Numbers weren’t coming easily for visiting Oklahoma on Saturday night – on the scoreboard or on the field of play. After the opening half in what improbably ended up a Sooners’ Tennessee victory, OU looked left for dead, with only a somewhat feint hope of holding on to a respectable end-game escape.
Well, that was the thought piercing through the head of this Sooner fan, at least, as I painfully viewed the opening 30 minutes of the game I had written earlier could well be the make or break game in Oklahoma’s 2015 season with a sinking feeling rumbling about in my nervous stomach.
Numbers don’t lie, as the saying goes, and the first-half numbers definitely weren’t mounting in a positive way on the Sooners’ side of the ledger.
Sep 12, 2015; Knoxville, TN, USA; Oklahoma Sooners wide receiver Sterling Shepard (3) scores the winning touchdown in double overtime against the Tennessee Volunteers Neyland Stadium. Oklahoma won in double overtime 31-24. Mandatory Credit: Randy Sartin-USA TODAY Sports
If this were a prize fight, the Volunteers, would easily have won rounds one and two of this regularly scheduled four-round contest that actually went two extra frames before a winner was determined.
As if a 17-3 halftime advantage wasn’t tough-enough medicine for Oklahoma fans to have to endure at the intermission, the network announcers for the game felt compelled to remind us that Tennessee head coach Butch Jones was 13-1 in his last 14 games when leading at the half.
Fortunately for the 10,000-plus Sooner faithful in attendance at the game and the tens of thousands of OU football fans viewing at home or wherever their lives took them on Saturday night, the halftime numbers were exactly that, just half the story in the game.
The Oklahoma defense – which in its defense (no pun intended) was forced to play with its back to the wall throughout the opening two quarters because of perpetually poor field possession – came out in the second half with the attitude “enough is enough.” After reeling off 45 yards on its opening drive of the second half, the Tennessee offense was shut down to virtually nothing, picking up just a trickle more yards than that the remainder of the game, including the 25 yards on the Vols’ scoring drive in the first overtime.
Because the Sooner defense exerted its will over the entire second half, the Sooner offense was given time to finally find its way, which didn’t come until the start of the fourth quarter. But when the offense finally got rolling, quarterback Baker Mayfield and Co. wasn’t about to let its collective foot off the gas. Mayfield engineered consecutive scoring drives of 80 and 60 yards, the latter tying the game and coming with just 40 ticks left on the clock in regulation.
Sterling Shepard scored the Sooners’ game-tying touchdown with a sensational leaping catch at the back of the end zone over the outstretched arms of a Volunteer defender. Not that long thereafter, the senior OU wide receiver tallied what turned out to be the winning score, bringing in an 15-yard pass in the second overtime and tip-toeing the final two and a half yards before diving just inside the end-zone pylon to send up a roar from the 10,000 Sooner fans in attendance that easily drowned out the sudden silence that overcame the vast, orange-and-white clad Tennessee faithful.
Sep 12, 2015; Knoxville, TN, USA; Oklahoma Sooners quarterback Baker Mayfield (6) runs off the field after defeating the Tennessee Volunteers in double overtime Neyland Stadium. Oklahoma won 31-24. Mandatory Credit: Jim Brown-USA TODAY Sports
The decisive blow came on Tennessee’s do-or-die possession in the second overtime, when Sooner All-Big 12 cornerback Zack Sanchez recorded his first interception of the season and the first interception in the game thrown by Tennessee quarterback Joshua Dobbs.
Just like that. Game over and an Oklahoma victory, as the Sooners’ seize victory from the jaws of defeat.
That is a recap of some of the more notable numbers in the Sooners’ huge road victory on Saturday. Here are a few more you may find compelling and of interest:
2 – Quarterback sacks by senior Sooner linebacker Devante Bond, totaling a combined loss of 18 yards.
3 – The win over Tennessee gives the Sooners three consecutive victories over SEC teams (2 against Tennessee and one over Alabama). It also marked OU’s sixth consecutive road win over a nonconference team, including victories at Notre Dame and Florida State during that time.
4 – First downs awarded to Oklahoma as a result of penalties against Tennessee.
8 – The Oklahoma defense held Tennessee to 8 net yards total and no first downs in the fourth quarter. Meanwhile, the Sooners had consecutive scoring drives of 80 and 60 yards over the final 15 minutes of regulation.
11:19 – Time in minutes and seconds that Oklahoma held the ball in the fourth quarter, compared to 3:41 for Tennessee.
14 – The win at Tennessee was the first time since 1983 that the Sooners have trailed by 14 or more points at the end of the third quarter and gone on to win the game. OU trailed Oklahoma State in 1983 by the same 17-3 deficit it faced against Tennessee entering the final quarter of play. Oklahoma won the game against Oklahoma State 21-20.
17 – OU 17-point comeback victory over the Volunteers is the largest ever by a Tennessee team playing at home.
28 – Games Tennessee has lost out of the last 29 against teams ranked in the top 25 at the time they played.
51 – Bob Stoops is now 51-27 against ranked teams in his 17 seasons at Oklahoma. That is a .654 winning percentage, which ranks third best in the nation over that period behind USC (.667) and Ohio State (.653).
74 – Receiving yards in the Tennessee game for senior wide receiver Sterling Shepard. That gives him 2,336 career receiving yards at OU, moving him to fifth on the all-time Sooner list and passing Malcolm Kelley (2,285 receiving yards)