Brent Venables’ Oklahoma NFL Draft Turnaround Leading to More On-field Success?

With seven players drafted, OU hopes that a steady flow of top-end talent begins to sustain success for Venables and his program.

Oklahoma coach Brent Venables | Carson Field / Sooners On SI

Column

When a coaching change hits a program, at what point do the players who stay with the incumbent regime become the new coach’s players?

The easy answer is immediately. But nuance calls for a more intricate look.

Saying “Bob Stoops only won a championship with John Blake’s players” would draw an eye‑roll from most people in Oklahoma. Sometimes, immediate success places a new name plate over a class of players.

What about when there's immediate failure? Brent Venables — never accused of being a failure in his life — got off to a rough start in his first season as head coach with a 6-7 campaign. The lack of success on the field did little to keep a number of Sooners from being drafted in the following NFL Draft.

Oklahoma offensive lineman Ryan Fodje, head coach Brent Venables, linebacker Cole Sullivan. | Carson Field / Sooners On SI

Five OU players heard their names called in the 2023 NFL Draft. Of the five selected, four seemed to be draft picks thanks to their time prior to Venables arrival. Anton Harrison, Marvin Mims, Brayden Willis and Wanya Morris were all standouts under Lincoln Riley. Eric Gray was the breakout star whose 2022 season was the sole reason he got drafted.

Regardless of how anyone characterizes whose player is whose, Venables got to claim five former players drafted after his first season.

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From there, the dip in NFL Draft picks that can occur when a program goes through a coaching change happened. Three Sooners were drafted in the 2024 NFL Draft and only two were selected in 2025.

For Oklahoma, a program that had sent an average of five players to the NFL per year over the previous decade — including eight in the 2019 draft — this shortfall was a clear sign that expectations were not being met.

Of course, it is easy to explain it away. The Sooners were morphing from an offensive heavy program with Riley to a defensive-minded institution under Venables. A change of that magnitude is going to come with a hiccup in the talent department.

OU also switched from the Big 12 to the death gauntlet of the Southeastern Conference.

Oklahoma coach Brent Venables looks on at practice. | Carson Field, Sooners On SI

It didn’t help that the volatility of those foundational changes mirrored Venables’ uneven run after his first year: 10–3 in 2023 was followed by 6–7 in 2024. That kind of inconsistency in the win column doesn’t disqualify players from being drafted, but it sure didn’t help their case.

A 10–3 mark in 2025 seemed more indicative that the program had taken the next step than Venables’ second‑year record did. It wasn’t the SEC patch that made those 10 wins feel more legitimate, but the fact that Venables was finally starting to show evidence of developing players on both sides of the ball.

This led to the 2026 NFL Draft that saw seven Sooners drafted — tied for fifth most in the country. Finally, Oklahoma got to hear its name called at a cadence it had grown accustomed to over the previous decade.

As it stands, OU heads into the 2026 with high expectations both realistic and optimistic — right where the program wants to be every offseason.

Oklahoma coach Brent Venables | Carson Field, Sooners On SI

They’ll also have the talent to make those expectations a reality.

Already, there are way‑too‑early mock drafts featuring Sooners like David Stone, and with a strong returning core plus several highly regarded portal additions, it’s not a wild stretch to project OU sending seven or more players to the 2027 NFL Draft.

It does appear that the work Venables had to do to bridge Riley’s vision of the Oklahoma program to his own has been successfully completed.

Can Venables, having now bridged the gap, finally use the talent on hand to string together back‑to‑back winning seasons for the first time in his tenure? While a return to the College Football Playoff looks doable but tough given OU’s 2026 schedule, a winning season appears to be well within reach.