Oklahoma's Running Game Continues to be Major Issue

NORMAN — Brent Venables addressed the running game only glancingly after Saturday’s 41-13 loss to No. 2 Georgia.

“We were patient in the run game,” Venables said in his only mention of the ground attack during his postgame press conference that almost exclusively focused on quarterback John Mateer’s struggles.

Offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle only addressed it once as well, this instance while answering a question about the offensive line.

But Oklahoma’s inability to run the football continues to be a major issue.

Through four games, the Sooners are averaging just 99 yards per game.

Only nine FBS teams have put up worse numbers than OU on the ground. Unsurprisingly, none of the teams behind the Sooners in the category have a winning record either.

It’s hard to win without at least the threat of a running attack, and Oklahoma has hardly presented much of a threat.

The Sooners have just two rushing touchdowns this season and none since the opener against UTEP.

It’s the second time in three seasons Oklahoma has gone three consecutive games without a rushing touchdown.

The other came in the middle of the 2024 season. After the second game of that stretch, offensive coordinator Seth Littrell was fired.

Prior to that stretch, Oklahoma hadn’t gone three consecutive games without a rushing touchdown since Howard Schnellenberger’s 1995 team.

Venables might’ve said Oklahoma’s running game was patient against Georgia, but the numbers don’t exactly tell a positive story.

The Sooners ran for just 65 yards, giving them just 126 over the last two games. That’s the lowest two-game production for Oklahoma since 2012 and the first time they’ve been held to less than 70 yards rushing in consecutive games since 2001.

Even taking out sack yardage, the Sooners averaged just 2.5 yards per attempt.

They’ve had just nine runs of 10 or more yards all season and none over the last two games.

Oklahoma’s longest run of the season came from Ben McCreary, a transfer from Incarnate Word who hadn’t appeared in a collegiate game since 2023 at West Texas A&M. Including McCreary’s 24-yard run late in the win over UTEP, the Sooners have just three runs of 15 or more yards.

Starting running back Lloyd Avant’s two longest runs, of 12 and 13 yards, came on the Sooners’ first two offensive plays of the season.

The last time the Sooners started a season with rushing numbers this low, Walter Cronkite was Oklahoma’s radio voice and Bud Wilkinson was still a decade away from taking over the reins as head coach.

When Lincoln Riley arrived, there were plenty of questions about how well he’d be able to integrate the running game into his Air Raid offense.

Of course, it helped that Riley inherited Samaje Perine and Joe Mixon from the previous offensive staff, but the Sooners’ ground game flourished during Riley’s time in Norman.

Though the running game dipped a bit his last two seasons, Oklahoma averaged 220 yards per game during Riley’s seven seasons running the offense.

The Sooners had nine 1,000-yard rushers during Riley’s tenure.

The only season Oklahoma have a 1,000-yard rusher under Riley was during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season when Rhamondre Stevenson was suspended for six games yet still ran for 665 yards.

During Venables’ first season at the helm in 2022, the Sooners averaged 219.4 yards per game on the ground.

They were led by Eric Gray, who ran for 1,366 yards and 11 touchdowns.

Every year since, Oklahoma’s rushing attack has taken a step back.

They averaged 182.2 yards in 2023, 144.2 in 2024 and 118.5 last season.

Similarly, the yardage of the Sooners’ leading rusher has dropped each season, with Tory Blaylock leading the Sooners with just 480 yards last season.

Avant is leading the Sooners with 164 yards and a touchdown through four games.

Without drastic improvement, that downward trend will continue in 2026, despite improving the ground game being among the major offensive focuses of the offseason.

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