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Brent Venables' confusing answer about a certain Oklahoma Sooners position room sends alarms ringing

Originally posted on A to Z Sports | By AJ Schulte | Last updated Jul 16, 2025 9:20 PM ET

For the last several years, the Oklahoma Sooners have battled questions about the state of their tight end room.

They seemingly haven't had a reliable playmaker there for years under tight ends coach Joe Jon Finley, and they have lost out on their fair share of targets that could have transformed the offense.

The criticism of Finley reached an all-time high last season as he became the co-OC of the worst Sooners' offense in a decade, and the tight end room became a joke among many Oklahoma fans. Despite this, Finley still remains on staff and the Sooners' tight end room is a gigantic question mark, with very, very little production.

At SEC Media Days, head coach Brent Venables was asked about the state of the tight end room and...brought up a player who isn't on the team anymore before highlighting a player who many figured to be an afterthought in an already thin room.

Brent Venables was asked about the TE room by @ParkerThune, and he brought up Bauer Sharp.

“I know we had some opinions about Bauer Sharp — that he wasn’t a really good player. He’s a really good player, everybody will see it.”

Also mentioned Kaden Helms’ growth. pic.twitter.com/pi2NFTuUUO
— Jesse Crittenden (@JesseCrittenden) July 16, 2025

This answer is interesting because you can tell when Venables just doesn't want to/know how to answer a question because he'll stall or give a sequiter before a brief answer comes to him.

We all know how...inconsistent the tight end room has been in recent years under tight ends coach Joe Jon Finley. Everyone outside of the program knows that it has not been a productive unit for years, and the Sooners have yet to change that.

Pointing to Bauer Sharp is an odd deflection of the question. By no means was he a great player on film last season, and if you believe he was, then you're also acknowledging he was poorly coached...by the same coach still on staff who has turned this unit into the butt of every joke. It doesn't sit right with me that Venables immediately highlighted a player on a now rival SEC program who will try and beat you later on this very season.

Maybe Venables is telling the truth here, and Helms truly has flipped the switch for his career. However, it feels more like a half-truth to deflect from the state of the room. Helms has missed virtually most of his career due to injuries. Simply being healthy would be his "best period of performance" by default.

This could simply be too much skepticism or cynicism, but this is far from a comforting answer to me, and it continues to dog the Sooners. It's been too many years of this for me to simply believe that the room will be fixed in a single offseason, especially with Finley in charge.

This article first appeared on A to Z Sports and was syndicated with permission.

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