Dec. 26—Everything has had to move a little bit faster for Oklahoma's offense over the past few weeks as it prepares to play in the Alamo Bowl.
Freshman quarterback Jackson Arnold has been preparing all year for his opportunity to lead the Sooners' offense into the future. Still, he hasn't had a lot of in-game experience.
The former five-star recruit has thrown just 24 passes in three games and it was possible that he'd get a redshirt for the season before Dillon Gabriel's injury against BYU. But the bowl season can be an unpredictable time of year in college football and now the Sooners are heading into the final game of the season without the quarterback and offensive coordinator that helped get them there.
"Like I told (Arnold), we're both getting our first start together," new offensive coordinator Seth Littrell said. "It'll be an amazing time. No one better to do it with."
Littrell was quickly one of the first names that came up when the Sooners began looking to replace former offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby. A former Oklahoma player, Littrell returned to Norman after a coaching stint at North Texas and assisted the program in recruiting and implementing offensive gameplans.
Littrell and Arnold have had the roughly same amount of time working in the Sooners' offense. The team doesn't plan to make any big changes to the offensive scheme leading up to the bowl game.
The Sooners have plenty to work on as they try to replace some of the key transfer portal losses over the past month.
So if the Sooners' offense does make changes to its scheme, it won't begin until the spring.
"Terminology is not changing, the offense that we're running will stay consistent to what we've done throughout the year, and then we can look up after the season and figure out what we need to do moving forward as adjustments and kind of evolving in how we grow," Littrell said.
From the time Lebby made his announcement that he would be taking the head coaching job at Mississippi State it only took two days before it was reported that the Sooners had found his replacement. On Tuesday Littrell spoke generally about the process that went into his promotion, but said that the decision "didn't take long."
In addition to Gabriel, the Sooners will be without offensive linemen Nate Anderson, Cayden Green, Savion Byrd and Aaryn Parks. At running back, Tawee Walker has entered his name into the portal, but has continued to practice with the team.
Fellow running backs Marcus Majors and Daylan Smothers have also entered the transfer portal.