room than they trotted out for all of 2024. Most importantly, they'll actually have a quarterback.
I firmly believe that the quarterback position actively lost Oklahoma multiple games this season more than any other factor. Jackson Arnold lost the Sooners the Tennessee and Missouri games, while Michael Hawkins lost the Texas and South Carolina games. Ole Miss wasn't entirely Arnold's fault, but that's a winnable game if he actually threw the ball. That's 4 and maybe even five games that the Sooners could have flipped entirely with a semi-competent quarterback.
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Arnold is someone else's problem now and Hawkins won't be the starter next season, barring some unforeseen circumstances.
Now, John Mateer is stepping up. Unlike what Oklahoma trotted out this season, Mateer won his team games. Mateer dragged a terrible Washington State team to an 8-4 record. In the games the Cougars lost, Mateer was rarely the reason they lost. Look at his numbers in their losses:
- New Mexico: 25/36-375-4-0
- Oregon State: 17/23-250-2-0
- Wyoming: 16/22-182-1-1
- Boise State: 26/37-327-2-1
His worst outing in that stretch would have been Arnold's third-best game in the season, second-best if you don't want to count Maine.
The Sooners are getting a clear upgrade under center next season, one who has already proven to be a winner and has a clear rapport with Oklahoma's next offensive coordinator. Which brings me to my next point.
Better Coaching
Speaking of low bars, it's not hard to improve on what co-offensive coordinators Seth Littrell and Joe Jon Finley did this season.
Luckily, the Sooners hired a significantly better offensive coordinator in Ben Arbuckle to fix their mess.
Littrell and Finley constructed game plans that were, to put it politely, laughable at best and downright stupid at worst. Neither of them proved to be able to understand the flow of a game either. It also seems neither of the two knew how to properly teach their scheme (and I use the term scheme very loosely, as it closely resembled a hodgepodge of plays more than anything serious). Players were frequently blowing assignments or were put in positions that didn't fit their strengths and/or asked them to simply do too much for a play to even work.
Sooner Scoop's George Stoia put it best here:
Oklahoma struggled to earn much of anything in 2024. I can count the amount of times a player got open off of a schemed design on both hands and still have fingers left over.
They were seventh-percentile in explosive plays this season. If you're not good at math like I am, that is very, very bad. They finished 2024 131st in EPA/Play and 121st in offensive success rate. The co-OC duo led Oklahoma's worst offense, maybe ever, this season.
Who is Ben Arbuckle? Breaking down the Oklahoma Sooners offensive coordinator candidate
The Oklahoma Sooners have fired offensive coordinator Seth Littrell after a dismal 2024 season. The search for a new play-caller on offense is firmly underway, and we know what Sooners’ head coach Brent Venables wants his next offense to look like. This article will be part of a series I will be doing breaking down […]
On the flip side, new offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle had one of the nation's best offenses on a much worse team.
His offense was 98th-percentile in explosive plays this season. The Cougars also finished seventh in EPA/Play and 9th in offensive success rate.
Arbuckle had to scheme players open regularly, as Washington State just wasn't a very talented team this year. He did so with a ease that reflected his status as one of the best play callers in the country.
It would be a complete reverse of history if Arbuckle proved to be even a fraction as disastrous as what Oklahoma had in 2024.
Most of this article has focused on the offense instead of the defense for next season, and for good reason: The defense finished the year elite and should still be up there next year. They return plenty of talent, and the staff is still in place.
They'll still need to replenish talent in the transfer portal, particularly at cornerback, but they already have their starting group set. Losing Danny Stutsman and Billy Bowman are big blows, for sure, but their linebacker and safety rooms are the deepest on the roster. They have the depth and starters to absorb those losses.
Now that the bowl game is over, there is still plenty of time for the Sooners to land talented transfers. Heck, Brent Venables even said they were in his bowl game press conference.
So I urge you to simply relax for now. Yes, 2024 sucked. I completely understand that. It was the most disappointing season the Sooners have had since the Trevor Knight-era 2014 team. It's completely understandable to be frustrated and ticked off about that. You should be! It's unacceptable at Oklahoma.
However, I also urge you to be optimistic about the future of this team. They have plenty of pieces in play to be successful and added even better ones. More moves are on the way as well. There is plenty to be hopeful about for 2025 if you are a Sooners fan.
