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OU’s 2025 campaign marked the best one of Brent Venables’ tenure.
The Sooners finished the regular season 10-2 and reached the College Football Playoff for the first time since 2019. OU lost 34-24 to Alabama in the CFP First Round, but even so, the season marked the high point of Venables’ four-year stint as the Sooners’ head coach.
It’s now time for him to prove that it wasn’t an outlier. But while there’s still plenty of work to do, Venables believes his team is on its way to building on last year’s trip to the CFP.
“Creating real momentum, that's a real thing from one year to the next, especially with the amount of returning guys that we have in all really three phases to continue to build on the success from a year ago,” Venables said at SEC Media Days in Tampa, Fla., on Monday.
So far, Venables is 32-20 as Oklahoma’s coach — the Sooners have gone 10-3 twice and 6-7 twice.
Venables essentially gets a pass for OU’s losing season in 2022, as he took over for Lincoln Riley, who departed in favor of USC. He inherited a depleted roster, and it’s somewhat remarkable that the Sooners even reached bowl eligibility.
In 2023, OU appeared to be playoff-bound for the first half of the season. But after the Sooners’ 7-0 start, they dropped late-season contests against Kansas and Oklahoma State and eventually lost to Arizona in the Alamo Bowl.
Without a doubt, the 2024 season was the most disappointing Venables-led campaign.
Oklahoma entered the year ranked No. 16 in the AP Top 25 but finished with a losing record. Widespread injuries in the wide receiver room and on the offensive line — along with poor quarterback play — led to a greatly underwhelming finish in the Sooners’ first year as an SEC member.
Though that season temporarily put Venables on the hot seat, it taught him much about dealing with injury bugs and other unforeseen circumstances.
“You see the things that were going well, try to build on those,” Venables said. “You try to learn from your injury situation to efficiently get better. You're always looking at that.”
The Sooners didn’t have as many injuries in 2025. But quarterback John Mateer suffered a hand injury in Week 4, while running backs Xavier Robinson and Tory Blaylock and defensive lineman Jayden Jackson all dealt with ailments late in the season.
Even so, Oklahoma strung together wins against four quality opponents — Tennessee, Alabama, Missouri and LSU — to end the regular season and clinch a spot in the CFP.
Injuries, for the most part, are unavoidable. But Venables is confident that he has the right personnel to overcome any adversity his team may face in 2026.
“You recruit the right kind of guys,” Venables said. “(We) went through some hard times… the ability to get better from those hard times, learning from both the good and the bad.”
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This article was originally published on www.si.com/college/oklahoma as Why Oklahoma HC Brent Venables is Confident the 2025 Season Wasn’t a ‘One-off’.
