Brent Venables Outlines One of the Biggest Challenges Oklahoma Will Face This Spring

Excitement is high in Norman as the Sooners approach spring football.

Brent Venables’ fourth year at the helm saw Oklahoma return to the College Football Playoff, and everyone in the program is hungry for more in 2026.

But as the team moves out of winter workouts and into spring practice, Venables identified the ability to develop quality depth as one of OU’s most important goals ove the next month and a half.

“You can’t keep everybody. You’d love to, but you can’t. And that will be the test of this football team,” Venables said in an interview on The Oklahoma Breakdown podcast. “… The test of this team, and I know we’ve helped ourselves on offense. … I really believe that one of the keys to our success is that we had our 2’s playing closer to 1’s than to playing to 2’s. … And we lost a lot of that competitive depth, most of that on the defensive side.”

Part of the lost depth simply came at the hands of graduation.

Defensive tackles Gracen Halton and Damonic Williams both made the most out of their final season on the interior of the defensive line, while R Mason Thomas put himself in position to potentially get drafted in the first round of the 2026 NFL Draft off the edge.

Losing key depth pieces to the transfer portal is the new normal across college football, and the Sooners were no different.

Linebackers Kobie McKinzie transferred to Northwestern and Sammy Omosigho moved to UCLA over the winter.

Neither player would have been guaranteed a starting spot with Kip Lewis returning and the addition of Michigan linebacker Cole Sullivan, but it means the depth behind Lewis and Sullivan went from a pair of seniors to younger, unproven pieces.

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The OU secondary will deal with similar levels of turnover. While Courtland Guillory, Eli Bowen, Peyton Bowen and Jacobe Johnson return, Gentry Williams, Devon Jordan and Jaydan Hardy all hit the portal.

Venables and Oklahoma general manager Jim Nagy were able to work together to bring in a talented transfer portal class that appears poised to fill holes on defense and upgrade the offense, at least on paper, but there are fewer veteran pieces who have been in the program for multiple years waiting to take over.

It does mean that there will be plenty of opportunity for players up and down the roster to earn playing time and carve out a bigger role in the two-deep throughout spring practice, however, which excites Venables.

“I’m really excited about what we’ve been able to add,” he said. “… This is a really committed group of guys that we’ve got coming back, without question.”