Oklahoma football coach Brent Venables can now be fully certain the 2025 season is not like 2024’s version.

His 12th-ranked Sooners picked up their fourth straight win to start the year Saturday, coming from behind in the fourth quarter to overcome No. 25 Auburn, 24-17, in Norman.

Quarterback John Mateer’s nine-yard touchdown run with just under five minutes to play provided the final lead necessary and R Mason Thomas sacked Auburn quarterback Jackson Arnold in the end zone on the Tigers’ final drive to add two points of insurance with a safety.

Venables, whose teams had started 3-0 in each of his previous three seasons, smiled throughout his post-game press conference, happy with his team’s effort and the final result.

Here’s what he had to say to the media after the game.

Opening remarks

The energy in the stadium all afternoon was really cool. Proud of our players. The determination, the resolve, the grit, the ability to overcome, keep fighting back. … Making plays when you have the opportunity to. Ther aren’t going to be a whole lot of them to be had, but you have to complement each other. … Sategna did a really nice job possession the ball and Grayson Miller, I don’t know what his average is since taking over a couple weeks ago, but five punts for 55 yards a punt. … It wasn’t always pretty. But that’s football when you play good people. … The storyline has to say ‘Y’all played your butt off.’ Affected their run game and their ability to pass the ball. We had a record 10 sacks. R Mason Thomas came off the bench and really impacted the game again. We were a little leaky in coverage in times and we knew they were really good. We’ve got to play better. We’ve got to put them in better position, make better calls. But in the second half, really excellent job. Everybody contributed. Six guys caught passes. Grayson and Sandell, they were awesome.

On defensive pressuring quarterback

I know the ‘backers are a part of that, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention them too. We played the second half with a really light box. … We continued to stop the run with a really light box. Note to self. Their phsyciality, their ability to get off of blocks and knock people back was something else today.

On leaving time left after final touchdown

I think there was maybe five minutes and some change on the clock. Score and take the lead. Knowing that’s an offense, if we’re doing what we should be doing, they’re going to take some time to go down the field. Make the quarterback hold it. If they need to dunk it a little bit. Not like the first half where we, second quarter, third quarter, the drive they had where they go down and score the touchdown, we had several opportunities there. Really wanted our defensive line to pin their ears back. Coaches had the guys ready with some things we were doing up front to help those guys as well.

On final touchdown drive

Tells you a lot about who they are, who’s in the huddle. Coach Arbuckle and the rest of the offensive coaches. They were able to do it. Really the toughness that that takes to put everything that didn’t go how you’d like it to, to put it behind and put it together and go down the field, that was something else.

On Jayden Jackson

He was fantastic. I don’t know what he has in his very young career. He may not have two-and-a-half sacks in his career so far. He’s caused a lot of sacks, I know that. He was so good. Played vertical all day, physical all day. Unblocked a lot. Really affected the game interior wise.

On Sategna’s touchdown play

We didn’t substitute. We were on the field. We asked the official. We’re lined up, we’re on the ball, everything is good and legal. We weren’t in a big hurry, so, yeah.

On Sategna’s day

I thought he was fantastic. Bragging on him. He’s a football player. The moment is never too big for him. … He’s not a huge guy. He’s not small, but he’s a smaller receiver compared to some of the bigger ones out there, but he plays big. He’s got great toughness to him. Excellent skill-set. He was fantastic today.

On Mateer

He led us to a win. I thought John was awesome like he always is. Have an opportunity to watch the tape and all those types of things, but we were four out of four in the red zone. That last drive was just fantastic. … Had some huge runs and that last one there, obviously, the quarterback run. He got some really timely third downs with patience and athletic ability and the go-ahead touchdown there.

On getting final safety on last Auburn drive

That might be a storyline but it wasn’t part of what we were thinking. It was what we need to do to help our guys to get pressure on this guy and get off the field. Really kind of got scarred up during the day. That last drive prior to that where they scored the touchdown, really scarred up. But you learn a lot, too. Things not to do. But we got it right at the right time. I thought front and the back played very cohesive. Really good coverage helps the d-line.

On importance of winning SEC opener

These are moments where you learn a lot about yourself. You gain, even through the failure along the way, you gain confidence. We try to preach to our guys all the time. So many of them naturally want to carry all this pressure, burden, to be perfect. Human nature. … This is another example that you don’t have to play perfect or have this amazing four-quarter game. You just need to be good at the right moments. … It takes everybody, coaches and players included. I’ve been talking about my favorite part of this team is just all three phases is the entire team, collective. The sum of all of our parts gives us an opportunity to have a pretty dang good football team. … We’ll get better. There’s plenty of bad on the field today. But that’s how you get beter. … Bye week comes at a great time. Got to get some guys healthy. Had a handful of ankles going into the game and we’re going to get some guys back for our next game provided there’s no setbacks.

On offensive line

I think Auburn was one of the better sack teams and disruptive teams the last few weeks to start the year. I think we held them to one sack. At the right time we were able to get into sync and do a really good job. That was a good defense we played and I thought the o-line played pretty dang good.

On short passes equivalent to rushes

You look at the NFL, that’s the NFL. The efficient offenses do it really well. Catching the ball and getting rid of it. Efficiency is staying on schedule, being able to throw it and catch it. … It’s not always there, the windows are small. You go against good people. You’re on the clock and it’s a very fast clock. You have to be timely in your execution and physical in the right moments, too. I thought we really were.

On lessons for Guillory

All the great ones will have a day that you’d like to have back. You just want to go somewhere and hide. I can help him, too. It’s not all on him, but this will help him. He’s a really tough kid. He’s really prideful and he made some plays there late. Great position and doing the things we needed to do, too, that don’t show up on the stat sheet. He’ll be all right.

On pressuring Jackson Arnold

He’s got amazing courage and toughness. He’s going to have plenty of amainzg days. He had some great moments today. He’s still just a baby. All his best days are in front of him. For me, I don’t even have the stats what he did. I know we sacked him 10 times, but other than that, you know, he made a great play. Made some guys miss in the open field. … He’s got great days in front of him, I’m just glad at the right time, we made some great plays on him when we needed to.

This article originally appeared on Sooners Wire: Oklahoma coach Brent Venables’ remarks after OU beat Auburn