The next offensive coordinator hire for Brent Venables will determine whether he makes it as the head coach of the Oklahoma Sooners. That is the reality in Norman right now. Oklahoma fired Ben Arbuckle earlier this week, and whoever Venables brings in to replace him, paired with whoever lines up at quarterback, is going to decide the rest of his tenure.

I was personally high on the Arbuckle hire. Bringing him in with John Mateer made a lot of sense. I didn’t think Mateer was a perfect quarterback coming out of Washington State, but there was enough there that you could say the Sooners had their offensive coordinator and quarterback pairing locked in. We’ve seen that formula work all across college football.

It just didn’t work in Norman.

The injury concern was never the real problem

And you may say, Tegan, the Sooners dealt with an injury last season, so how can you pin this on the offense? Well, let’s call a spade a spade. The injury wasn’t the story. The story was an offense that never built a true identity beyond asking Mateer to go bail it out, or asking Isaiah Sategna III to go bail it out.

The offensive line never really gelled together, and that hurt. But the biggest issue, in my opinion, was the lack of a competent rushing attack. That was the Achilles heel of this Oklahoma team. When you can’t run the football, every possession turns into a hope that one of your playmakers does something special. That isn’t a plan. That’s a prayer.

So the firing of Arbuckle made plenty of sense. It shouldn’t come as a shock to anybody who actually watched the Sooners play.

The archetype Brent Venables has to chase for his next OC

Now, if I’m Venables, I don’t go looking for the flashiest offensive mind on the market. I find an offensive coordinator who fits my skill set and my defensive-minded mentality.

I go pro style. I play ball control football, I limit possessions, and I demand that my offense be highly efficient. That’s the opposite of the approach where you spread it out, try to be a prolific offense, and also try to play great defense at the same time. Trying to do all of that at once is how you end up with an offense that has no real identity at all.

Venables’ defense is always going to be good. That is the one thing Oklahoma can count on every single season. So build the offense around that. Tell your offensive coordinator the job is to be efficient on every possession, protect the football, and let the defense win games. It’s not glamorous. It’s basic, it’s boring, and it fits.

That is the archetype I would go after, and frankly, I don’t think it’s debatable.

This decision leads to a make-or-break offseason for Venables

Here’s why this matters so much. After this season, Venables is sitting on one of the hottest seats in college football. Plenty of people have argued that he might be a better coordinator than he is a head coach. Whether that turns out to be true is still to be determined, but nobody can argue with the stakes in front of him.

The quarterback question is just as big. I’d assume the next one comes from the transfer portal again, and that adds another layer of risk to an already shaky situation. Hitting on both the offensive coordinator and a transfer quarterback is the difference between Venables finally getting this program where it wants to be and Oklahoma looking for a new head coach.

My stance here is simple. If Venables chases a coordinator who matches his defense and commits to efficient, ball control football, he gives himself a real shot to stick in Norman. If he chases another high-flying offense with no identity, this hire is going to be the one that ends his run with the Sooners.