Handing out grades for the Oklahoma Sooners against the LSU Tigers

It’s both difficult and easy to critique Jackson Arnold for Saturday’s performance. On the one hand, he was essentially the focal point of OU’s offense, with not much else positive going on. On the other hand, he hasn’t proven capable of throwing the football effectively more than ten yards beyond the line of scrimmage in the SEC.

110 passing yards won’t cut it. If you take out the throw to J.J. Hester, Arnold went 13-for-20 for a paltry 60 yards passing. Regardless of what he adds running the football, you can’t win football games with a quarterback that doesn’t feel comfortable putting the ball in the air.

Arnold deserves credit for the way he handled everything that happened this season. It’s unclear if that was his final game in a Sooner uniform or not. It’ll depend on who OU’s next offensive coordinator is and if Oklahoma brings in a quarterback via the transfer portal this offseason. A career that had so much promise was very tough to watch in 2024.

After the Sooners ran the ball all over Alabama, LSU stacked the box and forced Oklahoma to do other things to try and beat them. Obviously, it worked. Xavier Robinson was held in check, Gavin Sawchuk was nonexistent once again, Taylor Tatum is apparently still benched, and Jovantae Barnes has been out for a month with an injury.

The only successful plays the Sooners had were when they ran Arnold, and once LSU started spying him, the OU offense had nothing. The running backs were unable to get going. There’s a lot of potential in that room for the future, and hopefully, a new playcaller will be able to unlock it better than Seth Littrell, Joe Jon Finley, and Kevin Johns were.

Oklahoma really didn’t have receivers on the field in this game. They had outside blockers who occasionally ran routes. Short of a big catch by Hester and a sliding grab by Jacob Jordan, there isn’t much to tell from this position group.

With the top six players out once again, there’s just nothing good about the wide receiver room to look back on from this season. It’s crazy that all of the best wideouts got hurt and missed almost the entire season. We’ll see who leaves and who comes back for 2025.

The Sooners were down by 14 points, driving to try and cut into the LSU lead. That was until OU called a trick play for Bauer Sharp, but the throwback to Arnold wasn’t there. Instead of taking the loss or throwing the ball away, Sharp decided to heave the ball up in the air for no discernible reason. It was intercepted, killing Oklahoma’s most productive drive of the second half and essentially ending the game. He probably shouldn’t have been put in that position, but he has to execute better.

It’s been a bad year for the tight ends, a position group in deep need of a reset. The portal acquisitions didn’t work out, and it showed again versus the Tigers. The run game couldn’t get going despite two tight ends on the field for a lot of snaps. It’s another problem that the new OC will be asked to fix once he arrives in Norman.

The same goes for Oklahoma’s embattled offensive line, which followed up a great performance against Alabama by putting up arguably their worse performance of the second half of the season. They’ve shown some good things in the run game, but they struggled in pass protection once again.

There might be something there with some of the young guys up front, but there are plenty of holes to be filled when the portal opens. It’ll depend on who the offensive coordinator is as to what kind of linemen the Sooners will be looking for. The key is that they need to be looking.

Oklahoma’s defensive line has been a strength all season. They weren’t at the best this week, but they were far from the weakest point of the defense. R Mason Thomas played a whale of a game, as did Gracen Halton. That’s a couple of players the Sooners would love to have back in 2025.

If Oklahoma can avoid big portal losses at this spot this offseason, the defensive line could be a major strength again next year. Losing Da’Jon Terry will hurt, but if some other players can come back, there’s a chance to be nasty up front again.

Credit to Ethan Downs, who may have played his last game at OU. The Sooners could use about ten more players like him going forward.

LSU ran the ball better than expected in this one, as Oklahoma didn’t play well enough defensively to win this game. You could tell that they laid it all on the line to beat Alabama and there wasn’t anything left. That boils down to coaching.

This is another position where the future is bright. Kip Lewis looks ready to take over the mantle of leadership, and Kobie McKinzie will see the field a lot more next year. Cheetah has a lot of interesting possibilities as well.

If this is it for Danny Stutsman, it was an honor to watch the best linebacker in the country. He won’t soon be forgotten for what he did in a Sooners jersey.

A bad, bad day for the OU secondary. Garrett Nussmeier and the LSU wideouts torched the Sooner DBs all night long. Eli Bowen was exposed in a single coverage against Chris Hilton Jr., and the true freshman still has a way to go in the SEC.

There just aren’t enough difference-makers back there for the Sooners if the pass rush doesn’t get home. This is the area on Zac Alley’s defense that has to improve the most by August.

Billy Bowman and Woodi Washington may or may not play in the bowl game, but they should be recognized for what they did to help turn this defense around. The vets on this team set a good example for the players to come.

LSU’s 100-yard kickoff return for a touchdown was a huge moment in this game, an unacceptable play from Oklahoma. That can’t happen, especially not in the place that it did in the contest. The Sooners had just taken a 14-10 lead after Arnold’s 50-yard completion to Hester set up their go-ahead score.

It was a disappointing moment in what had been a solid year in kickoff coverage for the Sooners.

The Sooners were never able to truly change the game with their special teams. There were fewer mistakes than a year ago, but Peyton Bowen and the other returners were never able to turn the tide like we saw LSU do on Saturday.

That’s the next step in the evolution of this unit.

6-6 for the second time in three years isn’t good enough at Oklahoma. Brent Venables has one year from this point to fix it. Four years would be enough time to see if he’s good enough to be a head coach at a program of OU’s ilk. He’s got to win at a high level next year or he will be gone.

Venables has turned in two iconic wins over Texas and Alabama, and a lot of losses around those two games over his three years. This should have been a winnable game, but the lack of halftime adjustments once again doomed the Sooners in Death Valley. It’s an alarming trend, one of many that Oklahoma has developed under Venables. OU was simply not good enough to compete in the SEC this year. They didn’t looked as prepared to play against LSU as they did the week before against Alabama. The Sooners have to figure out a way to come off a big win and not let that effect their preparation the next week.

The offensive coordinator hire is the first of many make-or-break moments the Sooners are facing over the next 12 months. Who Venables chooses to turn the offense around will directly impact whether or not he continues as OU’s head ball coach.

The Sooners now await their bowl destination and await the NFL draft and portal decisions. There’s plenty of work to be done if Oklahoma wants to get back to winning at the level that they should be.