Oklahoma ‘excited’ for Seth Littrell’s debut as OC but wants to keep it simple in bowl

Brent Venables sees opportunity in the challenge of playing the Alamo Bowl with a first-time starter at QB and a new offensive coordinator, so his message to Seth Littrell is to keep it simple against Arizona.

OU will be breaking in not only a first-time starter at quarterback in freshman Jackson Arnold when it takes on Arizona in the Alamo Bowl on Dec. 28. The Sooners will also take the field in San Antonio with a new offensive coordinator, as Seth Littrell will make his Sooners play-calling debut after taking over as offensive coordinator late last month.

It’s a distinctly modern-day scenario for Oklahoma. The team’s starting quarterback, Dillon Gabriel, hit the transfer portal earlier this month before committing to Oregon, while offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby left 48 hours after the regular-season finale to take over as head coach at Mississippi State. Now the Sooners will head into a bowl matchup with a top-15 team with a pair of newcomers in prominent roles — a soft launch, so to speak, of what’s to come in 2024.

“You say challenge; I just look at opportunity,” Oklahoma coach Brent Venables said. “It’s better now kind of working through all that than next year — get baptized going into the SEC…. We’ll adjust and adapt. The coaches are excited. Players are excited. There’s some newness to it. Just an opportunity to go out and play another game together.”

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Littrell, who joined the Sooners as an offensive analyst in the spring, was elevated to offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Nov. 29, just a few days after Lebby’s departure for Mississippi State. It was a relatively short search for Venables, who vetted several candidates — including sitting head coaches, NFL assistants and quarterback gurus — before making the quote-unquote easy hire in promoting Littrell.

The 45-year-old former Oklahoma H-back and captain on the national championship team in 2000 brings prior experience as an offensive coordinator and a head coach. He most recently spent seven seasons as head coach at North Texas from 2016-22, and prior to that he spent time as offensive coordinator at North Carolina, Indiana and Arizona.

Brent Venables sees opportunity in the challenge of playing the Alamo Bowl with a first-time starter at QB and a new offensive coordinator, so his message to Seth Littrell is to keep it simple against Arizona.

You say challenge; I just look at opportunity,” Oklahoma coach Brent Venables said. “It’s better now kind of working through all that than next year — get baptized going into the SEC…. We’ll adjust and adapt. The coaches are excited. Players are excited. There’s some newness to it. Just an opportunity to go out and play another game together.”

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“The first day of meetings, just stepping up and addressing us, he was very calm and had a very strong and poised demeanor about him,” Arnold said. “You could tell he’s been here before.”

In preparing for the Alamo Bowl, Littrell isn’t going to make too many tweaks to Oklahoma’s offense. After all, he’s not only balancing gameplanning and acclimating to a new role, but he has been juggling the rigors of recruiting — between transfer portal activity and traveling to make in-home visits with Oklahoma commits and targets ahead of the start of the early signing period Wednesday. There’s a lot on his plate in a condensed timeframe at this time of year.

Instead, Littrell’s full-on alterations to the Sooners’ offense will come in the spring, when he has a chance to fully implement his system. It’s not expected to veer too far from what the Sooners have run the last two seasons under Lebby — though Littrell, who came up through the Air Raid tree but has put an emphasis on the power run game over the years, will certainly add his own flavor to it.

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Arnold, running back Gavin Sawchuk and offensive lineman McKade Mettauer all have similar expectations for Littrell the play-caller: a balanced attack with a tough, “hardnosed” rushing attack. Wide receiver Jalil Farooq anticipates the Sooners being “more explosive” offensively — even after finishing top-15 nationally in plays of 20-plus yards (73 total).

Time will tell just what Littrell’s offense will look like as a finished product. For the next couple of weeks, though, Oklahoma is largely sticking with Lebby’s playbook and terminology, so as not to throw too much at players or overcomplicate things with a relatively short turnaround before the matchup with Arizona.