Michael Hawkins’ sudden ascension to the starting quarterback job at Oklahoma should be no surprise to OU fans who have been following his story.
Sooners On SI has chronicled Hawkins’ path since before he committed to play for the school where his father was a cornerback on Bob Stoops’ and Brent Venables’ defense a generation ago.
Now Hawkins, a true freshman from Frisco, TX, has apparently supplanted sophomore Jackson Arnold as the Sooners’ QB — at least for now.
Hawkins replaced Arnold late in the second quarter of Oklahoma’s 25-15 loss to No. 6 Tennessee on Saturday night in Norman. After Arnold completed 7-of-16 passes for 54 yards, ran five times for minus-21 yards and committed three turnovers that either cost OU points or gave Tennessee points, Hawkins sparked the OU offense almost immediately.
Hawkins completed 11-of-18 passes for 132 yards and directed two fourth-quarter touchdown drives. Hawkins twice ran for the goal line and was originally rewarded impressive touchdowns — he ran over a defender on one and flipped over a defender on another — but both were take off the board by reply review. After the game, Venables explained his rationale for making the switch.
“Not taking care of the football,” Venables said. “And really, a poor half of football. So obviously, made a change there. Felt like we needed to. Gave up 12 points off of turnovers there in the first half. Hoping we could bring Mike in and he’d give us a spark. And obviously he did on a few drives there in the second half.”
Venables clarified that Arnold will need to stay focused and make a daily effort to continue to get better. He explained how he would try to make sure Arnold isn’t taking on too much of the blame for the team’s first loss. Appeal to his voice of reason,” Venables said. “He’s a competitor. He knows what comes with the territory. He’ll be the first to tell you that body of work deserved exactly what happened. So he’ll have the opportunity to respond and come back and get after it. I think he will.”
“I love Mike,” Venables said. “Mike is … he’s confident, he’s loose in the right ways. The moment’s not going to overwhelm him, even though again he’s a young guy. Things happen fast. Mike gets pretty excited, you saw him. He’s three or four steps ahead of the play a few times. That’s going to happen too. Certainly got to slow things down and let things develop, there’s that piece of it, but he’s a great competitor, got a tremendous amount of talent, and he cares. There’s a lot that you really have an appreciate for Mike about.”
