NORMAN, Okla. – An exasperated Brent Venables didn’t waste anyone’s time late Saturday night. His starting quarterback might have cost him the game.
There was no need for the assembled media following No. 15 Oklahoma’s 25-15 loss to No. 6 Tennessee to even ask what was next after a poor performance by sophomore Jackson Arnold helped ruin Oklahoma‘s first game in the SEC.
The quarterback job is wide open at Oklahoma. The way things played out, it’s now fair to say: Let the less-bad man win.
“We’ll figure out who the best guy is to help us get to No. 4, find our fourth win,” Venables said following what was only Oklahoma’s 14th home loss since 1999.
This one hurt so badly for OU because of what it portended. In a league filled with difference-making quarterbacks, Oklahoma suddenly doesn’t have one.
In a game that was billed as one of the biggest in OU history, the team, the program, and maybe even the state fell flat. Arnold, a celebrated five-star, crippled the effort with an interception and two fumbles in the first half that led to 10 Tennessee points.
Freshman Michael Hawkins Jr., a three-star backup, replaced Arnold late in the first half and provided a spark. But there’s a reason Hawkins didn’t start and a reason Arnold seemingly can’t hold onto the job.
Venables, at times, barely contained himself.
“Just some bad football,” he said. “Guys getting whooped and beat and not winning their matchups. [I] don’t like that at all.”
Oklahoma plays at Auburn next week, then has a bye week before the Red River Rivalry against Texas. What Venables does with Arnold is perhaps the top college football subplot of this week.
We already assumed Tennessee wouldn’t stroll into Memorial Stadium and win by 59 points, its average over the first three games against inferior competition. OU’s defense was too stiff and indeed held Tennessee well below its projected points total of 32 (per Vegas).
There was only one real bust for the unit all night. Tennessee’s own celebrated five-star quarterback from the same 2023 class as Arnold, Nico Iamaleava, zipped a 66-yard pass to Dont’e Thornton Jr. to make it 10-3 after the first quarter.
We also knew there would be some SEC settling in for the Sooners. For the entire offseason, the obvious comparison was arch-rival Texas, which, it turns out, is fortunate to have Arch — also from the same class of 2023 as Arnold. At this point, the Sooners don’t have much of anything at the position.
The Horns are No. 1. Offensively, the Sooners played like number two at times on Saturday.
Dillon Gabriel, the offensive motor behind last year’s 10-win season, was allowed to walk to Oregon so Oklahoma could begin the Arnold era (the math there was multiple years of Arnold, versus one more year of Gabriel). That’s how it works in college football now. Gabriel got a great NIL deal in Oregon and is sitting pretty. Arnold, a former Elite 11 MVP, showed promise in last year’s Alamo Bowl, throwing three touchdowns in a loss to Arizona.
Arnold also threw three interceptions that night. Those turnovers turned out to be foreshadowing.
In five career starts, Arnold has now committed nine turnovers — six picks and three fumbles — that have led to 37 opposition points. Even before the Tennessee game, there were signs Arnold was struggling. In a re-rank of class of 2023 QBs, 247Sports Director of Scouting Andrew Ivins moved Arnold from the fourth quarterback down to sixth.
Arnold was actually booed by what was left of the 84,071 when he entered for one play late in the game on OU’s last touchdown drive for a handoff.
The damage was done. In the first half, Arnold twice fumbled the ball away on the next play after Iamaleava had turned it over himself. Afterward, Venables was still fuming over the second fumble, a backward lateral thrown halfway across the field that bounced at the ankles of the receiver and was recovered by the Vols.
Venables said not only was the read bad — Arnold was supposed to hand off — but the pass behind the line was a brain fart too.
“The read is, run it all day …,” OU’s coach said. “We don’t have any backward RPOs.”
Which was part of the football tragedy on a historic day. Everywhere you looked in this quaint college town, there were reminders that times had changed. The SEC logo was stamped on everything except the scrambled eggs at Neighborhood JAM, the town’s hottest breakfast place.
Different conference. Same goals. Tennessee was just another shade of orange to hate for those throwing the “Horns down.” In Saturday’s slickly produced pregame video presentation at Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium, OU trotted out every celebrity this side of Oprah to let the world know it had taken a step up in degree of difficulty.
“It’s time to show the Southeast there’s only one …,” veteran actor and OU alum Ed Harris crowed from the video board, his voice hanging with anticipation moments before kickoff.
The correct answer to Harris’ unfinished sentence is, of course, “Oklahoma!”
Shortly after, that’s where the weekend-long pep rally ended in these parts.
The Southeast was shown something all right. Something it already knew. Tennessee might be good enough to compete for an SEC title in Iamaleava’s first season as a starter.
But there was also something Oklahoma fans didn’t want to admit. Make that, feared. Their Sooners have miles to go before competing in the game’s toughest conference. They are not as far along as Venables hoped they’d be this summer, though the warning signs were there after they replaced all five offensive line starters.
This is what Oklahoma wanted when it switched conferences: prime time on ESPN against the likes of Tennessee instead of another 11 a.m. start in the September heat against, say, Iowa State.
Instead, OU was backhanded back to reminders of the Big 12 days. That would be the conference the Sooners hadn’t won since 2020, the season before Lincoln Riley bolted for USC.
Venables still has some work to do in his third season. We knew some of that already when graduation and the transfer portal had ravaged his offensive line. We knew he was plugging in the promising Arnold.
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We also knew there would be a learning curve. We also knew the SEC was coming in off the top rope for those not prepared. Count Oklahoma enlightened, if not also injured.
Tennessee’s defense completed the smothering, having piled up 19 straight consecutive quarters without giving up an offensive touchdown before the Sooners scored twice in the fourth quarter.
By that time, the Vols defense had 11 tackles for loss by 10 different players. Oklahoma went a stretch of seven consecutive possessions running no more than three plays. Spanning the second and third quarters, OU’s offense netted mins-four yards.
During one dreadful first-half stretch, OU ran 10 consecutive plays of no or negative yards.
Tennessee drove for its second touchdown in the second quarter, missing two starting offensive linemen. One, 340-pound left tackle Lance Heard, missed his second consecutive game. Another starter was hurt on that drive.
No problem. Tailback Dylan Sampson ran it eight straight plays on a drive that resulted in his 10th touchdown this season.
The last highlight during the pregame introduction showed Josh Heupel, as Oklahoma’s quarterback, taking a knee in the 2001 Orange Bowl. That clinched the Sooners’ last national championship.
That was the same Heupel who, as Tennessee’s coach, set foot in the stadium where he became a star as a player for the first time since being fired as Oklahoma’s offensive coordinator after the 2014 season.
Iamaleava closed the circle, in a sense, kneeling down to seal Tennessee’s first SEC win of the season in a marathon that lasted almost four hours.
The Vols didn’t look like they were done. Meanwhile, the Sooners can’t seem to get started.
MORE: Fifteen post-game losses from 247Sports’ Sooners Illustrated
