BATON ROUGE, Louisiana — It appeared Oklahoma had conquered some demons in last week's win over Alabama. The defense completely shut down Alabama's offense, and OU's offense was effective enough to cruise to a win.
But Saturday's 37-17 loss at LSU was a harsh fall back to reality.
Despite holding a 14-10 lead midway through the second quarter, they Tigers scored the final 20 points of the game and cruised to a relatively easy victory. The Sooners were simply outmatched on offense, defense and special teams as the Tigers exploited issues that have been there all season.
"(It) really felt like we were three different units out there, not all representing Oklahoma together," Venables said.
Defensively, it was again struggling to limit explosive plays.
As much as OU had improved in 2024 as a whole, particularly in defending the run, the defense continued to struggle with surrendering big passing plays. They entered the game ranked 92nd nationally in passing plays allowed of 20 yards or more (32), which the Tigers exploited. Garrett Nussmeier and the Tigers completed seven passes of 15 yards or more, including two touchdowns of 40 yards or more.
Nussmeier finished with a ho-hum stat line of 277 passing yards on 22/31 passing and two touchdowns, as he completed 12.5 yards per completion.
Meanwhile, the offense was a far cry from the Alabama performance, and regressed back to the mean.
The Sooners weren't able to rely on the running game, which kept them from establishing control. Breakout star Xavier Robinson rushed just 10 times for 20 yards, while Jackson Arnold was contained for 75 yards on 17 carries.
Meanwhile, the passing offense was essentially non-existent. Arnold completed just 14 of 21 passes for 110 yards, averaging 7.8 yards per completion. 50 of those yards came on a throw to JJ Hester in the second quarter.
That lack of explosiveness completely plagued the Sooners all season. They came into the contest averaging 4.1 yards per play, which ranked 131st nationally. The Sooners averaged 4.7 yards per play against LSU, while the Tigers averaged a healthy 6.2 yards per play.
Losing the battle of explosive plays is a big reason why the Sooners struggled all season.
"You can't do that and expect to beat anybody with a pulse," Venables said. "Our margin for error was already razor thin, anyway. When you're doing the things you can't do in order to win... It's a lot to overcome. Right now, we're not good enough to be able to overcome that."
Now, the Sooners head into a pivotal offseason as they search for answers.
The first step will be finalizing the hire for a new offensive coordinator, which should happen in the coming days. The new offensive coordinator will be tasked with turning around an offense that ranked 118th in total offense (326.6 yards per game) and failed to score more than two offensive touchdowns in any conference game.
The Sooners will then need to reevaluate the defense, which showed real growth in 2024. The defense finished 16th nationally in both total defense and rushing defense, but Venables acknowledged that the secondary is an area where real growth is needed.
Then, the roster questions will come. Early signing day is slated for Wednesday, just a few days before the transfer portal window opens on Dec. 9.
It'll all have to come together as the Sooners look for ways to quickly improve a team that finished the regular season with a 6-6 record.
"For the last couple of months, been working on finding the right fit for us from a coaching standpoint," Venables said. "And feel like we’re going to be in a great position, strong position to make us better with that hire. I feel really good about that. The last month we’ve improved in a lot of areas on offense and lots of players made improvements. The defense is in a much better position than what we were, certainly, where we were two years ago and even last year. We made another huge step in every area of defense this year. I love the foundation, the body of work that these guys have put forth.
"Once we get some of these big decisions and moments on our schedule out of the way – go back and take a look at every area of our program where we need to be better. There will be nothing we won’t look at and evaluate that we need to be better than what we were this year."
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