Oklahoma Sooners head coach Brent Venables just sent a powerful message to the entire fanbase and his team during the bye week
The Oklahoma Sooners are in a rut and need to get out of it, or Brent Venables could be on the hot seat.
The Oklahoma Sooners are 2-2, and the rest of the schedule doesn’t get any easier. In fact, it could get a lot worse. Oklahoma is on its bye week, and the Texas Longhorns are waiting on the other side.
Texas is the No. 1 team in the country, so things could get ugly fast. No matter what happens, though, Sooners head coach Brent Venables isn’t backing away from what got him here. To be clear, “this point” doesn’t mean a losing season. It means a team that came into the year with real expectations because of last season.
Here’s where the Oklahoma Sooners stand
If the Sooners had even a decent offense last season, they’d be a national title contender. Instead, Oklahoma made the College Football Playoff for the first time under Venables and should have won. The Sooners blew a lead, but they should have won. What got Venables there is the standard he has held this program to.
He knows what it means to be the head coach at Oklahoma. It means more than most people even realize because of the history at that school. You have Bud Wilkerson, Bob Stoops, and Barry Switzer, and the list goes on. Venables knows what he has to do, and he addressed it during the bye week:
“The standards and expectations, I don’t want anybody to change. I don’t want to change those standards. The expectations, you know, I’d say raise them. We need to do a much better job. We have fallen short. We are working tirelessly and vigilantly to change this. I believe in this team. I believe in these players. I believe in the staff. And I would just say hang in there with us. These guys are fighting like hell to flip this thing around and to punch back and be better.”
That’s not a coach who is lowering the bar to make a 2-2 start look better. He’s asking fans to expect more, not less.
The big one here is the offense
In all seriousness, Venables isn’t the one to blame here. Sure, you could put some of it on him because he is the head coach, and that comes with the job. But the offense is the real problem. The quarterback is playing poorly, and the players around the quarterback are playing poorly, too. That’s a tough combination for any team to overcome, let alone one expected to compete at the top of the SEC.
As for the defense, which Venables primarily oversees, things look great on that side of the ball. The issue is the offense isn’t helping that unit out at all. Last season, the defense won practically every single game for Oklahoma. But there’s only so much a defense can do to carry a team. We saw that against Georgia. It won’t work against the elite of the elite, and that’s exactly who the Sooners are about to face.
Venables knows Oklahoma has to be better. Based on these comments, you should expect the Sooners to come out swinging against the Longhorns. Either way, this game will say a lot about where the program is headed.
If Oklahoma shows up and fights the way Venables says it will, the standard he talked about still means something. If the Sooners get embarrassed, Venables could find himself in the hot seat.
