Oklahoma’s Brent Venables High on Jackson Arnold bullish on defense

SEC or no SEC, Oklahoma coach Brent Venables seems excited about 2024.

Venables met with SEC frontman Paul Finebaum on Monday as The Sooners were officially welcomed into the Southeastern Conferenceand expressed why his team is ready for the new league.

After Finebaum met with the Texas Longhorns in Austin on Sunday and asked the Sooners coach why Texas is getting so much attention this offseason after making its first College Football Playoff appearance and winning just its fourth Big 12 title last year, Venables instead focused on his own program.

“This is not a program that is Johnny Come Lately,” Venables said. “This is a program that has been set for a very, very long time. We don’t look at other programs to try to compare ourselves. It’s not good for us. We focus on the outside. That’s what we have to do to be an SEC championship caliber football program. So that’s where our focus is.”

To that end, Venables also answered a few questions about the makeup of the Sooners’ 2024 roster.

Again, the head coach only projected optimism.

“I like where we’re at (offensively),” Venables said. “We have tremendous experience in returning to qualifying positions. Definitely Jackson (Arnold), this will be his first full season – Jackson is as talented a player as there is in college football. He is a winner. He earned his whole life. Smart guy, great instincts, he’s got tremendous skill, he’s got a great toughness to him. He can run it, he can throw it.

“And again, this is a developmental game, so wherever he finished the season — we had plenty of opportunities to win that (Alamo Bowl) game — wherever he finished the season in his first collegiate start, it’s going to be in a another game. the planet. My expectations from where we start at the beginning of the year, he will develop and improve. He’s tough, he’s got a lot of self-awareness about him. He has all the traits that get you through it, both the good and the bad, and he responds to adversity. Just a tremendous leader and the players play hard for him.”

Finebaum said he’s wondered in recent years what Oklahoma could accomplish with a defense, and now the Sooners have one.

“We’ve made steady improvement,” Venables said. “It was progressive. It can never happen fast enough. You are never satisfied. But this will be the third year. The first time we have third-year players in our system, give or take seven or eight starters back, so we have some experience in our schemes.

“We’ve developed in the weight room, this is going to be the third year, so that’s the weight room, that’s the nutrition, that’s the recovery — all those areas that are incredibly important. But I like our buy-in, the investment our players have in that locker room. This is a very invested team. Several guys chose to come back. They wanted to help lead us. There are many layered reasons why guys want to come back, but one reason is to leave your mark. And so (they) have an opportunity to do that by going into the SEC with a group of guys that are tough, hardworking guys. Very exciting.”