Oklahoma's roster turnover throughout the Brent Venables era is rather mind-numbing when put into adequate perspective.
In many ways, it's a microcosm of the current era of college football, in which players can become free agents at will and enter the transfer portal for a new opportunity. But it's astonishing nonetheless.
After all, it's been less than two years since Venables' first game as the Sooners' head football coach. But as he surveys the practice field in Norman these days, he sees precious few holdovers from the beginning of his tenure. Only five scholarship players (Jalil Farooq, Danny Stutsman, Billy Bowman, Ethan Downs and Woodi Washington) precede Venables' arrival. Washington is the grizzled veteran of the bunch, as he's heading into his sixth and final season as a Sooner. The other four were members of Lincoln Riley's last recruiting class at Oklahoma in 2021.
“Everybody else is new," Venables remarked on Saturday. "It’s a reminder of that as you look around. I love the blend of freshmen — over 50 scholarship freshmen and sophomores on the team — with a great blend of seniors and guys who have paid the price and played a lot of college football."
And though his squad may not boast a legion of players who have been through the fire time and again at Oklahoma, Venables is confident that he's assembled a roster with the right character qualities. And that confidence is reasonable, at least based upon what he's seen during the first week of fall camp.
"There’s more assuredness, depth of leadership," Venables explained. "I’m always careful because sometimes one team isn’t really good at leading. We haven’t really experienced that. Some teams weren’t capable of leading because they were brand new and trying to learn themselves. We have more depth of leadership that has been intentionally developed and intentionally recruited. Our guys have worked hard at it — to know what to do and [know] our systems, all our different systems. More comfortable, so the players can lead. It’s more of a player-led fall camp than it’s ever been.”
The phrase 'competitive depth' has been a constant refrain for Venables and his staff over the past two seasons, and it's something they've worked hard to cultivate on both sides of the ball. Oklahoma faced major depth deficiencies at several key positions in 2022, which contributed to a late-season skid in an eventual 6-7 campaign. A top-10 recruiting class and a strong portal haul helped shore up the Sooners' weaknesses in 2023, but the product was still far from pristine. Venables believes there's another quantum leap in store for his defense, and intoned that the Sooners are at least two deep with studs at every position.
“A year ago we bragged about competitive depth," he admitted. "But I do think there was a slight drop-off between that first and second group a year ago, and [now there’s] not near the drop-off — if any at all — with that first and second group, if you will... I think about linebacker and the transformation that’s taken place there in the last year and half. From our first year (2022) where we felt like we really only had three guys that could go play in a game, to where we’re at now — [it’s] night and day. And I think really, for the most part, every position on our team looks like that.”
To that end, it certainly helps to have versatile chess pieces that can play a variety of positions, and the Sooners have several of those pieces on the defensive side. They plan to experiment with Washington and Peyton Bowen in particular, as both can fill multiple roles in the secondary. Bowen played snaps at cheetah and safety in 2023, while Washington has made starts at safety and cornerback over the course of his distinguished career as a Sooner. While there has long been talk of some cheetah snaps this fall for Washington, Venables maintained that the bulk of his work will come at corner. When healthy, Washington has held down a starting spot at cornerback for Oklahoma since midway through the 2020 season, save for a one-off emergency start at safety in 2022.
“His primary position’s at corner, and he’s done a nice job there," Venables said of Washington. "The last two years, [we’ve] worked him at multiple positions, but we haven’t quite had the depth at corner that we’re hoping that we have there this fall. But he’s got a really good skillset. He’s smart; he’s played a lot of football. He’s really tough, so he plays big, but corner’s his primary position.”
