Oklahoma Fires OC Ben Arbuckle, Hands Play-Calling to Jason Witten

Oklahoma has made another in-season change at offensive coordinator. Head coach Brent Venables announced that Ben Arbuckle has been relieved of his duties after a 4-4 start, and tight ends coach Jason Witten will take over play-calling for the rest of the season.

A Second In-Season Coordinator Change

This is not new territory for Venables. He fired Seth Littrell as offensive coordinator during the 2024 season after a blowout loss to South Carolina, and now his second hand-picked coordinator is gone in-season as well, again after a loss to the Gamecocks. Arbuckle was just 4-4 in his own search for stability, and the pattern of fast, public coordinator changes is becoming a defining feature of Venables' tenure in Norman.

The timing matters. Oklahoma signed Venables to a lucrative contract extension this past offseason, a vote of confidence that now sits alongside a stalled offense and a coordinator search repeating itself for the second time in three years.

Why Arbuckle Was Let Go

Arbuckle arrived in Norman in December 2024 after leading a top-15 scoring offense at Washington State, and Oklahoma gave him a three-year deal worth roughly $1.5 million annually. The hire looked like exactly the kind of modern, pass-heavy offensive mind the Sooners needed.

It didn't translate at Oklahoma the way it had at Washington State. In his second season, the Sooners' offense ranked near the bottom of the SEC in both yards per game and touchdowns, and fan frustration boiled over publicly earlier in the year, with chants calling for his firing during a sluggish win over New Mexico. The breaking point came with a 42-25 home loss to South Carolina that dropped Oklahoma to 4-4 overall and 2-3 in conference play, a results-to-expectations gap Venables was unwilling to let ride into the final month of the season.

Jason Witten Steps Into a New Role

The move to Witten is notable because of how little coordinator experience he actually has. He is not an Oklahoma alum — he played his college ball at Tennessee — and he's in his first season on the Sooners' staff after joining as tight ends coach in January 2026, his first college coaching job at any level. Before that, Witten spent five years as head coach at Liberty Christian School, a high school program, following an 11-time Pro Bowl career at tight end for the Dallas Cowboys and a run as a Pro Football Hall of Fame finalist.

Handing an interim, in-season playcalling job to someone with zero prior college offensive coordinator experience is a gamble, but it also reflects how thin Venables' options were on a staff already reshuffled once this year. Witten replaces Joe Jon Finley, the tight ends coach who briefly called plays for Oklahoma during the 2024 Littrell shake-up, in an odd bit of staffing symmetry.

What's Next for Oklahoma

Witten's first game calling plays comes on the road against a ranked Florida team, a tough opening assignment for anyone stepping into a new role mid-season, let alone a first-time playcaller. With four regular-season games remaining and a offense that has struggled to find consistency all year, Oklahoma needs something to change fast if it wants to salvage a season that began with real expectations.

For more on how the stakes shake out down the stretch, see our College Football Playoff format explainer and this week's college football Saturday preview. Follow the rest of the season in our college football coverage.

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