Oklahoma Sooners College Football Preview 2023
Oklahoma Sooners College Football Preview 2023
Ben Queen-USA TODAY Sports
2022 Record: 6-7 overall, 3-6 in Big 12
Head Coach: Brent Venables, 2nd year: 6-7
@ColFootballNews | @PeteFiutak
2023 Oklahoma Preview: Offense | Defense
Keys To Season, Top Players, What Will Happen
- OU 2023 Schedule, Game Predictions
Maybe, for just that penultimate year in the Big 12, the rest of the conference caught up to Oklahoma.
On the way to the College Football Playoff, the 2017 Sooners were able to work their way through the conference that had two other very good teams, a bunch of okay ones, and two in Baylor and Kansas that did absolutely nothing.
The 2018 Big 12 was okay, but other than a solid Texas squad there weren't many threats to OU's conference title hopes. The 2019 Big 12 was also decent - Baylor was great - but it wasn’t exactly a gauntlet of a conference run to get another title and a CFP appearance.
2020 was 2020 - everything was a weird - and 40% of the league finished with losing records partly because there weren’t a ton of fluffy non-conference games - Oklahoma still managed to win the Big 12 title. Half of the league finished with losing records with a full slate in 2021.
The 2022 Big 12? TCU put together a historic run, Kansas State was fantastic, and Texas Tech, Kansas, and Texas were all dangerous. Eight teams ended up going bowling, and the two that didn’t - West Virginia and Iowa State - were hardly the free space games of previous Big 12 bottom-dwellers. The conference was really good from top to bottom.
And yes, Oklahoma was off.
That started to happen at the end of 2021, and the coaching change to Brent Venables in 2022 was a major pivot, but to look at the 6-7 season - OU’s first losing campaign since 1998 - and call it almost half full, maybe it was a trial run for what’s coming.
It’s Oklahoma. It’s supposed to be playing for the Big 12 Championship, no matter what. That had better happen this year, because …
Fast-forward to 2024, and the Oklahoma football schedule gets Alabama, LSU, Tennessee, Ole Miss, Auburn, Missouri, South Carolina, and Texas in conference play. The 2023 Big 12 conference slate is a soft kiss on the forehead compared to the SEC schedule, and under Venables the program has to show it’s got the parts, systems, and momentum in place to handle life in the big city.
Again, to look on the bright side of 2022, losing to Kansas State and TCU - as it turned out - was forgivable, injuries were part of the problem in the debacle against Texas, and the road losses to West Virginia and Texas Tech were each by three points and could’ve gone the other way.
And then there was the Cheez-It Bowl loss to a red-hot Florida State team. That was a fight of a 35-32 Sooner loss that came down to a last minute field goal - the team showed up.
There’s a ton of work that still needs to be done, but the 2023 Sooners will be a whole lot better, the schedule is a lot more manageable, and they should get a huge season from the ...
2023 Oklahoma Preview: Offense | Defense
Keys To Season, Top Players, What Will Happen
- OU 2023 Schedule, Game Predictions
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