How Experience Will Boost Oklahoma in Brent Venables' Second Spring in Norman

The Sooners are integrating plenty of new faces, but familiar names should help smooth the transition as spring practice starts on Tuesday.

NORMAN — Spring football is going to look a bit different in Norman this year.

Brent Venables and the OU coaching staff are now fully entrenched, no longer new on the job.

Twelve months ago, Venables was installing a new defense while offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby taught a new system to both the players and the coaching staff.

Over and over, Venables stressed the need to set a strong foundation, as he’d only get the chance to lay the ground rules for his program once.

This year, the Sooners won’t have as much catching up to do.

The returning players are one year into the system on both sides of the ball, though last year’s 6-7 finish means there’s plenty of improvement still necessary.

Oklahoma will also have to integrate plenty of new faces, as OU has 26 newcomers between the transfer portal arrivals and high school early enrollees who will practice for the first time as a Sooner on Tuesday.

Getting all the new additions up to speed will be the first task this spring, as once everyone gets acclimated, they can start competing for snaps throughout the spring and into fall camp.

Still, there’s a baseline the entire team must achieve leading into the summer.

“You still go all the way back to the basics of program installation, which we’ve been doing for the last few months,” Venables said on Monday. “How you do, what you do – everybody needs to always be reminded of what those are. What your standards are, what your values are, what your expectations are of your guys.”

Still, returning starters like Dillon Gabriel, Andrew Raym, Danny Stutsman, Woodi Washington and Billy Bowman will be key in helping get new pieces online as fast as possible once practices get underway.

“There’s not as much newness to all of it. So that’s been fun,” Venables said. “Guys are able to finish the end of your sentences both in the meeting room and just talking about program installation. So it’s going to look a lot different.”

The Sooners have plenty to fix in 2023.

Oklahoma’s defense struggled in Venables’ first year back in Norman.

As a result, OU aggressively pursued talent in the transfer portal, but the returning pieces from last year’s team will be relied upon to set the tone throughout the spring practices.

“Guys know how we practice, how we stretch, what we do after we stretch – all those things, how we practice in shells versus out of pads,” Venables said. “So the process and procedures aren’t as new for the guys but you don’t take it for granted when you have 25-plus new guys.

“You have to assume they don’t know what to do. Getting to the end point is going to get a lot easier in a lot of ways.”

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