Oklahoma coach Brent Venables has a simple reason for why he’ll be running the Sooners’ defense in 2025.
Venables established himself as one of the best defensive coordinators in college football with Oklahoma and Clemson over the past 20 seasons before he was hired as the Sooners’ head coach. After delegating play-calling duties to former defensive coordinator Zac Alley in 2024, Venables announced in February that he would call the defensive plays in 2025.
Wednesday, he explained that his coaching mindset has always been that something was on the line every day going back to when he was first hired as an interim coach at Kansas State. And then he gave a simple answer as to why he’ll be the play-caller.
“Why am I going to call the defense? Because I’m good at it,” Venables said. “And I’m confident at it. And we’ve got a great staff. If I’m going to be successful, the players are going to be successful the product is going to be what we want it to be, it’s going to be because of all of us. And somebody’s got to lead it. I did that in 2023, we made improvement, in some areas not as much as we wanted, so I know what that looks like and managing game day and in-season, out of season, the meeting room, practice field, all those things, I know what that looks like.”
Venables’ decision to take over the defense comes as Oklahoma was just 6-7 in its first season in the SEC. The Sooners’ defense gave up 4.9 yards a play and allowed 21.5 points per game; but the Sooners were just 97th in the country in scoring offense and averaged just over 175 passing yards per game. OU scored more than 24 points just once in SEC play and that came against Auburn in Week 5.
It was the second time in three seasons that Oklahoma finished under .500 during Venables’ tenure. The Sooners were 6-7 in 2022 before going 10-3 in their final season in the Big 12.
In addition to defensive changes, there have also been significant changes to the Oklahoma offense ahead of what could be a make-or-break 2025 season. Following the late season dismissal of offensive coordinator Seth Littrell, the school hired Washington State offensive coordinator Zach Arbuckle. Cougars QB John Mateer — one of the most prolific QBs in college football a season ago — then entered the transfer portal and followed Arbuckle to Oklahoma.
