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Oklahoma head coach Brent Venables on Texas: "No weaknesses on paper...or on tape"

Eric Nahlinby: Eric Nahlin10/08/24
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NATHAN J. FISH/THE OKLAHOMAN / USA TODAY NETWORK

Third-year Oklahoma head coach Brent Venables met with media on Tuesday to discuss his team’s upcoming rivalry game against Texas.

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The Sooners are 4-1 but the season has already been filled with tumult. OU barely survived a game against Houston, then benched its five-star starting quarterback, Jackson Arnold, during the loss to Tennessee. After the loss to the Vols, the Sooners did what they seemingly always do and bounced back with a road win over Auburn. This time with freshman dual-threat quarterback Michael Hawkins at the helm.

Like Texas, Oklahoma was also on a bye during this chaotic past weekend.

Venables started his press conference with standard coach-speak following a bye week. He mentioned his team self-scouted, worked on fundamentals and schemes, and used the time to get players healthy.

After that, he discussed the overall tenor of the game and what it means for college football.

“How could you not get excited for this game? This is everything that you want to coach and play for at this level. The pageantry, the emotion, the intensity, the opportunity. You know you’re going to have center stage in college football Saturday.”

From there he discussed Texas’ experience, with an emphasis on the offensive line.

“We’re going to play a great Texas team, playing incredibly well. They’ve won 19 of their last 22 games. Coach Sarkisian and their staff have done a really nice job. Really good team, it’s a veteran team. I think 20-21 of their top 22 guys on offense and defense are juniors and seniors. A veteran team; 134 or so starts with their offensive line. From an offensive standpoint it kind of all starts there. They’ve got really good players at every position but the way they’re playing up front, the cohesion, the chemistry, the physicality that they’re playing with, they kind of lead the way from an offensive standpoint.” 

His mention of Texas being 19 of their last 22 games is perhaps self-serving as his Sooners upset Texas in last year’s game. It’s both a reminder of how far Texas has come and also that upsets are frequent in the RRS.

While Texas gets most of its headlines for its offense, the defense has been playing at a very high level.

“They’re playing really well again on both sides. Top-5 in the country in virtually every defensive and offensive category. Just playing really well. Other than running backs that they’ve lost — I think it was in fall camp — they’ve remained relatively healthy but the backs that they have…Wisner (he confused Trey Wisner for Jaydon Blue) was in the last game, I think he had 18 carries against Mississippi State. He played really well for them but they’re all — Blue, Gibson — they’re all playing really well as well.”

Despite Texas’ overall experience, a couple of young studs on defense have caught his attention.

“I think their youngest player they have that plays significant snaps is Anthony Hill and he’s one of the best linebackers in all of college football. Great, great player. And then Colin Simmons is a freshman. I think he’s been mentioned as a potential freshman All-American, playing really really well for them as well.” 

He finished his opening statement regarding extremely high praise.

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“No weaknesses on paper…or on tape.”

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