Oklahoma football: Breaking down another Bedlam victory
By Chip Rouse
In the 112-game history of Oklahoma State-Oklahoma football, there have been 16 games in which both teams have entered the game ranked, and the Sooners have won 15 of them.
But none of those Oklahoma victories in the in-state rivalry series they call Bedlam – and with good reason – was more thrilling than the shootout at the O.K. Corral on Saturday. Nor higher scoring, with the 62-52 Oklahoma victory representing the most combined points scored in any game in the Bedlam Series.
Any person who wonders why they call it Bedlam only needs to refer to the offensive armageddon that took place on the field at Boone Pickens Stadium in Stillwater on Saturday afternoon to understand why.
The two teams combined for 1,446 yards of total offense, 72 percent of that sum through the air.
Baker Mayfield completed 24 of 36 passes for a record 598 yards passing and five touchdowns. That broke the previous OU school record of 554 passing yards by Landry Jones in a similar Sooner shootout at West Virginia in 2012 (OU won that game 50-49).
A win is a win, there’s no denying that, And if high-scoring offenses are what you yearn for rather than a low-scoring defensive masterpiece, you should have felt right at home watching one of the best offensive displays of the 2017 college football season along with what can only be described as disaster from a defensive standpoint.
As the game wore on, and with the score 48-38 entering the fourth quarter, it appeared more and more that this was going to be one of those contests in which the team that possessed the ball last was going to win the game.
It didn’t actually turn out that way on Saturday, but that was 1) because the Sooners had the better of the two quarterbacks in Baker Mayfield, and 2) the much-maligned Oklahoma defense came up with the biggest defensive stand of the game in the final two minutes.