Brent Venables has 'pressure' to win bowl game over Florida State, Joel Klatt says

There could be pressure on Brent Venables to get a win for Oklahoma in the team’s bowl game against Florida State, according to FOX Sports’ Joel Klatt. 

“I will tell you this, I do think that there’s some pressure on Brent Venables to be 7-6 and not 6-7,” Klatt said on his podcast. “At this program, with their success over the last 20 years, you think about that, and that’s clearly something that you’ve got to take into consideration.”

Klatt broke down the game between the Sooners and Seminoles, which he dubbed as an interesting matchup considering the trajectory of both programs going into the Cheez-It Bowl.

“A weird game, how often do you see 6-6 against 9-3,” Klatt said. “You don’t often see that. Generally speaking you see teams that have a similar finish. OU, oh my goodness. So let’s just start with OU. Prior to the year, OU fans were so upset with me. And the reason being is like I thought that they would take a major step back this year. I thought it was going to be more along those lines of those two years with Bob Stoops where I think they were 8-5 in two different years. 

“And I said like I think, you know, listen, they lost their coach, they lost all the all these players off the defense and the offense in the portal and I just thought it was going to be too much to overcome, even with the positive sentiment of bringing back kind of a favorite son in Brent Venables even with getting Dillon Gabriel and that’s exactly what panned out.”

Gabriel played in 11 games this year and while the numbers looked good, it did not always translate to wins considering the defense’s struggles this season. Gabriel had 2,925 yards, 24 touchdowns, six interceptions and a 63% completion percentage.

“I think that the biggest thing for me is they struggled in two areas this year that I thought were vital and really I think one of those could hurt them in this matchup against Florida State which I’ll get to in a moment,” Klatt said. “Their rush defense was just not good enough. They gave up almost 190 yards per game on the ground. And this is a run game for Florida State that has gotten better and better and better in the back half of the season. So that’s a big worry for me. 

“And then the other one is like, they just didn’t win tight games. To a point like that’s a thing. We talked about Texas all the time. These one score games, like this is not great. 3-3 down the stretch. All three losses were by three points apiece. So at some point, you’ve got to get better in those moments.”

Oklahoma (6-6) takes on No. 13 Florida State (9-3) Thursday at 5:30 p.m. ET.