Year later, Brent Venables suddenly looks like just the right coach for a game like Saturday's

Oklahoma head coach Brent Venables runs onto the field before taking on Iowa State on Saturday, Sept. 30, 2023. (AP Photo/Alonzo Adams)

One hates to be wrong.

Also, it can’t be denied, Brent Venables was in over his head last season.

Not on the recruiting trail, not with the culture he appears to have done a fine job implementing. Not with the resolution that never left him when everything was going wrong.

He had a Saturday problem. 

What his offense and defense did vis-a-vis each other felt disconnected.

His defense appeared too put upon, like it was trying to learn too much, too fast and wound up doing all of it poorly.

The offensive was feast or famine, often in the same game, and coordinator Jeff Lebby was too often explaining what he should have been doing when it was too late to matter.

It was all just … off.

Yet, here we are five games into season number two, the Sooners are 5-0 with at least three character-building victories that may not have occurred a year ago and watching it all and listening to the man, too, a different reality has surfaced.

Now Venables appears just the right guy get the most out of each and every Saturday and, oh, by the way, that’s No. 3 Texas the 12th-ranked Sooners will be kicking off against at the Cotton Bowl on Saturday.

If you didn’t like what he was doing last season, join the club. Yet, if you didn’t, though you may hate to be wrong, perhaps agree it’s become a that-was-then, this-is-now scenario.

Four days ago, Iowa State dispatched, Venables admitted it wasn’t just player growth that made OU’s second-quarter turnaround possible, but the whole program’s.

“I would be negligent not to recognize everybody being more familiar, better chemistry, more efficient,” he said, “me being more trusting in other people.”

Wait, what?

What was that last thing?

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