Oklahoma football 2018 kickoff preview: Games 5 through 8
By Sixto Ortiz
TCU Horned Frogs seek to avenge two losses to OU in 2017
Gary Patterson’s TCU teams are always known for great defense and mistake-free play. If it wasn’t for OU’s recent domination of the Big 12 Conference, TCU might be sitting on its own run of Big 12 dominance.
Oklahoma got the best of TCU both times the teams met last season: The Sooners won 38-20 in the regular-season game in Norman, and defeated the Horned Frogs 41-17 in the Big 12 championship game.
In the first matchup in 2017, besides Baker Mayfield’s typically stellar performance, Rodney Anderson had himself a monster game, running the football for 161 yards and two scores and also delivering 139 receiving yards and two more scores. The TCU defense simply had no answer for Anderson in that game.
The Big 12 championship was an even more lopsided affair, and even though the Horned Frogs kept Anderson in check, Oklahoma used other weapons in its substantive offensive arsenal to put away TCU, helped along by the Sooner defense capitalizing on some Horned Frog miscues.
Gary Patterson recently announced sophomore Shawn Robinson will take over the quarterbacking duties for the departed Kenny Hill. Michael Collins, a Penn State transfer, will be Collins’ backup.
Robinson saw very limited action in 2017 as Hill’s backup, so he enters 2018 as pretty much an unknown quantity. Robinson will benefit, however, from an experienced backfield, as juniors Darius Anderson (768 yards and eight TD’s in 2017) and Sewo Olonilua (330 yards, seven scores) both return.
TCU may rely more on the running game in 2018, so defensively Oklahoma must shut down the Horned Frogs’ run game and force their offense to win the game through the air.
The Oklahoma secondary will have to ensure they don’t gift Robinson with a breakout game. This road game in Fort Worth has all the hallmarks of a trap game for the Sooners, who may come in a bit deflated after the Cotton Bowl match with Texas a week prior.
Defensively, TCU’s stingy run defense (5th nationally in 2017) returns a lot of experience along the line and linebacking corps. But, according to ESPN the program suffered a setback when talented sophomore defensive tackle Ross Blacklock, who was the co-Big 12 defensive freshman of the year, suffered an Achilles tendon injury in practice.
Still, the TCU defense is stout enough all across the board to pose a problem for the Oklahoma offense, especially if the Sooner passing game falters and Lincoln Riley is forced to rely on the ground game to win this one. This is one game that TCU is more than capable of winning at home, and one we believe they will win in a slugfest.
Prediction: TCU 28, Oklahoma 21