41 Days Until Kansas Football: Oklahoma Preview

Lincoln Riley headed west. Oklahoma is going to head southeast. And on October 15, Kansas will head south to Norman for likely the last time as Big 12 conference foes.

What will the Jayhawks be faced against? Let’s dive into the new-look Sooners.

Pre-Game Notes

Kansas and Oklahoma have played 106 times but the last 17 have been completely one-sided. Oklahoma has won every meeting since 1997, though it’s worth pointing out that the Sooners were ranked in all but one of those (the sustained consistency really has been impressive). In fact, Oklahoma is 43-3 against Kansas when only OU is ranked and 6-1 when both teams are ranked.

Football historians hypothesize (they don’t actually, don’t bother looking that up) that the Oklahoma surge and drive for domination can be traced back to 1905 when Kansas blanked the Sooners 34-0 in their second meeting.

Mike Plank Four-Down Scouting Report

First Down

You may have heard that Lincoln Riley took the USC job, so the Sooners brought in Clemson defensive coordinator Brent Venables to lead the program. Clemson may have been where Venables has spent the past decade, and this is his first head coaching job, but he knows the program and Big 12 well. Venables played at Kansas State—by way of Garden City Community College—and then served as a grad assistant and linebackers coach for Bill Snyder before spending 1999-2011 at OU as defensive coordinator and assistant head coach.

Second Down

You won’t be able to make the argument (not logically at least) that any success in Venables’ first year was due to Riley’s players. The Sooners lost nearly 70 percent of its offense and 60 percent of its defense, equating to nearly 400 career starts. OU also no longer has any quarterback signings since 2018 still in Norman.

The losses are from a team that went 11-2 and finished No. 10 in the AP poll, but that was also felt to be disappointing by some after being ranked No. 2 in the preseason.

Third Down

So who is around? The likely top quarterback is former UCF QB Dillon Gabriel, while the QB room will also feature Pitt transfer Davis Beville, freshman Nick Evers, and the best name of the group, General Booty. (An aside: would there be anything better than a player named General Booty coming in to lead OU to a comeback win over Texas and then flashing the horns down? The memes would be endless.)

Eric Gray will likely take the running back role from Kennedy Brooks, while Marvin Mims is probably the top receiver returning from last year. Also joining the receiving corp are Missouri transfer JJ Hester and Arizona State transfer LV Bunkley-Shelton.

Fourth Down

On defense, OU lost five players to the NFL draft, but do have 12 players back who have started a game. One player to watch is Jalen Redmond, who had eight tackles for loss and 3.5 sacks in eight games last year.

Matchup On Paper

With a new coaching staff and mostly new roster, looking at Oklahoma’s production last year doesn’t do a ton of good. Instead, let’s look at the track records of the coaches now leading the way.

The new offensive coordinator and QB coach is Jeff Lebby, who had that role at Ole Miss the past two years and before that was the QB coach at UCF. Lebby’s offenses play fast and rack up yardage. Last year at Ole Miss, the Rebels were fourth nationally at 506.7 yards per game and in 2020, set an SEC record at 562.4 ypg in conference play. To give you an idea of the pace, Ole Miss averaged 78 plays per game in 2021 and 79.7 in 2020. Oklahoma under Riley those two years averaged 65 and 71 plays per game.

And for Venables on defense, just take a look at these numbers from his time at Clemson from his Oklahoma bio: “Over the last 10 years, the Tigers rank first nationally in sacks (445; next most is 392) and opponent third-down conversion percentage (30.2%), second in opponent pass efficiency rating (111.1) and takeaways (244; tied), third in scoring defense (17.8 ppg) and opponent completion percentage (53.3), fourth in total defense (311.4 ypg) and pass defense (190.5 ypg), fifth in interceptions (148) and sixth in rushing defense (120.9 ypg).”

Way-too-Early Trend Lines

Since this current Oklahoma win streak against Kansas began, the closest the Jayhawks have come is 12 points and that was last season. KU has only kept the score within 20 points five other times.

It’s impossible to give a good read on this until we see both teams on the field. But given how lethal this offense could be and that the defense could take some time, the over might not be a bad play to consider. 

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