Brent Venables weighs in on Notre Dame playing with 10 men, lesson learned

After Notre Dame failed to put 11 men on the field for Ohio State’s game-winning play, other coaches around the country are making sure to cross their t’s and dot their i’s.

At his press conference this week, second-year Oklahoma head coach Brent Venables was asked his thoughts on the final sequence between ND and OSU. He admitted that there was a lesson to be learned for his guys.

“I mean, we all talked about it as coaches, and really the players — and I don’t even want to probably talk about it. But it was like, note to self: make sure…” Venables said, trailing off, suggesting that he needs to be 100% certain he doesn’t make a similar mistake going forward.

As a major program head coach himself, Venables knows it has to hurt Marcus Freeman to live with that costly mistake in the biggest moment.

“I say it, you know, your gut hurts, to be honest,” he said. “Because that’s not the way you wanna go, you know. You feel bad for him, you know, because that was an incredibly well played game. Tough, physical, that was a fabulous football game. I admired both defenses. You know, the quarterbacks, it was a great game.”

But it came down to one massive error that Venables caught as it all unfolded.

“That did affect certainly the second play without question. But I sat there and watched it live and my wife is sitting there and my father and mother-in-law’s. I’m like ‘they don’t have enough guys, they got a problem on that right side.’ And sure enough, that’s Captain Obvious, ran the zone right there.”

Venables was then asked whether it’s a head coach’s job to publicly shoulder the embarrassment in such a situation, and if, internally, there’s more blame passed around.

“Yeah, everybody has to have ownership in that, no doubt,” responded the Oklahoma coach. “Head coach ultimately takes responsibility for everything that’s out there 100%, as you should. But you know, everybody has ownerships, somebody somewhere.”

Lastly, Brent Venables commented that he doesn’t want to spend too much time ragging on another coach’s decisions. “And anyway, I’ll get myself in trouble talking about it, but sounds easy and it should be better and easier than that.”

He’s just got to make sure that his Sooners don’t commit a similar folly. After such a glaring mistake from the Irish, you’d think most coaches will have an extra eye on their personnel totals this coming week.