Mutual Fan Club in Norman with New Head Coach Brent Venables and QB Dillon Gabriel
ARLINGTON, Texas – Brent Venables was exactly as expected when he climbed up on the stage in front of the Big 12 media on Thursday’s final day of the 2022 Big 12 Media Days inside AT&T Stadium. He was intense, enthusiastic, passionate, and confident. One of the reasons this longtime defensive coordinator can be confident as a first-year head coach is he has a quarterback that is experienced, talented, and has played on a big stage. Lincoln Riley left and the experienced OU quarterbacks left with him. Venables hired former UCF and Ole Miss offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby as his play caller and Lebby’s former quarterback at UCF came with him.
“Dillon Gabriel is a winner. You can't say it any better than that. He's thrown for 8,000 yards, completed over 60 percent of his passes, incredible touchdown-to-interception ratio, just a great leader,” Venables said of Gabriel. “He's our quarterback. Certainly, anything can happen as we move forward through fall camp. It's always about daily competition. But I feel great I can lay my head down at night knowing not just what he has done on the football field but the quality of the person he is. He's about all the right stuff. He's dependable. He's reliable. He's accountable. He's humble. He's one of the hardest workers, shows up early. He's last one to leave. working to improve. And he leads by example, and guys follow him. He's a galvanizer of people.”
Galvanizer, he’s a relationship builder. That goes way back. He talked about his family was close. He learned it in the home. When the family went to the grocery store, everybody went to the store. Together was an all the time thing for Gabriel.
“I’ve always been a people person and I’m all about relationships,” Gabriel said. “I’ve been that way since early on, from whenever they are asking for. I love my teammates. I love everyone in this building. It goes beyond the team. It’s the equipment staff, the nutrition staff, the strength staff. A lot of people have a hand in this, so it goes beyond the locker room. The position I’m in. I have to be that. It’s easy because I’ve been that from a young age.”
As a quarterback he has to draw people in. A quarterback that is standoffish or pompous is a quarterback that ends up on his butt, a lot. Gabriel isn’t that and he believes in his teammates and he’s more than willing to sell his head coach to the masses, just like his head coach is ready to give him the props.
“He’s my head coach and I see him as my head coach,” Gabriel said of Venables. “This may be his first rodeo, but he’s been coaching for a while. You know what I mean? He’s intelligent in the way he motivates us. If you were to ask me and I didn’t know anything prior about his past I would have said he’s been a head coach for 10-years.”
That duo, Venables and Gabriel and throw in many of the others including Lebby, and that is what gives Oklahoma a good chance even with so much change.