Late night thoughts on OU. Take them or leave them: First of all, great stuff from @GeorgeStoia in the press conference after the game. As @prestonpoole405 and I talked about on the pregame show, this OU offense doesn’t have an identity. It’s just jarring to hear the offensive coordinator say the same thing three games into the season. Arbuckle deserves a big part of the blame. And let’s be clear…There’s blame to go around all over the OU program for the offensive struggles. Mateer deserves a big portion of the blame for being a terrible decision maker and making the play you simply CANNOT make at the worst time. Bedenbaugh and the OLine deserve blame for not blowing inferior teams off the ball. But let’s not forget who hired Littrell and Arbuckle…Brent Venables. The consistent clock management disasters at the end of half/games are on the head coach. (If the head coach is not involved in those discussions at the end of halves, that is also an issue) And maybe I’m reading too far in between the lines with Arbuckle’s quote about needing to find their “identity”…but everyone can see that OU is not running the same offense that Arbuckle ran at Washington State…why is that? Is that because the QB isn’t good enough to run it? If so, why the regression? Is it because of the offensive line that has been horrible for 4+ years now and can’t block anybody? If so is it time to finally say goodbye to Bedenbaugh? (I understand Fasusi was out, but it was New Mexico and these issues aren’t new.) Is it because the defensive minded head coach is putting Arbuckle in a box, because in his heart of hearts he doesn’t trust the QB? To go along with that, it’s clear from the outside looking in that the only times Mateer gets in a rhythm are when the offense has a little more tempo (see 3rdQ of Mich game or the drive with Hansen today) BUT is the defensive minded Venables slowing the tempo down? Not saying that’s wrong, but if they are going to slow it down, that should mean running the ball more, and I’m not sure that OU’s OLine is good enough for that, and I’m pretty sure the coaching staff thinks the same thing, only running the ball with the RBs 13 times against Michigan. So now you have an air-raid OC who is not running the system that you brought him to OU to run, and a QB with zero confidence. An offense that is completely STUCK between identities. Who knows what the answer is, if you knew the answer, I’m sure Nagy would pay you a lot of money. All I know is that we’ve been talking about the same issues for multiple years, and all the close wins last year masked a lot of the issues. This team has talent, the defense is elite (not quite as good as last year, but elite)… But by the numbers, the Defense under Venables is not quite as efficient as the Offense was under Riley…and the Offense under Venables with Littrell and Arbuckle is considerably worse (efficiency wise) than the Defense was under Riley with Grinch…That’s embarrassing! Now OU has the #1 and #2 teams in the country up next…and MSU, Florida, Ole Miss, A&M, and Mizzou are all ranked ahead of OU. It looks like history could be repeating itself, following a good season with a disappointing one. The only difference this year, is that this OU team had the highest expectations yet in Venables tenure, and (so far) it’s been a massive failure. When Venables signed the contract extension, we said let’s watch this play out, it’s either going to look really smart or really dumb. And if we are being 100% honest, it is heading the wrong way quickly. People nationally are looking at the Venables extension as a punchline to a joke, and they look at OU as a former powerhouse. OU fans in the offseason said this will be the year that we will be able to grade Venables fairly…lots of talent and high expectations, coming off a solid year… Well, grading through three games, Venables and everyone involved with the OU program are flunking.