After a blowout loss to Texas, many Oklahoma fans started researching available offensive coordinators.
Co-offensive coordinators Seth Littrell and Joe Jon Finley have not been popular in their six games helming OU’s offense. Littrell, who’s in charge of the Sooners’ play calling, has caught the most flak for leading an offense that ranks last in the SEC in total yards and second to last in points.
Head coach Brent Venables was asked his thoughts about making coaching changes during the season, which he has never experienced.
“If you go back and look at where I’ve been, I’ve not been a part of any staff changes in the middle of the season with Bill Snyder, Bob Stoops or at Clemson with Dabo (Swinney),” Venables said Tuesday. “There’s always problems, sometimes people know about them, sometimes they don't. There's always some level of struggle, and you’ve got to work through your problems and find the best possible solutions.”
Venables is not convinced that only one person is the root of Oklahoma’s offensive struggles.
“If you have success, it's everybody. And sometimes when you don't have success, people want to point to one guy,” Venables said. “Sometimes it's probably appropriate to blame one person, but most of the time, it's not. It's a combination of a lot of things (as to) why you're struggling.
“You try to put it all together and have perspective, and not make any rash decisions based on the information that you have. At the end of the day, there's nothing easy about any of it. But I've been a part of those staffs to where maybe decisions were made at the end of the year, but nothing mid-season.”
OU’s coach has taken time to evaluate the struggles occurring on offense. Perhaps the most notable in a long line of perplexing stats is that the Sooners rank No. 133 of 134 teams nationally in plays longer than 20 yards.
To him, the explosive plays he sees on a daily basis during practice aren’t translating to Saturdays.
“There are always struggles in practice,” Venables said. “But, as far as connecting on deep balls and explosive (plays), has it looked good in practice? Yeah.”
One of his focuses in watching film has been to determine whether scheme or execution is causing the most trouble. He took that to Monday’s practice, where after witnessing players make mistakes, he’d asked them if they were taught that way, and the response was typically “no.”
Through all the evaluation he’s done, honesty and accountability from both the coaching staff and players are what Venables is relying on to help find answers.
“I go back to, ‘Is it there?’ Venables said. “If they have the best defense against what we're doing every snap, then we’ve got to figure out better ways to scheme. If we're in good calls against what the defense is presenting and there are issues with the details of what we're doing based on what I know we're coaching them to do, there's got to be some player accountability as well.”
For now, he sees a wide variety of issues with the offense, from coaching to the inability to translate what happens in practice on game days.
“The perspective is you’ve got a brand new quarterback in there that just started his second game,” Venables said. “… Were guys wide open? Yeah, several times they were wide open. Is the protection there when they’re wide open? Yep, it sure was. Do we have to pull the trigger? Yeah, we do.
“Do we have to get better with our route detail? We do. There’s a coaching piece to that. What you put on the field is a reflection of what you coach. And at the same time, we’ve got to take what we did right in practice and take it to game day. We can't lose our minds. And too often that happens.
“As a coach, there's a fine line between being successful and not being successful on any particular play, and there’s a lot of moving parts that go into that. But at the end of the day, you either are or you aren't’, and we haven't been enough. That's incredibly frustrating to say the least.”
Quarterback situation
Venables didn’t consider making a quarterback change on Saturday.
However, with the offense still stagnant under freshman Michael Hawkins Jr., it begs the question of whether OU would consider playing both him and sophomore Jackson Arnold, and rotating them on each drive.
“I’m certainly not immune to anything,” Venables said of potentially rotating his quarterbacks. “I know (Hall of Fame coach) Steve Spurrier did it for his whole career. But that being said, it'd be great if you had one that you could get behind and do the things that are necessary to win. We're certainly not putting it out of the realm of possibility in the future.”
Neither quarterback has thrown for 200 yards in a game this season. While Hawkins sparked the Sooners when he took over during their 25-15 loss to Tennessee, he struggled in the first three quarters against Auburn and couldn’t get anything going against Texas.
Arnold’s struggles began in OU’s 16-12 win over Houston and carried over to Tennessee, where he committed three turnovers in the first half.
With Arnold no longer starting, questions have arisen about whether he’ll redshirt this year.
“It’s been discussed between us,” Venables said of whether Arnold will redshirt or not. “What was told to Jackson was, ‘If we put you in, it's because we need you to help us go win.’ We're certainly sensitive to everything. We're not sitting here with our head in the sand or naive to what it is.
Venables made it clear that Oklahoma wants Arnold on its team, and the feeling is mutual.
“He wants to be the starting quarterback at the University of Oklahoma,” Venables said of Arnold. “His focus and his priority is with the team, where he is right now. He's practiced extremely well the last couple of weeks.
“I feel that it's only right to give Mike the opportunity to be the quarterback and to have a body of work that says he either is or isn't the right guy. And will he learn from his past mistakes?”
