Brent Venables Q&A with SBN's Shakin the Southland

With the news last week of Brent Venables accepting the defensive coordinator's position at Clemson, we thought we'd utilize the powerful SB Nation resources and reach out to the Clemson site Shakin the Southland. They were gracious enough to answer some of our questions and we did same, so be sure to over to their quality site and check out our responses as we give them a little insight into their new defensive coordinator.

Here is our portion of the Q&A.

CCM - From browsing around some Clemson sites to get a sense of the fan's reaction, it seems to be a bit mixed between positive and skeptical. Are you getting the same sense from your readers/fellow Clemson fans?

StS - We definitely are getting the same sense. Many folks are excited to get a coach from an established and proven program like Oklahoma. This same coach was the co-Defensive Coordinator from the 2000 National Championship team and has been with Bob Stoops since he took the head position at OU. There is excitement about the recruiting ability of Venables as he was able to bring a lot of excellent recruits to Norman during his time there. There is also excitement about the fit for this hire. Venables coached on the other side of a fast paced, high octane offense that scored a lot but left the defense on the field a lot as well. In those regards, folks are happy and think that possible the insertion of a coordinator who has his background and has had success coaching against spread-type attacks.

Conversely, the question on everyone’s mind is whether OU was good in the early 2000’s moreso because of Mike Stoops than Venables. Further, our fanbase, like the OU fanbase, points to the relative "drop off" in defensive performance over the past couple seasons and wonders, again, if Venables is indeed an elite coordinator as Oklahoma gave up absolutely ridiculous statistics in several games this past season (Baylor and Ok State come to mind immediately).

StS - Actually we're not big stat guys. We don't quote many yardage/game statistics to our readers except as an indicator of performance, but we will show correlations when we see fit to use them. Stats don't prove that a player is good or that a coach can coach, they are just indicators that can be used in an argument. Most of the time, we go by the eye test all the way and prefer not to use many statistics, but we will throw them out in game previews we write only for our readers to see.

We are getting into a complete analysis of BV now but have not completed all items. So far, though, I’ll tell you that I was immediately impressed with his ability to recruit. From 2006 to 2010, Venables is credited as the primary recruiter for a slew of signees and averaged 3+ recruits rated at four stars (Rivals) or better each class. At times, he brought in 7 or 8 players per class over this time period. That is flat out getting it done, especially as the defensive coordinator who has to gameplan in addition to recruit.

Otherwise, we’ll need to normalize some defensive statistics because OU’s offense puts the defense on the field far more than the NCAA average team. Further, we’ll need to compare OU’s defense to another stud defense from the Big 12 to compare apples to apples. Long and short, we look to have those answers on our site in the near future but don’t have them pieced together right now.

StS - When you get paid as he’ll get paid, obviously expectations will be high as soon as he arrives at Clemson. I believe the savvy CU fans will realize that our front four returns very little experience and our linebacker play over the past couple years has been horrid so BV has some problems to overcome. The Tigers had a host of fundamental issues as well as "offense specific items" (trouble against spread offenses and against mobile quarterbacks) that really stuck out. I believe that CU fans will expect more fundamental soundness and better play out of the linebackers in particular. As poorly as the defense played in ’11, some of these expectations shouldn’t be too tough to meet. Also, we (STS) realize that this season will be used to backfill lost players and gain experience for others due to recruiting issues related to coaching turnover in ’08 as well as some questionable recruiting strategies that has our Tigers in a vulnerable position in terms of players with quality snaps.