Hot Seat Index: How Brent Venables can save his job at Oklahoma in 2025
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The obvious answer is one word: Win.
How can a coach on the hot seat at his respective program save themselves? Win. They’re on the hot seat because they haven’t won enough. Usually, winning cures all.
(Unless, of course, your boss is Daniel Levy, and in that case, lifting a trophy can’t even save you.)
But, it’s never as simple nor as clean to tell a coach on the cusp of unemployment to just win more games. In the case of someone like Brent Venables at Oklahoma, he can only work with the healthy players available to him on gameday. In the case of someone like Hugh Freeze, he can only build upon what was left to him. Losing programs are not made equal, and in he case of several around the SEC this upcoming season, what saves them from Buyout Grove will look different depending on where you stand.
Oklahoma’s win total at DraftKings is currently set at 6.5. Would just making a bowl game save Venables? Probably not. At least, not at a normal program. And Oklahoma isn’t a normal program. It’s a proud one, and its proudest alumni have to sit in squalor while that grotesque burnt orange brigade south of the Red River challenges for titles.
Auburn’s win total is 7.5 at DraftKings. Freeze said recently he knows he has to make a bowl game at a minimum to save his skin in 2025. But maybe Auburn can see the vision, regardless of how far above .500 Freeze reaches, if it simply looks better.
Kentucky’s win total is 4.5 at DraftKings. The whipping horse in Lexington left for Fayetteville. Mark Stoops has to win in 2025 or the title of “SEC’s longest-tenured coach” will shift to a different zip code next year.
We’re focusing on 3 high-profile SEC programs over the coming days, 3 coaches who need to win in order to stay with those programs next year, and what needs to happen in order for them to win. Today, the spotlight is on the SEC newcomer.
Oklahoma, and the climb back
Sooner fans have been remarkably spoiled. Bud, Barry, and Bob are revered in the Thunder State. It helps that the first names all flow remarkably well, but those 3 also reached “first name only” status on the strength of their résumés.
From 1947 through 1963, Bud Wilkinson won 83% of his games and produced 8 seasons with at least 10 wins. From 1954-56, Oklahoma didn’t lose a game.
A few years after Bud, Barry took over. And Barry Switzer did more of the same. From 1973-88, Switzer won 84% of his games and produced 10 seasons with at least 10 wins. Oklahoma didn’t lose its first game under Switzer until November of his third year. I mean, this guy was referred to as the high priest of the church of OU football.
A few years after Barry, Bob took over. And, again, Bob Stoops did more of the same. From 1999-2016, Stoops won 80% of his games and produced 14 seasons with at least 10 wins. Stoops lost 5 games in Year 1, and then lost more than 3 in a single season only 3 times over the next 17 years.
(To be fair, OU had some duds between legends. But, folks in Oklahoma speak about the John Blake years the way some in the Earth Kingdom spoke about the Fire Nation. There is no war in Ba Sing Se.)
OU claimed 3 national championships under Wilkinson, then 3 more under Switzer. Stoops lifted a BCS national championship in 2000 and got the Sooners into the College Football Playoff in its second year of existence.
Brent was supposed to be the next. It just fit. An absolute lightning rod member of Stoops’ coaching staff and then the best defensive coordinator in college football at Clemson, Venables was hailed as the guy to return OU to its rightful place in the college football hierarchy.
OU wasn’t OU under Lincoln Riley. At least, not to the degree fans wanted it to be. The physicality was gone, replaced with a sort of softness that rubbed so many the wrong way. And when Riley fled in 2022 for USC, Oklahoma felt the Palace on the Prairie had been left in disarray.
A guy who knew OU when it was rolling would be able to come in and restore the shine to the facade. But Venables? He’d make the thing roar again.
Venables went 6-7 in Year 1, but there were enough pieces moving in the right direction that momentum carried the program into Year 2. The Sooners signed another elite recruiting class and plugged holes via the portal. The crop of high schoolers was headlined by a trio of 5-stars — quarterback Jackson Arnold among them — and the future was firmly set. OU surged to 10 wins in Year 2, beating Texas along the way.
Oklahoma lost 7 times in 2024. Venables is on the hot seat because the progress that had been made through the first 2 seasons turned to dust last fall. A rash of injuries played a significant role in OU’s misfortune, but Archer is yelling “danger zone” in Venables’ ear for 2 specific reasons.
The first: Venables missed on an offensive coordinator hire. The second: OU couldn’t protect.
Dillon Gabriel wanted to be closer to home, so the Sooner starter for Venables’ first 2 seasons transferred to Oregon. But Oklahoma was willing to let him leave because Arnold was the next great thing. He started the Alamo Bowl against Arizona to close out the 2023 season, and though he threw 3 interceptions in a 14-point loss, he showed enough flashes of brilliance to ignite some optimism.
Jeff Lebby left Venables’ staff to take the Mississippi State head coaching job, and Venables made the decision to look internally for his replacement. Former North Texas head coach Seth Littrell — a running back at OU under Stoops — was promoted to co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach after one season as an analyst. Joe Jon Finley, another Sooner alum on the staff, was given a co-OC title and a raise.
With some continuity, maybe Arnold’s development would fast-track and the second-year quarterback would pick up right where Gabriel left off.
With Littrell calling plays and Arnold running the show, OU scored 2 second-half points in a Week 2 home game against a Houston team that would go on to finish 4-8. Arnold completed 59.4% of his passes and averaged 5.4 yards per attempt in the game.
“We deserved to lose. … I thought overall, our body of work on offense was not very good today,” Venables said after the game. “We have to get a whole heck of a lot better, quickly.”
They did not.
Per Game on Paper, OU ended the season ranked 129th out of 134 FBS teams in opponent-adjusted EPA per play.
The Sooners ranked third in the same metric during the 2023 season. Prior to Venables’ arrival in 2022, OU ranked in the top 10 nationally 5 times in 6 seasons.
“I hired the wrong guy,” Venables said around Thanksgiving. “It obviously wasn’t the right guy. That’s not centered on Seth. I failed, and I own that. That’s not earth-shattering news. OK, what do I got to do to fix it? So, what do we have to do as a staff now?”
Venables fired Littrell after a 35-9 home loss to South Carolina. The Sooners were sacked 9 times and tackled in the backfield a total of 13 times. The Gamecocks scored 22 points off 4 OU turnovers and had a 21-0 lead 5 minutes and 20 seconds into the game. The loss marked consecutive home defeats for the Sooners — something that had happened only once before since 1999.
Arnold threw for 1,421 yards and 12 scores last season, completing 62.6% of his passes with just 3 interceptions. But he averaged only 5.8 yards per attempt and was benched for Michael Hawkins Jr. after the Tennessee game. Hawkins threw for 783 yards with 3 scores and 2 picks, but he started the South Carolina game and after that OU moved back to Arnold.
Of course, it didn’t help that Gabriel led Oregon to a 13-0 record, a Big Ten championship, and the No. 1 overall seed in the CFP. He became a finalist along the way. And Venables had to deal with the narrative that he pushed Gabriel out the door to make room for Arnold.
“You can’t make a guy stay,” Venables said last September. “The guy is trying to find the next thing, the next chapter for him. I’m sure there was probably some disappointment that [Gabriel] wasn’t more highly thought of in the NFL. He had an amazing year. He was a fantastic quarterback. But we didn’t run anybody off or things like that.”
Arnold transferred to Auburn in the offseason. It might be fair to say that his recruitment was a missed evaluation. But a 5-star quarterback isn’t a sure-fire star, and Arnold still has time to correct the course of his career in a new home. But it might also be fair to say that Arnold still can’t be properly evaluated.
Hawkins was sacked 15 times. Arnold was sacked 34 times. No FBS team gave up more sacks in 2024 than Oklahoma. No one looks good under constant pressure.
Last season, PFF graded the Sooners out as the 109th-ranked run-blocking unit and the 92nd-ranked pass-blocking group. Arnold was pressured on 40% of his dropbacks. Hawkins was pressured on 42% of his dropbacks. They were 2 of just 14 power conference QBs last season with at least 100 dropbacks who faced pressure on at least 40% of those dropbacks.
The line replaced all 5 starters from the previous year in 2024. Six of the 10 linemen who saw at least 100 snaps from last season are back, but injuries make it hard to project who will be where in 2025. Line coach Bill Bedenbaugh rolled out different 5-man starting lineups in each of OU’s first 9 games.
Bedenbaugh is a 2-time semifinalist for the Broyles Award who is entering his 12th year with the program. If anyone deserves the benefit of the doubt on this staff, it’s him. But OU has to have better line play next fall.
Did Arnold have a historically poor season because he didn’t want to look downfield, because he couldn’t make the throws, or because he didn’t have the time? My colleague, Spenser Davis, found that only 14 other power conference quarterbacks in the CFP era have averaged fewer yards per attempt on the kind of volume Arnold saw in 2024. Maybe its a combination of factors.
Regardless, OU will have an entirely different engine in 2025.
Related Reading: What to expect from Oklahoma QB John Mateer in his first SEC season
Venables hired Ben Arbuckle from Washington State to run the offense, and he assumed play-calling duties with the defense. Arbuckle, in turn, convinced Washington State quarterback John Mateer to follow him from the Palouse to Norman.
Washington State ranked 17th in the nation last year in opponent-adjusted EPA per play. The Cougs ranked eighth in EPA per dropback and Mateer ranked eighth among qualified FBS players in EPA per rushing attempt.
Mateer had nearly 4,000 yards of total offense and 44 touchdowns last season. He’s a dual-threat gamer.
OU added 5 wide receivers from the transfer portal, a high-ceiling running back from Cal, and 7 new offensive linemen. Unless injuries destroy another season, this will be Arbuckle’s offense through and through.
And the defense should remain pretty good. OU was eighth nationally last season in opponent-adjusted EPA per play allowed. Coming off a season in which it finished 17th in defensive SP+, Bill Connelly’s predictive model has the Sooner defense projected to be the 13th-best in 2025.
The Sooners gave up at least 30 in a game 4 times last season, but they also lost games in which they allowed 26, 25, and 21 points. If the offense isn’t grotesque, the Sooners will find themselves in a ton of second-half fights. The bar is on the floor, as they say.
And plenty of folks think OU can be pretty good on offense.
“If I’m right, Oklahoma’s gonna be a contender in the SEC,” CBS Sports’ Josh Pate said on his show recently. “I believe in the OC-quarterback approach, bringing both of them in, not just one of them, especially when they’re both qualified, and Ben Arbuckle and John Mateer are. I also think it greatly helps that John Mateer is not being brought into Norman, Oklahoma, and then being looked at by everyone down on their knees with their hands clasped praying, ‘Please save us John, save us.’ No, you don’t need to save anyone.
“You need to go in there and play solid football and execute, make good decisions, because you know what you’ve got around you? You’ve got a top-10 roster around you. You’ve got a really good defense. You don’t have to score 42 a game to win, and you’ve got guys calling plays for you that you’re very familiar with. I think he’s gonna be really good this year. That’s why I’ve got Oklahoma top 10 in the preseason.”
The Sooners don’t need to be a top-10 team for Venables to save his job.
But he better beat Michigan on Sept. 6.
That game will be the litmus test. If the Arbuckle-Mateer partnership is going to work, if the offense is going to rebound, we’ll see it against the Wolverines. If OU wins that game, there’s a good chance the Sooners will be 5-0 when they head to the Cotton Bowl to face Texas.
That would be a pretty good start.
Don’t get blown out at home in embarrassing fashion. It’s one thing if a team is bad. It’s another if a team is unwatchable. OU was unwatchable last season. Fixing that will make everything feel a little less tense.
Brent Venables probably isn’t joining the “Bud, Barry, Bob” shirts. If OU morphs into a national championship contender under his guidance, it’ll come as a surprise to everyone. But he doesn’t need to reach that level in 2025 to save his job.
Thirteen head coaches in Oklahoma history coached at least 3 seasons at the school. Nine of those 13 coaches made it through their first 3 seasons without a single losing record. Two had 1 losing season in their first 3, and both of them were pre-World War II.
Venables and Blake are the only coaches in OU history to get at least 3 seasons and have multiple losing records to begin their tenure.
Blake didn’t get a fourth year. OU clearly wants to see Venables succeed. He has the pieces in place to do so in 2025.
ESPN’s Football Power Index says OU will play the third-toughest schedule in the country in 2025.
Clear the win total. Produce a season that has more wins than losses. Doing so will show that Venables, who was able to identify and quickly fix mistakes, has things heading in the right direction.
Derek Peterson does a bit of everything, not unlike Taysom Hill. He has covered Oklahoma, Nebraska, the Pac-12, and now delivers CFB-wide content.
