After a year of trusting another defensive coordinator, head coach Brent Venables is back to acting as the DC this year. And, well, they’re giving up all of 14 points per game – one of the best in the entire
country. The’ve absolutely stymied most of their schedule, but Michigan, Auburn, and South Carolina haven’t exactly been good offenses all year, so take that with a grain of salt. They did hold Tennessee to 27 points and gave up 34 to Ole Miss, which are really the only two high-level offenses they’ve faced on the season. Still, they’re in the argument for the top defense in the SEC.
Venables has a history of running something of a chameleon defense. It’s mostly a 4-3 or 4-2-5, but he’s constantly shifting the fronts around and hunting matchups. Some games will feature a more true heavy DT and NT combo with edge rushers, but some games he’ll use some big ends as interior rushers more often. And there will always be plenty of blitzes and simulated pressures with stunts. It’s a creative approach to the front seven, and it’s extremely disruptive. The Sooners have an absolutely absurd 97 tackles for loss this season.
Edge rusher R Mason Thomas is the star of the show, leading the way with 6.5 sacks and 9.5 tackles for loss after being the Sooners’ leading disruptor a year ago. But he’s bookended with Taylor Wein, who’s a 275-lb tweener that will rush from both a wide defensive end spot as well as moving inside to rush from a defensive tackle position. Wein leads the team with 11 tackles for loss.
Up the middle, Jayden Jackson is a two-gapping force along with Damonic Williams, and their backups, David Stone and Gracen Halton, rotate in just as much as the more explosive one-gap attackers. Venables rotates the whole group often to mix up the way his front attacks the offense, and that rotating and shifting happens at dizzying speed.
Linebackers Owen Heinecke and Kip Lews are also blitzed regularly, and Heinecke in particular has been a revelation lately as he’s filled in for an injured Kobie McKinzie and been an absolute chaos-maker.
To top it all off, Kendal Daniels mans the “Cheetah” position that Venables has always loved, using a linebacker/safety hybrid as a “big nickel” in the base defense. Daniels will move around and blitz from darn near any alignment, and he has 9 tackles for loss as well.
The Sooner secondary has also improved from a year ago, only allowing 180 yards per game. They run a little more cover 3 than most teams do these days, but they still swap between man and zone, and one-high and two-high regularly throughout the game. Safety Peyton Bowen has been outstanding as a centerfielder, though his running mate Robert Spears-Jennings, has been more of a run support guy that has had some struggles in coverage.
At corner, true freshman Courland Guillory has been a playmaker on the right sideline for them. He’s had his fair share of mistakes, but he’s highly aggressive at getting his hands on the ball any time it’s in the air.
To be totally honest, Brent Venables has given Alabama fits nearly every time they’ve played, outside of the 2015 National Championship game. He put Tua Tagovailoa in the spin cycle with all of his pre-snap disguises in the 2018 Championship, and a year ago he held the Tide to all of 3 points and pretty much broke the Alabama fan base.
Now… they’re better than they were a year ago, and are probably the best negative-play-producing defense in all of college football. This game is going to be a total struggle. The good news for Alabama is that they have a QB who excels and post-snap diagnosis and medium distance passing. The Venables scheme often relies on pre-snap disguise and then dropping defenders into places where they expect the QB to go – and this can lead to some wide zones between the linebackers and safeties, particularly with a glorified linebacker playing the slot often.
This game will 100% come down to Ty Simpson being able to drag the Tide to a victory, as I don’t see any path that the run game or other designed short passing will net Alabama much gain at all. If Ty can keep himself just clean enough to get those mid-distance passes off and punish the Sooners for their aggression, then he may be able to outscore whatever the Alabama defense holds the Sooners’ offense to.
Still, expect a frustrating night and a low scoring one. Let’s go with 21 points for Alabama, and the game goes into overtime. From there… Who knows.
