Blatant Homerism: The official outlook for the Sooners in 2025
I often say that being a fan of a successful college football program sucks. When you expect your favorite team is going to win all the time, winning itself starts to take a backseat to not losing. You detest the drama that makes college football fun – surprises can only be bad.
For fans of the Oklahoma Sooners, the past three years served as a reminder that hoping not to lose beats the hell out of cheering for a mediocre team. The situation grew especially dire last season. Most weeks, OU’s sturdy defense was given the Sisyphean task of trying to hold on as the other side of the ball struggled to get out of first gear. (It’s worth noting that D scored touchdowns in OU’s only conference wins.) It made for a surreal juxtaposition versus what we had come to expect after watching the high-scoring Sooners for years.
It’s hard to shake the impression you get from watching a unit collapse as severely as OU’s offense did last year. You can attribute much of their overall incompetence to a deluge of injuries, but a series of poor decisions by the coaching staff played an equally significant role in putting the O on course for ruin. As such, skepticism that head coach Brent Venables can rectify the situation in just one year seems warranted.
Not for nothing, Venables has changed the identity of OU’s program. Under the guidance of defensive line coach Todd Bates and defensive ends coach Miguel Chavis, a defensive front that was a punchline became one of the best units in the country in the span of three years. The development on the DL helped spark OU’s transformation into a top 20 defense last season. Upgrading the personnel and player development from top to bottom behind them has given the D even more room to grow this fall.
It took Venables and offensive line coach Bill Bedenbaugh longer to refurbish an offensive line that was rapidly falling into disrepair three years ago – blame the lack of talent on the OL just as much as poor health for the 2024 debacle. To stabilize Bedenbaugh’s room, OU has signed eight OLs in the last two crops of high school recruits, including highly touted prospects Michael Fasusi and Ryan Fodje in the 2025 recruiting class.
The bumpy process of rebuilding the team from the inside out hasn’t been fun after so many seasons of add water, win conference title. But even though the Sooners could score with anybody year in and year out, they got manhandled by bigger, faster and stronger opponents whenever they played for prizes beyond the Big 12 crown. Having an assembly line of great quarterbacks at the ready didn’t change the reality that the old way of doing things had hit its ceiling by the time Lincoln Riley left OU.
OU hasn’t enjoyed the same level of success during the team’s renovation under Venables. However, purging the Sooners’ old identity was a necessary step in building a program that can compete in the SEC. Following three years of creative destruction, it feels like OU is in a better position to move forward in its new conference.
The question hanging over this Sooners season: Can Venables be more than a bridge between eras for OU?
Despite the departures of linebacker Danny Stutsman, safety Billy Bowman and defensive lineman Ethan Downs from the ‘24 team, we should assume OU will maintain its level of play on defense this year. In fact, the D appears equally likely to take another leap forward. OU is loaded with veterans on that side of the ball, which should allow Venables to tailor his diabolical schemes throughout the season to match a variety of offenses.
So the answer really hinges on the wiz kid hired to oversee OU’s offense and his sidekick at QB. New offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle put together attacks at Washington State that ranked 39th and 22nd, respectively, in Offensive SP+ in the last two seasons. OU hired Arbuckle to reignite its moribund O, and the Sooners also threw a hefty package at fellow Cougars emigre John Mateer for the signal caller’s name, image and likeness rights. Adding ex-California running back Jaydn Ott and a handful of small-school transfers at receiver will hopefully give Arbuckle some weapons that were sorely lacking on OU’s roster a year earlier.
The fact of the matter is that OU won six games in 2024 in spite of an O that appeared hellbent on sabotaging the team at every turn. We’re talking about a team that fumbled 26 times in 13 games – seven more times than the prior season despite running about 100 fewer plays. When they weren’t booting the ball away, the Sooners could barely make opposing defenses sweat: They failed to even get a first down on 30% of their offensive drives.
OU isn’t paying Arbuckle seven figures per year to achieve modest goals like cutting down turnovers, but that would make for a great start. The offense doesn’t even have to reach the upper echelon of the sport for the Sooners to field a strong squad, however. At the very least, a more effective ground game behind an improved OL should enable OU to better control possessions and cut down on the egregious number of third-and-long scenarios that doomed the offense in ‘24. Meanwhile, channeling Mateer’s playmaking skills to avoid an outsized number of negative plays should add explosiveness.
And now imagine the OU defense playing with a lead in more than a handful of games…
Ultimately, I have no idea what kind of record OU needs to put up against this season’s nightmarish schedule to ensure Venables comes back in 2026. To put things in perspective, the FEI strength of schedule ratings indicate the best teams in the country would lose two games versus this slate; an average team would go 4-8.
That sounds daunting, but it’s also the job Venables was hired to do. Now in his fourth year, the time has come to show he can accomplish more with this program than simply setting it up for the future.
Prediction: 8-4… and then who knows what? (Supporters can see the rest of my projections for the four power conferences on the Through the Keyhole Patreon site.)
Through the Keyhole teams up with Homefield
Through the Keyhole is joining forces this season with Homefield Apparel to bring you the best in college sports apparel. Throughout the month of August, the Can’t Miss Kickoff event will include drops for an incredible amount of new items, so treat yourself to some new Homefield gear celebrating the start of the college football season.