It wasn’t pretty, but the Oklahoma Sooners did enough on Saturday to defeat the LSU Tigers and very likely secure a spot in the College Football Playoff. OU toppled the Bayou Bengals 17-13 on Owen Field on Senior Day, and the four-point win was another ugly victory for fourth-year head coach Brent Venables and his team.
OU is now 6-2 in the SEC and 10-2 overall this year; a massive improvement from a 6-6 regular season and a 2-6 mark in conference just one year ago. It’s been a remarkable turnaround for this program, but winning over the Tigers on Saturday makes it that much sweeter, because it should mean a CFP berth.
Much like most of this season, the Sooners won ugly and made a couple more plays at the end to get the victory. However, there’s a lot of things that once again reared their head on Saturday that make it look like it’ll be really difficult for OU to get a win in the playoff. There’s a lot tp unpack after the Week 14 win, so here are three takeaways after Oklahoma took down LSU.
1. OU’s defense didn’t crumble, despite almost no help
The Oklahoma defense has been playing incredible football in the month of November, and they’ve been the strength of this football team all season long. In a game where the Sooners lost the turnover battle and threw two awful second half interceptions, the OU defense didn’t wilt or back down, they just kept fighting. Then, when they finally got support from that offense, they were able to finish things off and push this program into a likely CFP bid.
It’s a remarkable turn of events, as the defense used to cost the Sooners games before Venables showed up. In four years, he’s taken a very poor unit and turned them into an immovable object, all in the lion’s den of the SEC.
2. Sooners Have to Figure Out the Offense
Oklahoma’s offense didn’t play well at all against LSU. Quarterback John Mateer threw three interceptions and had an awful third quarter that nearly cost OU the game. Mateer and offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle are lucky that the defense bailed them out yet again, our Sooner Nation would be calling for their jobs. Oklahoma is likely in the CFP, but they won’t make noise there if they can’t give more support on offense. It simply isn’t good enough, despite making just enough plays to get these wins in November.
That goes for the future of the program as well. It feels like the defense in Norman will always been solid, as long as Venables is in town, but the offense has been holding the team back during his tenure as the head coach, especially these last couple of years. There’s been improvement this season over last year, but it’s still not close to where it needs to be. The defense and special teams have been championship-caliber in 2025, but the offense is making things much harder than they need to be.
3. Take a bow, Brent Venables
Venables’ back was against the wall heading into the 2025 season. After going 6-7 in two of his first three years at the helm, he was firmly on the hot seat heading into this year. He took a $1 million pay cut to help with the NIL and revenue-sharing budgets and decided to take over defensive play-calling himself, and it has paid off. Venables and his team kept punching and punching all season long, and he’s punched his way all the way to a likely CFP slot.
It’s far from perfect under Venables, but this team has taken on his intense, relentless identity, and they play as hard as any team in the country, at least on defense. No one was sure that he was the right guy for the job before this season began, but he’s done a remarkable job of finding ways to win each week against an extremely difficult schedule. Bravo, Brent Venables. Bravo.
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This article originally appeared on Sooners Wire: 3 takeaways from Oklahoma’s win over LSU
