Jaren Kanak growing into his role at OU
Because of the defensive struggles OU had in 2022, there were questions a lot of Oklahoma fans had with the personnel.
The usage of some and the curious non-usage of others. Linebacker Jaren Kanak fit into the latter category. It didn’t matter that he was absolutely still learning the position. What OU fans saw when he was in the game was someone who wanted to make a play.
What head coach Brent Venables wanted to make clear, however, is it wasn’t about the system. There are bumps and bruises that come along the way in learning the system, but Kanak had simply never played defense.
“It’s not our system. Guy had hardly ever played defense,” said Venables last week at Big 12 media days. “He was a high school quarterback, you know. They’d put him in there and they’d bring him off the edge, you know, and that was it. So he had to learn how to get in a stance.
“We had him at Cheetah last year and we’re just trying to spread guys out and some guys can’t play Cheetah so instead of backing everybody up at one position, spread ’em out. He’s a guy that’s a 10.4 100-meter guy, let’s put the fast guy out there in space and let’s see how they can help us. We had no depth a year ago. None. Zero. You learn from it all.”
Kanak finished with 24 tackles, a tackle for loss and a forced fumble/recovery. Everybody will point toward the Nebraska game. After DaShaun White was ejected for targeting, Kanak came in and played extremely well.
He had 10 tackles and the forced fumble and recovery.
You could almost hear the hindsight thinking in Venables voice when describing the development of Kanak and others like him.
“Probably should’ve played some of our younger guys more, even if they’re making, quote-unquote, mistakes — at least it gives those other guys a chance to play maybe a little better in the fourth quarter when they had to go back in,” Venables said. “But that’s some of that give and take that you go through when you’re building a roster and starting over in many ways and he’s in a different spot like a lot of those other young guys.”
Kanak appears to be positioning himself in a starting role to go along with Danny Stutsman as the two inside linebackers. Their bond is incredibly strong off the field. OU fans are hoping it’ll correlate with elite play on the field as well.
