COORDINATING A TURNAROUND?
OU hopes Grinch can match Venables' feat at Clemson
Can Alex Grinch help turn OU's defense around like Brent Venables did for Clemson?
CNORMAN — lemson hired Brent Venables as defensive coordinator in January 2012, a week after the Orange Bowl.
Not an OU Orange Bowl. Another Orange Bowl.
The West Virginia 70, Clemson 33 Orange Bowl.
These days, of course, Clemson's defense is the gold standard. The Tigers have won two of the last three national championships and routinely send defenders galore to the NFL Draft — 19 in the last five years, including six first-rounders.
Now Lincoln Riley hopes he's hired Oklahoma's own Venables, which is quite confusing since OU HAD Venables. But the Sooner defense is in the same tatters, or worse, as was Clemson's eight years ago. OU in 2018 ranked last in Big 12 defensive efficiency. The Sooners gave up 48 points to Texas, 46 to Texas Tech, 47 to OSU, 40 to KANSAS, 56 to West Virginia, 45 to Alabama in the Orange Bowl.
Why am I wasting your time? You know the numbers as well as I do. Alex Grinch is taking over a reclamation project even more difficult than what Venables found in the South Carolina hills after that shellacking by West Virginia.
A difficult assignment. A daunting assignment. But not an impossible assignment. Venables did it at Clemson. Why can't Grinch do it at Oklahoma?
“So excited to be the defensive coordinator at Oklahoma, I can't even tell you,” Grinch said Monday without the hint of a smile. “I know how hard this job is, but I know you can do hard things in this profession.”
Venables, a 13-year
Sooner lieutenant for Bob Stoops, didn't magically transform Clemson. It took time. In 2012, Clemson gave up 49 points to Florida State and 48 to North Carolina State. In 2013, five of 13 opponents reached 30 points on Clemson, including Florida State, which scored 51.
Coordinating defenses on any level of football is a thankless job these days. But Grinch seems primed for the test.
“The pressure's on them,” Grinch said of opposing offenses. “That offensive coach that's trying to get a head job, he better be scoring 40 a game, or he ain't going to get a look. Maybe I just convinced myself of that, that somehow we have an advantage that way. In any event, focus on the job at hand. Always next-step type of talk … it's just do your job and be excited to have a room full of guys looking back at you and embracing some of the things that you say.”
Grinch said he knows the landscape. Knows that defensive coordinators aren't on the fast track to head coaching jobs. Heck, Venables remains the Clemson d-coordinator after all these years and all that success.
“If I was an athletic director right now, I'd probably hire an offensive guy, too,” Grinch said.
But there is much to like about Grinch. You'd expect Riley to hire a fireball, and he indeed has.
“He's wired different,” said OU cornerbacks coach Roy Manning, who came over in the off-season from UCLA but coached with Grinch at Washington State. “How he sees the game. How he sees life, is really different.”
How so? Manning says Grinch gets excited when his own offense has to punt. Instead of, uh-oh, we've got to play defense, it's “great, we GET to play defense.”
Grinch certainly is preaching aggression, both with his schemes and his words.
“He starts barking at you early,” said OU sophomore safety Brendan Radley-Hiles. “He makes sure that if you're walking around, a little sleep in your eye, or you're not locked in, focused, he's going to start talking loud. He's going to start talking fast. He's going to make sure you understand the tempo at which he's speaking … you're going to want to give him your undivided attention.”
Manning said Grinch has something “every single day” to get players and staff going. “Hopefully you're a self-starter. But if you aren't, you'll be revved up to go after every meeting, after we break down any huddle out there. You can't fake it, you can't get this far along, just kind of jibber-jabberish. You can see it in his eye, that he means every word and believes everything.”
Grinch certainly is intense. So was the old gang 20 years ago, when the Stoops brothers and Venables arrived and changed football in this state and beyond.
Of course, things were a little different then. Offense didn't necessarily rule the land, and it was the OU offense, not the defense, that needed a 1999 overhaul.
So Grinch's mission is prohibitive. But so was Brent Venables' when hired at Clemson. Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-7608080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. You can also view his personality page at newsok.com/berrytramel.