Oklahoma Bombarded by Explosive, Determined Houston Offense

If you’re an Oklahoma fan, there’s no way around it: this year’s edition of Sooner football has big-time problems – on both sides of the ball.

The 15th-ranked Houston Cougars played like world beaters in totally out-classing favored, third-ranked Oklahoma, steamrolling the Sooners 33-23 in the 2016 college football season opener for both teams.

Nightmare shades of Clemson in 2014 and ’15, Texas A&M in 2012 and even Texas from a year ago, and perhaps most of all Boise State in 2006, came back to haunt Oklahoma in a game that became lopsided after the first 15 minutes of play.

In three of the four aforementioned games, the Sooners failed to contain athletic, dual-threat quarterbacks that picked them apart with yardage gains virtually at will and big plays on big downs. The reference to Boise State obviously flashes back to the last time OU was upended by a team clamoring to show that it could play with the elite teams from college football’s so-called Big Five conferences (at that time the BCS conferences).

The Sooners struck paydirt first in this game on a 35-yard touchdown run by redshirt sophomore Joe Mixon and held a 10-3 advantage at the end of the first quarter. It looked at that early stage that the Sooners would be in position to outgun their opponent if it turned into a shootout, which is what the experts were predicting for this marquee matchup.

Houston took the lead in the second quarter with a field goal followed by a short TD pass from Cougar quarterback Greg Ward Jr to uncovered Texas Longhorn transfer Duke Catalon. OU fired right back, however, scoring on a 64-yard catch and run by a wide-open Mark Andrews at the mid-point of the second quarter that allowed the Sooners to regain the lead, albeit briefly, at 17-13.

A pair of field goals by Houston, one coming as the first-half game clock expired, gave the Cougars a 19-17 halftime lead and all the momentum heading into the intermission.

Even though the halftime score indicated a close game, which was not unexpected, the stats told a much different story. The Cougars collected 11 more first downs than the Sooners in the first 30 minutes and outgained the reigning Big 12 champions by more than 90 yards.

The big stat that stood out for me, though, was time of possession. Houston controlled the ball for nearly two-thirds of the opening half.

The Sooners came out after halftime, and it looked as it they had made some necessary defensive adjustments. The OU defense forced a three-and-out on Houston’s opening possession of the second half, something it was unable to do in the first 30 minutes as the Cougars scored on all five of their first-half possessions.

The Sooners took over at its own 28-yard line following a Houston punt and advanced the ball to the Cougar 36-yard line before the drive stalled. what came next was the defining moment in the game. A back-breaking play from which Oklahoma would never recover.

Oklahoma attempted a 53-yard field goal, which was somewhat questionable from the get go considering the field position that would be surrendered by a likely missed attempt (Austin Seibert, the OU placekicker, had never made a field goal of that length in his collegiate career).

The kick indeed was short. For whatever reason, the Oklahoma coaching staff did not see a Houston return man waiting to return a short FG attempt (shades of Alabama vs. Auburn in the regular-season finale two seasons ago).

Brandon Wilson of Houston fielded the missed FG and took off down the sideline, outracing the lead-footed Sooner field-goal unit in a mismatched foot race that ended after 100 yards and a Cougar touchdown that increased their lead to 26-17.

Horrible, horrible decision. This one was fully on the Sooner coaches.

From there, the wheels completely came off for the OU offense and things quickly went from bad to beyond ugly.

Oklahoma turned the ball over on fumbles in its next two possessions (one by wide receiver Jarvis Baxter after an 18-yard completion and one by Mayfield after being hit behind the line of scrimmage.

Houston scored its third and final touchdown late in the third quarter, going 51 yards in 12 plays after the Baxter turnover for a 33-17 lead, and that was basically all she wrote for the Sooners on this day.

Oklahoma did score one more time, when Mayfield hit Andrews on a 25-yard scoring toss, but by this point in the game it was simply a matter of too little, too late.

Oklahoma gained 61 yards on the ground in its scoring drive on its initial possession of the game, but only 16 rushing yards the remainder of the game. Additionally, the Sooners had only 26 rushing attempts the entire game.

Again, the final stats are not a true reflection of how dominant Houston was in manhandling the Sooners and controlling this game. The Cougars ended up outgaining OU by just 10 yards (410 to 400). The passing yardage was practically equal (323 to 321 in favor on Houston), and there was only 12 yards rushing separating the two teams.

The stats may have evened out, but you would hardly have known it the way Houston totally dominated the line of scrimmage and consistently made plays when it had to while Oklahoma struggled to move the ball consistently on offense and sustain drives.

Houston badly exposed an Oklahoma team that clearly has much work to do in all phases of the game, including in-game decisions made by the coaching staff. The Oklahoma offensive line and defensive secondary failed to live up to preseason plaudits.

An ugly, ugly game from a Sooner fan’s perspective, one of the worst I have seen from a Bob Stoops-coached Oklahoma team.

Don’t even get me started about the Sooners repeatedly disappointing when they are ranked in the top five to begin a season. They are going to have to continue to shoulder that burden until such time they come out and prove otherwise.

That dramatically was not the case in Houston on this opening weekend of the 2016 college season.

Some serious adjustments are going to have to be made or this Sooner team could be looking at a 1-2 record to begin Big 12 play a month from now, something that has never happened in Stoops time at Oklahoma.

One final thought: The season is not over for Oklahoma and its College Football Playoff chances, and certainly not for its chances to claim a 10th Big 12 championship, but the margin for error has now become razor thin.