This has been the talk of late and it turned into reality on Monday as it was announced the Washington State offensive coordinator will assume the task of rebuilding OU’s historically bad offense from the 2024 season.
I would assume this means he joins the staff immediately for OU’s bowl preparation at the least as an observer in place interacting with the staff in whichever minor bowl the Sooners land after this weekend’s conference championship games. It would make sense in that all the bowl practices would be aligned with moving the offense into spring ball with a head start.
It would not surprise me a bit if Washington State sophmore quarterback John Mateer follows Ben Arbuckle to Norman as well. I believe the transfer portal opens on December 9th and it will be very interesting to see what transpires there with the OU quarterback position in relation to not only Jackson Arnold, but Michael Hawkins as well.
I don’t know what this means for the other OU offensive position coaches at this point.
But we do know this…OU’s offense was brutal this season. The worst since the John Blake days. Brent Venables has now gone 6-6 in two of his three seasons as the OU head coach. I love Brent Venables’ story not only as a football coach, but as a man as well. But the storied OU football program has high standards and a third season of 6-6 would probably put Coach Venables right there with Gary Gibbs as a former great OU defensive coordinator who didn’t pan out as the head coach in Norman.
I hope that’s not how it goes. So we’ll see.
We’ll also see how all this fares for Jackson Arnold as well. I think he’s a great young man and will still turn out to be a very good quarterback. He had to lead an offense which in effect lost its top six receivers thru the course of the season and had a shaky offensive line at best.
The transfer portal opening next Monday thru the month of December will be a trip in itself to say the least.
I’m going to watch OU play Georgia Tech tonight and get my mind off OU football for at least a week or two or more. It was an interesting first SEC season for certain. But everyone should have known this was going to be a tough transition from the finesse Big 12 to the cage fighting SEC…so I would think all now understand the difference between SEC and Big 12 football. There are no soft spots. None. Every Saturday is a cagefight.
Miguel J