Oklahoma Expected to Hire Former NFL Assistant as New RBs Coach, per Report

The Sooners have reportedly found their replacement for DeMarco Murray.

Oklahoma is set to hire Deland McCullough as its new running backs coach, according to a report from Matt Zenitz of CBS Sports. The reported hire comes five days after Murray — OU’s running backs coach from 2020 to 2025 — took the same role with the Kansas City Chiefs.

Oklahoma is expected to hire Deland McCullough as its running backs coach, sources tell me and @CKennedy247.

Worked in the NFL with the Raiders this past season. Before that, he was running backs coach at Notre Dame and coached players like Jeremiyah Love and Audric Estime. pic.twitter.com/DTqh4s7uUH
— Matt Zenitz (@mzenitz) February 18, 2026

McCullough is the father of two former OU players — linebacker Dasan McCullough and defensive back Daeh McCullough. Dasan played at OU in 2023 and 2024 before transferring to Nebraska, while Daeh spent his true freshman season, 2023, in Norman before ultimately transferring to Louisville.

Most recently, McCullough was the Las Vegas Raiders’ running backs coach in 2025 under Pete Carroll.

There, he oversaw the development of rookie running back Ashton Jeanty. Though Jeanty had a strong rookie season, the Raiders largely struggled, and the franchise fired Carroll after the season. New coach Klint Kubiak, formerly the Seattle Seahawks’ offensive coordinator, chose to reload the Raiders’ staff upon his arrival. Although Kubiak began the rebuild almost immediately and let 13 Raiders assistants go on Feb. 6, McCullough's dismissal only became official on Monday. He was reportedly a candidate for the Chiefs post that eventually went to Murray.

McCullough returned to college coaching in 2021 when he went back to Indiana to serve as the Hoosiers’ associate head coach and running backs coach. His return to Bloomington lasted only one year, as he became Notre Dame’s running backs coach in 2022.

It was while McCullough was in South Bend as both running backs coach and associate head coach under Marcus Freeman that OU coach Brent Venables began recruiting his son, Dasan, 6-foot-5 Freshman All-America defensive end/safety at Indiana who had originally committed to Ohio State. The coaches apparently struck up a relationship that has endured.

In 2023, after Daeh McCullough signed with OU, Venables revealed that he'd been recruiting Daeh in high school when he found out that his big brother had entered the transfer portal on his way out of Indiana.

“Next thing I know – I don’t know how it went down – I’m on the phone with Dasan when he got into the transfer portal," Venables said then. “We were like two sorority girls catching up. It was quick. It was easy in regards to conversations and getting back to the football side of it.”

“Right when I entered the portal,” Dasan McCullough said in 2023, “he was the first one to call my phone.”

That clearly left a positive impression in the McCullough brothers' dad, who now will serve as Venables' running backs coach.

Deland McCullough also served as USC’s running backs coach in 2017 before taking the same position with the Kansas City Chiefs. In Kansas City, McCullough helped the Chiefs win Super Bowl LIV, and he was named the NFL’s Running Backs Coach of the Year at the 2020 NFL Scouting Combine.

McCullough became a college football coach in 2010, when Miami (Ohio) hired him as a coaching intern. Indiana then hired McCullough to be its running backs coach, and he held that position from 2011 to 2016.

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