Oklahoma Football: Sooners Weather Injuries, Slop to Grab Bedlam Win
By Chip Rouse
It was a game of attrition for the Oklahoma football squad. With key players dropping like flies with injuries, the Sooners overcame the injury storm and the weather to blow by in-state rival Oklahoma State for a 38-20 Bedlam victory and another Big 12 championship.
Oklahoma, held to just four yards total on its first two possessions, amassed 580 yards of offense after the first 15 minutes and put 21 unanswered points on the scoreboard between the second and third quarter to effectively salt the game away.
Oklahoma State was doing an excellent job at the outset bottling up the two OU running backs, Samaje Perine and Joe Mixon. Conversely, the Cowboys were getting large chunks of yardage on the ground against the Sooner defensive front in the early going.
Working with a short field, the Cowboys mounted a 53-yard drive midway through the first quarter. With third down and goal-to-go from the OU one-yard line, quarterback Mason Rudolph fumbled the snap and fell on the ball at the two. The Cowboys elected to go for the sure points on fourth down, and Ben Grogan booted a 19-yarder to give OSU the first score in the game.
That’s the way the first quarter ended, with Oklahoma State up by a 3-0 score.
On the first play of the second quarter, though, Baker Mayfield connected on a 69-yard touchdown strike to his favorite target, Dede Westbrook, who avoided a couple of tacklers and took it all the way for a Sooner touchdown, giving OU the lead at 7-3.
The Sooners had another chance to score on their very next possession. Mayfield found fullback Dimitri Flowers, the OU hero in the Iowa State win, wide open in the middle of the field for a 67-yard catch and run that ended up at the Oklahoma State three-yard line.
The OU drive stalled there, aided by a offensive pass-interference penalty that set the Sooners back 15 yards. They settled for a 34-yard field goal by Austin Seibert to extend their lead to 10-3.
Oklahoma State responded with back-to-back touchdown drives that put the Cowboys on top 17-10 with under two minutes remaining in the half. To make matters worse for the home team Sooners, their best receiver and arguably the best in college football this season, Westbrook, was injured on a bone-jarring hit by Oklahoma State safety Jordan Stearns midway through the second quarter. Westbrook left the field with what appeared to be concussion symptoms and would not return the remainder of the game.
Before he left the game, however, Westbrook caught four passes for 111 yards, and his touchdown catch, his 16th of the season, set a new OU single-season record.
The Sooners marched 70 yards in a little over a minute, to pull back into a tie, at 17 apiece, just before the first half ended.
The second half was all Oklahoma. On the very first play of the second half, Perine broke through the Oklahoma State defensive line and rambled for 66 yards before he was caught from behind to set the Sooners up deep in Cowboy territory. Five plays later, Perine finished off the drive with a one-yard scoring plunge, giving Oklahoma a 24-17 lead.
On their second possession of the second half, the Sooners drove 80 yards in 13 plays for a touchdown that put them up by 14 points, at 31-17.
Oklahoma State kicked a third-quarter field goal to pull within 31-20 and missed another field goal try in the fourth quarter that would have cut the Sooner lead to eight points with almost 10 minutes remaining in the game.
The Sooners took possession after the missed field goal by Grogan, and on the first play, Mixon burst across the line of scrimmage and into the open field on his way to a 79-yard touchdown run, the longest of his career. That score tore the heart out of the Cowboys and effectively put the game out of reach.
The Oklahoma defense, maligned all season long for giving up big yardage and too many big pass plays, held the high-octane Oklahoma State offense to just 31 total yards on the ground after putting up 186 rushing yards in the first two quarters.
Meanwhile, the combination of Perine and Mixon, both of whom left the game with injuries at one point, gashed a pretty solid Cowboy defense for 300 yards in the second half.
With Westbrook out of the game and weather conditions the way it was, with rain falling throughout the game, OU offensive coordinator Lincoln Riley adjusted his game plan, going with a more ball-control running game for most of the second half. The OU touchdown drives in the third quarter took nearly 10 minutes off the clock and, more importantly, kept the high-octane Oklahoma State offense on the sidelines.
Mayfield, who came into the game with the nation’s best passing efficiency rating, threw the ball just 19 times in the game, completing 13 for 288 yards and three touchdowns.
The Sooners outgained the Cowboys by 226 yards, the biggest bulk of that margin coming in Oklahoma’s dominant second half.
Perine finished the game with 239 yards on 37 carries, and Mixon had 99 yards on 11 carries, most of it coming on his 79-yard touchdown scamper that sealed Oklahoma State’s fate.
The OU winning margin could have been even more than it was. Perine took a knee on the OSU two-yard line with less than 30 seconds remaining in the game on a play in which he could easily have stepped into the end zone. Earlier in the final quarter, Oklahoma was on the OSU 10-yard line, only to be pushed back 15 yards on an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty called on big Sooner offensive tackle Orlando Brown.
On the next play following the penalty, Perine fumbled and the Cowboys recovered the ball on the 18-yard line.
With the win, Oklahoma extended its consecutive-game Big 12 winning streak to 16 games (nine this season) and captured its 10th Big 12 championship in the Bob Stoops era. The Sooners now have more Big 12 titles than losses at home since Stoops has been at Oklahoma.
The victory also assures OU of a spot in the Sugar Bowl, probably against Auburn of the SEC, on Jan. 2 in New Orleans. The final bowl destinations along with the selection of the four teams that will be part of the College Football Playoff, will be announced on Sunday afternoon.