Oklahoma football: Best thing, worst thing, biggest surprise from Week 2

All things considered, this past weekend was a ho-hummer, non-event as far as traditional Oklahoma football weekends go.

The Sooners showed up, all right, and so did over 82,000 of their devoted fans, for what amounted to a glorified scrimmage against a much-smaller and lesser opponent that was brave enough to fill a scheduling void, come to play the nation’s No. 4 team and take it on the chin for a nice financial payout.

So that is now thankfully behind us, and we move on to the rest of the season, with the first road trip of the season immediately ahead and a return trip to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, where the UCLA Bruins will be waiting.

Before we turn our full attention to this Saturday and what to anticipate between the Sooners and the Bruins, though, one final look over our shoulder at the events of last weekend and the best thing, worst thing and biggest surprise from the South Dakota game.

Best thing(s)

Participation. Aside from the “W,” which is always a good thing in a sport in which a single loss can potentially derail a team’s championship hopes, Oklahoma was able to rest its starters after a couple of quarters on a hot and humid night and get a lot of players into the game to see what they could do under actual game conditions.

When you look at the stat sheets and the participation chart, it is easy to call Saturday’s game a total team win. There were many contributors for the Sooners on both sides of the ball, as well as on special teams.

Multi-layered offense. By halftime, the Sooners had 28 points on the scoreboard and close to 350 yards of offense. With most of the starters and prime playmakers on the sidelines watching for most of the second half, however, the offense continued to roll behind largely second and third-teamers. OU put up 42 more points over the final 30 minutes and virtually equaled the first-half production.

Kickoffs. It was also good to see redshirt freshman Gabe Brkic’s kickoffs reach the end zone for touchbacks  on nine of 11 kicks against South Dakota. In Austin Seibert’s final season at OU, 83 percent of his kickoffs (91 of 109) were fielded in or went out of the end zone for no return. In the season-opening win over Houston, four of Brkic’s kickoffs were fielded short of the end zone and returned, fortunately not for significant yardage.

Oklahoma Sooners Football

Takeaways. It goes without saying it was good to finally see the defense record not one, not two, but three takeaways in the game after all that has been made of defensive coordinator Alex Grinch’s emphasis on that aspect of the game.

No major injuries. The biggest danger in a game like this is suffering a serious injury to a key player or players unnecessarily —  in a game in which the outcome was never really in doubt. It appears the Sooners escaped without any major injuries to report, and that’s a very good thing.

Worst thing

The worst thing about last Saturday’s game, perhaps, was that it happened at all. It is difficult to draw much from a 70-14 blowout win over a far-inferior opponent going forward other than the opportunity to get a lot of players into the game and work on getting better in areas that need improvement.

Biggest surprise

Rhamondre Stevenson. No one outside of the Oklahoma coaching staff knew much about running back Rhamondre Stevenson when he committed to OU last December out of Cerritos Community College near Los Angeles, California. At 6-feet, 1 inches and 230 pounds, the Las Vegas native runs with power, and that power has been on display late in the Sooners’ first two games.

His very first carry in an OU uniform, in the second half of the Houston game, resulted in a fumble (which may have been as much Jalen Hurts’ fault as Stevenson’s). After that, however, he carried the ball five more times for 41 yards, topped off with a 25-yard touchdown run.

Stevenson entered the South Dakota game early in the third quarter. On an OU first-and-10 on the Sooner 25-yard line midway through the third quarter, the big junior running back broke through the first line of defenders and was off to the races on a 75-yard scoring jaunt, his second rushing touchdown in as many weeks. He finished the game with a team- and game-high 104 rushing yards.

He may be listed as the No. 4 running back on the OU depth chart (behind Trey Sermon, Kennedy Brooks and T.J. Pledger), but something tells me we are going to be seeing and hearing a lot more about Rhamondre Stevenson before the season is over.