Brent Venables explains how he'd like his offense, defense run at Oklahoma

New Oklahoma coach Brent Venables is already known for having great defenses. After all, he was the Sooners’ defensive coordinator for their 2000 national championship and coached in plenty of national title games over his career.

But what about offense? Venables was asked about how he wants the offense to run as he takes his first head coaching job.

Venables said he knows how the game has changed and how fast teams play. But being a head coach allows him to work on one of his favorite parts of coaching: getting a game plan together.

“I love game-planning,” Venables said in his introductory press conference. “I love coaching week to week, tweaking and fitting schemes based on the matchups and things of that nature. But I think it’s important that you understand what you have at your disposal in regards to playmakers.

“[You’re] going to ride the things that are your strengths, you’re going to protect the weaknesses, but I believe you’ve got to throw the ball in this day and age, without question. I don’t think [that’ll] ever change. But you’ve got to be aggressive in the things that you’re doing, very diverse in your presentation and make the defense move and adjust and be right on the field.”

Brent Venables on building the Oklahoma defense

Venables brings plenty of defensive prowess to Norman. That means he comes with plenty of ideas about how to improve the Oklahoma defense.

Versatility and flexibility were big topics, but he knows the area to focus on as he hits the recruiting trail: the front seven.

“On defense, I believe that it all starts … up front,” Venables said. “You’ve got to recruit great players there and develop them. Length and speed, guys that have position flexibility is ideal. It helps create additional depth. The way offenses operate, you’d like to be able to … not have to get in and out of some packages. You want to do it when you want to do it, not when somebody forces you to do it.

“So you want to be able to play with the same personnel as much as you can but, again, have flexibility. You want people to feel like they’re seeing a lot, but keeping it simple. … [and] not trying to out-trick. When it’s all said and done, I love deception on both sides, but at the end of the day, it comes down to fundamentals and physicality and guys playing with uncommon effort. I think those have got to be non-negotiables.”