Kevin Wilson is Having a 'Heck of a Time' Back on Staff at Oklahoma

After spending two years as head coach at Tulsa, Kevin Wilson felt he had more left to give.

The longtime offensive guru wasn’t quite ready to retire, but after leaving Norman in 2010 to take over at Indiana, Wilson believed he had more to give to the program.

“I just thought I could help,” Wilson said on The Oklahoma Breakdown podcast with Gabe Ikard and Teddy Lehman. “… I’ve had a lot of great jobs, but those nine years at OU were pretty special.”

Wilson joined Bob Stoops’ Oklahoma coaching staff in 2002, and he worked as offensive line coach, tight ends coach and offensive coordinator until his departure in 2010. He worked alongside Brent Venables when he was Stoops’ defensive coordinator, creating daily battles at practice that Wilson enjoyed.

“Having worked with Brent for nine years kind of being an offensive guy that sees things different, not better, just different thoughts,” Wilson said. “I asked a couple of guys, could I help? And Brent was intrigued and it was really great to just join, be a part of the game, be a part of the program last year. I had a heck of a time.”

Oklahoma Sooners, Kevin Wilson — Oklahoma offensive assistant Kevin Wilson on the sideline at Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. | Carson Field, Sooners on SI

Wilson said he did a lot of learning in his first year back with the program, both about working with offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle and with what it takes every week to battle in the SEC.

“When I got here, I was hobbling around. I couldn't do much,” Wilson said. “But most importantly, when I got here, I thought I tried to do a good job of learning or trying to understand what Ben, Coach Venables, what we wanted to do. Because I really felt I could probably screw things up more than help.”

This offseason, Wilson feels fully integrated with the coaching staff.

“After the season, we did a great study of ourselves,” Wilson said. “We had what was called theory a year ago. Now you've got testimony. This is really what we do and what we do well and what we don't do well. So we could dive into that in (the) spring.”

And Wilson believes the offense has made progress.

“We looked better. We're trending,” Wilson said. “But we've got miles to go to be what you really can be, what you want to be, what it takes to be high-level in this league. We've got some really good players. We're doing some, I think, really good things. We're going against a great defense every day.”

There wasn’t a major offensive overhaul, but Wilson believes the entire coaching staff has done a nice job tweaking things to make the entire unit more productive in 2026.

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“I don't think there's major changes as far as brand new plays,” he said. “… What's the process of getting hats on those extra guys, which is really a challenge every week. ... Bottom line, at the end of the day, you can't play offense like Switzerland and be neutral here. You've got to go forward. You've got to go towards the other direction.”

The work is far from finished.

While the players undergo their summer conditioning and the rest of the coaching staff is on the recruiting trail, Wilson has been looking back to find the areas of growth the offense can attack during fall camp.

“I took a whole month and just studied spring,” Wilson said. “And now we're kind of going back through that looking, ‘Hey, are you sure this is right or can we, do we think these techniques and fundamentals need to be better?’… We brought in some good players, we're working better to keep the schemes and the fundamentals coming.”

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