OU football coach Brent Venables has 'sense of urgency' in offensive coordinator search
Ryan AberThe Oklahoman
NORMAN — OU coach Brent Venables isn’t fully looking toward the future just yet.
The Sooners still have two games remaining in the season, including Saturday’s matchup with No. 7 Alabama (6:30 p.m., ABC).
But Venables is also working through the process of hiring a new offensive coordinator, and changes to the recruiting and transfer portal calendars have forced that process to speed up.
Signing day, which has been in mid-to-late December in recent years, was moved up to Dec. 4 this season.
The transfer portal will open Dec. 9.
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It will be critical for Venables to have an offensive coordinator in place before those dates.
“We’ve talked to several people and so we feel like we’re in a good position where we need to be,” Venables said Tuesday. “Haven’t put a hard deadline on it, making that decision, and doing the process its due diligence. There’s a lot of layers to it as you can imagine.”
One name that has been circulating since the job opened — former Florida and Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen.
Mullen last coached Florida in 2021, when he was fired late in the season with the Gators at 5-6.
The Gators offense was particularly potent in 2020, when Kyle Trask led the nation with 4,125 passing yards and 43 touchdowns.
But Florida’s defense faltered, including in a 55-20 loss to the Sooners in the Cotton Bowl that season.
Venables was asked specifically about Mullen and if the job was his if he wanted it.
“I’m not going to comment about the details of the search,” Venables said.
But, Venables added, Mullen was a candidate a year earlier when he ultimately hired Seth Littrell following Jeff Lebby’s departure to coach Mississippi State.
Littrell spent last season as an offensive analyst for the Sooners before being promoted following the conclusion of the regular season.
“I reached out to him a year ago,” Venables said of Mullen.
But the Sooners never flourished offensively under Littrell, who was fired Oct. 20, the day after the Sooners’ 35-9 loss to South Carolina.
At the time, OU’s offense was averaging just 288 yards per game .
In the three games since, under interim play-caller Joe Jon Finley, the Sooners have averaged 417 yards per game — though the 665 they put up vs. FCS Maine on Nov. 2 skews the improvement a bit.
Entering Saturday’s game, the Sooners (5-5, 1-5 SEC) are tied for No. 117 nationally in total offense, averaging 326.8 yards per game. They are No. 115 in passing offense at 183.3 yards per game.
While Mullen is currently an analyst at ESPN, the rest of the likely candidates for the job — including Tulane offensive coordinator Joe Craddock, Washington State offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle, Miami offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson and Texas State offensive coordinator Mack Leftwich, among others — are actively coaching.
“This is a real thing called a regular season that’s got to finish up,” Venables said. “And if I’m talking to the right people, which I believe I am, then they’re going to be sensitive to finishing what they started and being loyal to their players and the people that they work alongside with, things of that nature. But sooner rather than later is when I want it finished.
“I want to get it right, so that’s our focus.”
