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Oklahoma football: Five reasons OU will win season-opener handily

By Chip Rouse

NORMAN, OK - NOVEMBER 10: Defensive back Brendan Radley-Hiles #44 of the Oklahoma Sooners gestures to the crowd before the game against the Oklahoma State Cowboys at Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium on November 10, 2018 in Norman, Oklahoma. Oklahoma defeated Oklahoma State 48-47. (Photo by Brett Deering/Getty Images)
NORMAN, OK - NOVEMBER 10: Defensive back Brendan Radley-Hiles #44 of the Oklahoma Sooners gestures to the crowd before the game against the Oklahoma State Cowboys at Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium on November 10, 2018 in Norman, Oklahoma. Oklahoma defeated Oklahoma State 48-47. (Photo by Brett Deering/Getty Images) /
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Everybody seems to be expected a high-scoring shootout, much like recent versions of Oklahoma football, when the Sooners open the new campaign on Sunday night hosting an offensive-minded Houston team.

The Las Vegas line favors the Sooners by three touchdowns over Houston, but some of the cable network analysts as well as a few other college football writers and analysts see this game being high scoring but much closer than betting odds indicate.

My assessment falls somewhere in between. I do see both offenses more than capable of putting up plenty of points, but I believe the OU defense will outperform the Houston defense, which actually ranked worse than the Sooners a year ago, force a couple of critical turnovers, and win this game by 17 to 21 points.

The not so pleasant news in what otherwise will be a good opening win against a challenging opponent is that the Sooner defense will still show some carryover effects of not keeping opponents out of the end zone.

With the game just hours away after a long but eventful offseason, I offer four reasons the country’s No. 4 team will come out strong and surprise some with a convincing victory worthy of a top-ranked team.

  • Jalen Hurts’ debut in a Sooner uniform will not disappoint. Quite the contrary. He is not Baker Mayfield or Kyler Murray. What Hurts brings is a third dimension to what might be the nation’s best running trio, with a supporting cast of Kennedy Brooks and Trey Sermon, two of college football’s best running backs. And don’t believe the nonsense that Hurts is not an effective passer. The Houston defense will find out otherwise, and so will the media critics. Look for the former Alabama QB to deliver 250 yards passing and another 40 rushing in his OU debut.
  • The OU offense line, which features four new starters this season, will not grade out as high as last year’s award-winning, nation-best unit, but they will perform well enough to protect Jalen Hurts and give him ample time to find open receivers and make plays downfield. They also will do their job in blocking assignments, opening up running lanes for OU’s outstanding running-back duo of Brooks and Sermon. Final grade: solid B, which should get even better as the season continues.
  • While much of the first-game focus will be on the debut of Jalen Hurts, perhaps even bigger for Sooner fans, and certainly those who anticipate the same old Oklahoma — all offense and no defense — is whether the Sooner “D” under new coordinator Alex Grinch will be any better. The one area where we should see a big change will be in their quickness and aggressive play on the ball. That should pay off in more takeaways, translating into more offensive possessions and more opportunities to score. We will start to see that improvement right out of the chute in Game 1 this season.
  • Coaching — Lincoln Riley is only in his third season as the head coach at Oklahoma, but he is an quarterback whisperer and an offensive genius and may be the best in college football in both areas. Houston coach Dana Holgorsen is also known as an offense-oriented coach, although in seven seasons at West Virginia, Holgorsen never beat the Sooners. Some writers have written this past week that Holgorsen’s familiarity with OU’s offensive schemes will work against the Sooners in their rematch with Houston. That hasn’t proved to be true so far, and the Houston defense is much worse that the one Holgorsen had at West Virginia. Riley and his staff will outcoach Holgorsen. Enough said.
  • Finally, this game is being played at Oklahoma — at the Palace on the Prairie, Gaylord Family — Oklahoma Memorial Stadium — where the Sooners have lost only 10 times in the last 123 games, dating back to the opening game in 1999. They won’t lose this one, either.
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