Oklahoma football: Ten numbers that defined Sooners in 2019
By Chip Rouse
For the third year in a row and fourth time in the last six seasons, the Oklahoma football team made it inside the College Football Playoff cutline to compete with the best in the game for college football’s holy grail: a national championship.
To some it may seem that Lincoln Riley has been at Oklahoma for a long time. That’s a true assertion if you consider five years to be a long time. The 2019 season marked Riley’s fifth as a member of the Sooner coaching staff and his third as head coach.
During his five seasons on the Oklahoma sidelines, what he has seen and achieved is the envy of most college coaches. In addition to the four College Football Playoff appearances, the Sooners have won five consecutive Big 12 football crowns and produced two Heisman Trophy winners and six Heisman finalists.
Oh, and don’t forget his three 12-win seasons in the same number of seasons as Oklahoma’s 22nd head football coach.
Oklahoma Sooners Football
Despite the remarkable consistency in the win column, Riley will be the first to tell you that every season is different with its own set of ups and downs and annual challenges.
This past season, for example, featured a number of record individual performances — which in recent years has almost become an expectation — along with the greatest comeback win in the 125-year history of Sooner football and several unusually close games that easily could have gone either way.
They say that numbers don’t lie, and following that train of thought we’ve compiled 10 numbers that defined the 2019 season of Oklahoma football.
1 — Perhaps the one number that best defined the 2019 season for the Sooners was not a performance number, but rather a jersey number, the No. 1 worn by quarterback Jalen Hurts. The Alabama graduate transfer led the Sooners in both passing yards (3,851) and rushing yards (1,298) and finished second in the country in both passing yards per attempt (16.2) and points responsible for per game (22.9). He and Tim Tebow of Florida are the only two players since 1996 credited with at least 32 passing touchdowns and 18 rushing TDs in a single season.
2 — Hurts was clearly the team leader statistically, but the best player on the field every Saturday was the one whose jersey number fell next in line, No. 2 CeeDee Lamb.
8 — For the third straight season, Oklahoma led the nation in offensive yards per play. The Sooners average 8.0 yards per play in 2019, an NCAA-record 8.6 yards per play in 2018 and 8.3 yards per play in the 2017 season — with three different starting quarterbacks.
17 for 17 — Redshirt freshman Gabe Brkic was one of just two players in the Football Bowl Subdivision to make every field goal he attempted in the 2019 season. He also was successful on all 52 of his extra-point tries.
49.7 — The Sooners third-down conversion percentage on offense in 2019, tied for fourth nationally with national champion LSU.
63 — Points surrendered in the opening quarter by the Oklahoma defense in 2019, the fewest of the four quarters.
76 — The difference in where Oklahoma ranked nationally in total defense in 2019 (38th, 356.4 yards yielded per game) compared with the 2018 season (114th, 453.8 yards allowed per game).
300 — The Sooners’ had three 2019 games in which they posted at least 300 yards rushing and 300 yards passing. In the past two seasons, they have accomplished this a total of eight times, five more than any other team in the country.
538/331 — Yards of total offense and total defense, respectively, by Oklahoma this past season, the first time in the 24-year history of the Big 12 that a team has led the conference in both categories in the same season.
537.6 — The Oklahoma offense averaged 537.6 yards per game, third best among the 130 teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision. With Lincoln Riley directing the offense, the Sooners have finished in the top three nationally in each of the last four seasons.