Brent Venables may have foreshadowed staff changes on way out of Orlando

Oklahoma football coach Brent Venables talks to his team during fall camp. (SoonerSports.com photo)

The gist of Brent Venables’ postgame media meet last Thursday night at Camping World Stadium was in line with what everybody saw during Florida State’s three-point Cheez-It Bowl victory.

“I wanted to see fight, I wanted to see guts, I wanted to see courage, I wanted to see physicality … I wanted to see belief,” he said. “And we saw that tonight with our guys.”

We all saw it.

The Sooners were a 10-point dog, yet lost by three. Their starting offensive line included no starting offensive linemen. 

Their running back contingent did not include Eric Gray, who’d gained 52.6 percent (1,366) of their ground yards (2,599) and 66 percent of their ground yards gained by running backs (2,071) … yet OU gained 253 total and 212 between true freshmen running backs Jovantae Barnes and Gavin Sawchuk.

Defensively, the final number was not pretty, 587 yards allowed, but OU gave up just 11 first-half points, turned the Seminoles over on downs three times and with an interception once, held them to a field goal late, making overtime a more reachable goal, all of it against an offense that entered humming and suffered not a single opt out, just like the Seminole defense.

Good show.

Stipulated.

Venables added, “Winning is incredibly important and that’s the standard and expectations that are here at Oklahoma,” but counterpointed the thought with, “You have no regret when you put everything you’ve got into it and that’s what this football team did.”

The problem, however, is it would appear the players are suddenly running in front of the coaches and whatever their ceiling might be next season, the year after and so on, that’s no place to be.