The Sooners’ weaknesses are surfacing again in losses at LSU as the program searches for answers

BATON ROUGE, La. – It seemed like Oklahoma conquered some demons in its win over Alabama last week. The defense completely stopped Alabama’s offense and OU’s offense was effective enough to pull out a win.

But Saturday’s 37-17 loss at LSU was a harsh reminder of reality.

Despite holding a 14-10 lead midway through the second quarter, the 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 took advantage of problems that had existed all season.

“(It) really felt like we were three different entities out there that didn’t all represent Oklahoma together,” Venables said.

Defensively, they once again struggled to limit explosive plays.

Although OU improved overall in 2024, particularly in defending the run, the defense continued to have difficulty giving up big passing plays. They entered the game ranked 92nd nationally in passes allowed of 20 yards or more (32), which the Tigers took advantage of. Garrett Nussmeier and the Tigers completed seven passes of 15 yards or more, including two touchdowns of 40 yards or more.

Nussmeier finished the game with an impressive stat line of 277 yards on 22/31 passes and two touchdowns, completing 12.5 yards per completion.

Meanwhile, the offense fell far short of Alabama’s performance and regressed back to average.

The Sooners couldn’t rely on the running game, which prevented them from gaining control. Breakout star Xavier Robinson rushed just 10 times for 20 yards while Jackson Arnold was contained with 17 carries for 75 yards.

In the meantime, there was essentially no passing. Arnold completed just 14 of 21 passes for 110 yards, an average of 7.8 yards per completion. 50 of those yards came on one throw JJ Hester in the second quarter.

This lack of explosiveness has plagued the Sooners all season. They came into the contest averaging 4.1 yards per game, ranking 131st nationally. The Sooners averaged 4.7 yards per play against LSU, while the Tigers averaged a whopping 6.2 yards per play.

Losing the battle for explosive plays is one of the main reasons the Sooners have struggled all season.

“You can’t do this and expect to beat everyone’s pulse,” Venables said. “Our margin for error was already extremely thin. When you do the things you can’t do to win… There’s a lot to overcome. At the moment we are not good enough to be able to overcome that.

Now the Sooners face a crucial offseason and are looking for answers.

The first step will be to complete the hiring of a new offensive coordinator, which should occur 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 did not score more than two offensive touchdowns in any conference game.

The Sooners will then have to reevaluate the defense, which showed real growth in 2024. The defense ranked 16th nationally in both total defense and rushing defense, but Venables acknowledged the secondary is an area where real growth is needed.

Then come the squad questions. Early Signing Day is scheduled for Wednesday, just days before the transfer portal window opens on December 9th.

It all needs to come together as the Sooners look for ways to quickly improve a team that finished the regular season with a 6-6 record.

“I have been working over the last few months to find the right player for us from a coaching perspective,” Venables said. “And we feel like with this mindset we’ll be in a great, strong position to improve even further. I feel really good about it. In the last month we have improved in many areas of the offense and with many players. “The defense is in a much better position than two years ago and even last year. We’ve taken another big step in every area of ​​defense the work these guys have done.

“Once we get through some of these big decisions and moments in our schedule, we’ll look at every area of ​​our program where we need to get better. There will be nothing that we won’t look at and evaluate that we have to be better than we were this year.”

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