Oklahoma 2024 Report Cards: OU's Coaching Staff Had an Awful Year

By almost no metric did the Oklahoma coaching staff have a good season.

To find any good, the defense must be completely separated from the offense.

And overseeing it all, in a difficult Year 3, was head coach Brent Venables.

Venables struggled in a handful of areas this season, both in game management and staff management, as OU limped across the finish line to another 6-7 record in the Sooners’ first season as a member of the might Southeastern Conference. OU went just 2-6 in SEC play and was not competitive in a handful of games, from the opener against Tennessee to the rivalry with Texas to an incomprehensible implosion at home against South Carolina to the finale at LSU.

Venables must receive some grace when evaluating his job performance in 2024. His family’s world was rocked again over the summer when his wife Julie received a medical diagnosis that her breast cancer had returned. Venables leans heavily on his faith gets immeasurable support from his wife and four kids, but handling the magnitude of being the OU head coach while dealing with an unimaginably all-consuming family crisis is something that can’t be graded or quantified or judged.

But two factors can’t be counted out as Venables continued to grow into the job:

1) The Sooners had a losing record for the second time in three years, and …

2) Venables had to fire a coordinator for the second year in a row.

This time it was offensive coordinator Seth Littrell who got the ax. But instead of waiting until the end of the year like he did with defensive coordinator Ted Roof, Venables had to take action at midseason because the OU offense had gotten historically bad.

A year after he was fired as head coach at North Texas and added to the OU staff as an offensive analyst, Littrell was elevated and replaced Jeff Lebby as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach — even though he hadn’t been an OC in eight years and had never coached quarterbacks.

Littrell’s play sequencing was often disjointed and seldom connected. He kept going back to plays that didn’t work and got away from plays that did. He didn’t exploit defensive weaknesses, he didn’t isolate his own players’ strengths. He put players with limited skills in bad positions, and he struggled to adjust to and counter what defenses were doing to the OU offense.

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That stood out most in pass blocking as the Sooners allowed more quarterback sacks than all but three FBS teams this season. Early on, Littrell frequently left a tight end or even a running back in single pass protection, or if an inexperienced offensive tackle was struggling to block an edge rusher, Littrell was often late giving him help.

And when tight ends coach Joe Jon Finley replaced Littrell as the play-caller, things got better in some areas and worse in others.

Finley sometimes seemed to draw up inexplicable plays for his players that had a low (or zero) chance of succeeding — a jet sweep to Bauer Sharp, or a double pass to Bauer Sharp, or a different double pass to Bauer Sharp — and never seemed to have any oversight. Either Venables or someone else in the offensive staff room should have spoken up when those plays were inserted into the game plan or repped in practice or called on game day, but no one did.

What percentage of quarterback Jackson Arnold eschewing downfield throws was due to his lack of trust in either the receivers or the offensive line, and what percentage was on Littrell and Finley insisting Arnold’s passes be limited to the line of scrimmage? We can’t know that, but Arnold didn’t have any problems throwing deep when he was Dillon Gabriel’s backup, or in the Alamo Bowl, or when he was in high school. His development as the Sooners’ starting quarterback in Year 1 was an abject disaster and a complete failure — in every area — and ultimately resulted in the 5-star prospect and Gatorade National Player of the Year transferring to Auburn.

Whatever the problem — pass blocking, undependable receivers, a scared QB or milquetoast coaching — speedsters like Brenen Thompson (12.1 yards per catch) and Deion Burks (7.9) were never allowed to stretch the field and caught mainly short passes and screens. As a result, OU was near the bottom of every metric for big plays or explosive offenses.

The Oklahoma offensive line was in total disarray the first half of the season as Bill Bedenbaugh had to run out eight different starting combinations in the first nine games. That was due to three things: injuries at various positions, Bedenbaugh not having any quality replacements ready to step in as OU lost all five starters from 2023, and Bedenbaugh missing on the evaluations of several of his five transfer portal additions.

Eventually, Logan Howland and Heath Ozaeta developed into capable blockers at left tackle and left guard, respectively, but their inexperience and lack of preparedness was painfully obvious when they were thrust into the lineup due to injuries. For all his well-earned reputation as a developer of offensive linemen, Bedenbaugh should have had those two playing at a higher level when they were called upon.

Jacob Sexton and Jake Taylor looked ready to step in when the season began, but both frequently struggled in both pass blocking and run blocking before injuries ended their seasons. And transfer Febechi Nwaiwu could be considered the Sooners’ most reliable interior lineman this year but also had prolonged periods where defensive linemen exposed either his lack of physicality or good technique.

Some of the same thing happened at receiver, where injuries claimed one Sooner after another — and yet, the replacements were often simply not prepared to play. Wideouts coach Emmett Jones’ group finished the season with a steady rotation of true freshmen and walk-ons, but still the group dropped a season-high five passes in the Armed Forces Bowl loss to Navy (Venables actually counted seven drops).

That’s a stark lack of development that should have taken place in the two weeks of bowl practices — or maybe even during the regular season, when it was clear that the Sooners’ top five wide receivers (Nic Anderson, Andrel Anthony, Deion Burks, Jalil Farooq, Jayden Gibson) were out for the year. But the replacements (true freshmen Zion Kearney, Zion Ragins and Ivan Carreon) contributed just 28 catches for 285 yards and one touchdown all season and necessitated the emergence of true freshman walk-on Jacob Jordan (27 catches, 234 yards, one TD).

DeMarco Murray didn’t have to deal with the kind of injuries that Bedenbaugh or Jones did, but he, too, struggled to find any reliability or consistency among his running backs.

For the second year in a row, Murray bounced back and forth between RB1s. Most of the time, junior Jovantae Barnes looked like the best option and 2023 rushing leader Gavin Sawchuk struggled. But Murray kept giving chances to promising true freshman Taylor Tatum despite obvious and sometimes catastrophic deficiencies in pass blocking and ball security. Murray didn’t use true freshman Xavier Robinson at all early, and after it was decided to redshirt him, Barnes got hurt and Robinson got called up. He was almost immediately the Sooners’ best offensive player down the stretch — so why didn’t Murray use him sooner? And after Robinson exploded all over Alabama, why was his role reduced in the season finale at LSU, and why was he a non-factor in the bowl game?

The defensive coaching staff has far fewer questions to answer for 2024. The Sooner defense currently ranks No. 19 overall this season and is 24th against the run and 29th in points allowed.

The secondary struggled again at times in pass coverage, as OU ranked 43rd in passing yards allowed and 69th in defensive pass efficiency rating. Sometimes it was Brandon Hall’s safeties who misread what the offense was doing and got themselves out of position (Billy Bowman made some impressive plays but didn’t have an elite senior year), but usually is was Jay Valai’s cornerbacks (Kani Walker and transfer Dez Malone) who simply could not hold up in single coverage and gave up way too many deep throws, forcing true freshman Eli Bowen to emerge at midseason as the team’s best corner.

But overall, Zac Alley was a great addition to Venables’ defensive staff as the linebackers coach and primary play-caller. The OU linebackers had a strong season, led by senior captain Danny Stutsman as the heart and soul of the OU defense, earning consensus All-America honors. Kip Lewis had another good year, and Kobie McKinzie flashed plenty of evidence that he’s ready to replace Stutsman.

Alley, however, didn’t stick around, choosing instead to almost double his salary and take the DC job at West Virginia. That reflects poorly on Venables, whom Alley previously called his second dad.

Meanwhile, it was the Sooners’ defensive front that finally elevated its play and looked like a legitimate SEC unit.

For that, d-tackles coach Todd Bates gets a huge amount of credit, especially for landing TCU’s Damonic Williams from the transfer portal, developing Gracen Halton into a big-time playmaker, and for helping Jayden Jackson quickly evolve into a freshman All-American. Bates also gets flowers for signing 5-star David Stone, who had a nice first year as a backup and will need to take that next step soon.

Defensive ends coach Miguel Chavis had his best season, too, as R Mason Thomas finally stayed healthy and led the team with nine sacks on his way to All-SEC honors. Senior Ethan Downs was reliable as always. After he was slowed by injury this year, former 5-star P.J. Adebawore needs to make a big jump in 2025 under Chavis.

Good game management remains occasionally elusive for Venables. There were times this season where he burned a timeout that could have been useful later or disrupted a scoring opportunity. Substitution snafus cost the Sooners at Ole Miss. But there has been progress there, too: no coaches were penalized for mouthing off at the officials this year, and nobody was hit with sideline interference infractions. For all his limitations, Finley did execute a pair of nice 2-minute drills against Ole Miss and Navy, and he orchestrated a brilliant game-tying fourth-quarter drive at Missouri.

Venables made the call to try to win at Mizzou instead of playing for overtime, and that backfired when Arnold’s bonehead fumble was returned for the game winning TD in the final seconds. He also made the call to go for 2 instead of sending the Navy game into overtime with an extra point kick. With the offense struggling like it had, that felt like the right decision to try to win in regulation, but Finley’s play call on the 2-pointer was poorly designed.

On the motivational front, Venables gets downgraded for opening the SEC campaign with such a flat performance against Tennessee and also looking lifeless on offense against Texas, but also gets a boost for whatever he told the team ahead of its massive upset of Alabama in late November.

In retrospect, fans might have appreciated a little more effort to retain Dillon Gabriel, who transferred to Oregon and became a national superstar (and a Big Ten champion, Big Ten player of the year and Heisman finalist, and a little less reliance on an unproven 5-star QB prospect. But that's hindsight and simple speculation. Gabriel blossomed in 2024 as a Duck like he never would have as a Sooner. Not on this offense.

In all, Venables made a poor choice on Littrell, but hit a home run with Alley — but maybe didn’t give Alley enough credit (or enough money) to keep him around. His defense (where he spends most of his time) got better this year, while his offense (where he probably should have focused his energies) regressed badly.

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Sooners On SI grade: Offense F, Defense B, Head coach D