Oklahoma has to at least send feelers out to Rhule's agent right? After putting a big fat 0 up against Texas, and their impending move to the SEC, they got to be just a tad bit worried about Venables. I am not saying they are looking to fire Venables already, but just like a hmmm Rhule was able to recruit Texas really well, we would be the best job by far, maybe he would be interested, kind of thing.
He could lose the rest of his games this year (a reasonable possibility, IMO) and he would be safe for at least another season. The fans are restless (actually, pretty divided, with a fair portion still on the "trust the process" train), but the donors and administration are not and they make the calls.
I did not expect such a disaster or anything close to it. Seems to me to be a perfect storm of everything. Gabriel has played merely ok on the whole-- great in some spots, but missing layup throws on third downs which put the team in a hole. OU hasn't had a QB miss those types of throws since John Blake was coach in 96-98. That includes a few lean years. Without Gabriel, the QB room is really, really bad. Beville is legitimately the worst QB I have ever seen at the college level, and I've seen some shitty Wake teams. This lack of QB depth can be blamed on FULR, though not having a QB who is even remotely competent as a backup can be blamed on the current staff. They did try to land Jaxson Dart after DG committed, and that would've helped, but he didn't want the competition and Ole Miss probably had a better NIL package. They ended up with Davis Beville (Pitt 3rd stringer), General Booty (JUCO), and Nick Evers (true freshman). I find it hard to believe that neither of the last two are better than Beville, but whatever. It is what it is. And without DG, OU has zero shot at winning a game. Maybe they would've done better with Jaxson Dart, but Caleb Williams dicked around for so long that they had to bring in Gabriel. He was literally an hour or two away from being officially enrolled at UCLA.
D is a disaster. Perhaps it was foolish to think that better coaching would lead to a better defense when 4-5 of last year's D went to the NFL. Grinch (former DC now at USC) rotated guys heavily, so there was an expectation that there wouldn't be much dropoff in skill and they'd be better coached. Trying to ID the problem here is tough, and I'm always wary of explanations which throw the previous staff under the bus when they're kind of intangible (lack of QB depth is tangible, so for that I do blame the previous staff). But the rumblings are that they are just not picking up some very basic concepts in coverage, and also that other guys screw up trying to cover for another guy's bust. The Grinch D was apparently really basic, meant to reduce thinking, and apparently it's quite difficult to coach out bad habits. This makes sense to me, but it also makes sense to coach with the players you have and the coaches aren't doing that. They're sticking with the plan because the kids are showing in practice that they get it-- it's just during the game where they all have bust after bust. If you watched OU in the first 3 games and particularly against Nebraska (who, despite being a bad team, does have a pulse), this wasn't an issue, but some things were exposed on tape for conference play. 3 man rush is definitely not generating any pressure, though, so that may get mostly scrapped moving forward.
The other issue is that I think the Big XII, top to bottom, is as solid as it has been in many years. It doesn't have any world beaters, but it's pretty good. There are some teams that will go 6-6 that would've been 8-4 or 9-3 in previous seasons.
