Oklahoma football: Breaking down the 2018 Sooners on a national scale
By Chip Rouse
When you break down the 2018 Oklahoma football team into individual units and compare them on a national basis, it is easy to see where the Sooners team strength resides and why.
Several of the national college football preview publications rank the individual units of the teams within a conference. Phil Steele, in his annual College Football Preview issue, examines the same data but expands the comparison to include what he considers the top 50 or so teams on a national scale within the four basic offensive units (quarterback, running backs, receivers and offensive line), three on defensive side of the ball (defensive line, linebackers, defensive backs) and special teams.
Many college football experts consider Steele’s College Football Preview the bible within the sport.
The detailed statistical analyses provided in the publication is far from light-hearted reading, but it does provide a revealing account of the strengths and weaknesses, as well as position breakdowns, scouting reports and a projection for the 2018 season, of 130 FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision) teams in 11 conferences.
Steele is in line with most of the preseason predictions of the Sooners in 2018. He has Oklahoma winning the Big 12 and at No. 9 in both his 2018 College Football Power Poll and his separate Preseason Top 40 (the difference between the two polls, he explains, is that the Preseason Top 40 is a projection of where he believe a team will finish the season, and the Power Poll takes into account the difficulty of the schedule and the talent level of the opponents you play).
Steele’s individual unit breakdowns ranks the 2018 Sooners as having the country’s fifth-best running back group, led by the one-two combination of redshirt junior Rodney Anderson and sophomore Trey Sermon. The pair combined for nearly 2,000 rushing yards a year ago and both averaged over 6.0 yards per carry. Interestingly, this time a year ago, Phil Steele ranked the Oklahoma running backs 25th in the nation.
Oklahoma Sooners Football
With the departure of Baker Mayfield, the Sooners go from No. 3 in the quarterback rankings to No. 39, just ahead of Buffalo but just behind Ohio State, who lose J.T. Barrett after four outstanding seasons.
OU was rated as having the 11th best receiving corps in the 2017 preseason, and Steele sees that group moving up to fourth best in the country entering the 2018 season. A big reason for that is the electrifying speed-demon duo of Marquise “Hollywood” Brown and CeeDee Lamb. Between them, they caught 103 passes last season for 1,900 yards and 14 touchdowns.
You generally can’t have a top-ranked offense without a great group of guys upfront in the trenches, and the Sooners have that. Ranked by Steele as the No. 1 offensive unit in the country this time a year ago, two members of that O-line are gone, but three return, and that is good enough, according to the gospel of Steele, to be the fifth-best offensive line in 2018.
The Sooners are probably going to have to outscore everybody again to win 10 or 11 games in the coming season. The defense is expected to be better — the bar was so low a year ago that it shouldn’t take much to show some progress in 2018 — but, let’s face it Sooner fans, the top
skill players for Oklahoma are on the other side of the ball.
The Sooner defensive line is way down the list, at No. 45, in Steele’s 2018 position group rankings, and the OU defensive backs, where the biggest gap in the defense existed a year ago, are ranked at No. 44.
The Sooner linebackers don’t even warrant a top-50 ranking heading into this season, according to Steele’s assessment. If this turns out to be reality, it could present a major defensive problem for Oklahoma. Steele has five Big 12 teams (5. Texas, 9. TCU, 34. Iowa State, 36. West Virginia and 47. Texas Tech) ranked in the top 50 at linebacker and ahead of Oklahoma.
The final position group examined by Steele and his colleagues is special teams (placekicking, punting and the respective return teams). The Sooners rank 43rd in this important category, also behind five other Big 12 teams. Steele’s rankings list TCU at No. 3, Baylor, Kansas State and Texas Tech at No. 34 thru 36, respectively, and Texas at No. 33.
This is all speculation, for now. All that really counts is what the players do in reality on the field. Its does indicate, though, where the balance of power rests in Oklahoma football.
The Sooners are pretty solidly a top-10 team nationally on offense. If they don’t get markedly better on defense and special teams, though, the chances of finishing in the top 5 and possibly earning a return trip to the College Football Playoff, or even a spot in the top-10 and receiving a bid to a New Year’s Six bowl, will become nothing more than wishful thinking.
In case you are curious, Steele projects that Oklahoma will meet Georgia in the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day 2019 in a rematch of the 2017 College Football Playoff game between the schools.
Next: Ranking the all-time, top-10 Oklahoma quarterbacks