You could see the disappointment all over the face of Oklahoma football coach Lincoln Riley as he sat down to address the media following Kansas State’s 48-41 upset victory over the Sooners.
When he started speaking, you quickly heard the passion and pained frustration in describing the bitter result of a team that played incredibly poorly “against a good football team in a hostile road environment.
“When you play the way we did it’s going to get down to a coin flip play at the end, and it didn’t go our way,” said the Sooners’ head coach.
The truth is, this might have been the worst game Oklahoma has played in Riley’s two-plus seasons as head coach. And while it’s easy to blame Alex Grinch’s defense for the loss, the reality is there was no phase of the Sooners’ disappointing performance at Kansas State on Saturday that deserves a passing grade.
Yes, the defense, or lack of much thereof, deserves a good share of the criticism, but the offense squandered several opportunities in both halves. Special teams was guilty of a costly fumble on a kickoff, several short kickoffs that resulted in K-State returns and a punt that traveled a net-19 yards and set up the K-State offense on the OU side of the field, which the Wildcats quickly converted into a touchdown four plays later.
And the coaching staff doesn’t escape its share of the blame, either. In the nightmarish third quarter, in which K-State overpowered the Sooners with 17 unanswered points and built up an 18-point advantage that grew to 25 early in the fourth quarter, the Oklahoma performance on both sides of the ball appeared as if the life had been completely sucked out of what was supposed to be the nation’s 5th-ranked team.
Riley and his staff were outcoached by the staff on the home sidelines, and on this particular day, at least, head coach Chris Kleiman’s Wildcats were the ones who played like a top-five ranked team.
O.K., what’s done is done. The Sooners have to put what happened Saturday’s Halloween-like performance behind them and focus on what’s ahead. They can’t do anything about the K-State loss, but they have complete control over how they respond to it and how they perform the remainder of the season.
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For better or for worse, Oklahoma has a bye week before returning to action a week from this Saturday for a night game (that’s not a misprint) at home against Iowa State.
"“There’s everything out there left for us, and we know that,” Riley told reporters, in the postgame interview session, he told the team in the locker room after the game. “We can’t listen to all the noise.”"
The media wasted little time in informing us that the K-State loss, especially the way it happened, deals a critical blow to OU’s College Football Playoff chances. Despite the seven-point final outcome and 18-point OU fourth-quarter rally, the Sooners were totally dominated and outplayed by Kansas State, and there is no getting around it.
Maybe so, but if anyone knows the roadmap for remaining in national title contention from a single loss, it is the Oklahoma Sooners. After all, they have two strong examples to show of making the Playoff as a one-loss team (in 2015 and 2018).
OU also made the Playoff as a one-loss team in 2017, but there were four one-loss Playoff teams that season, and the Sooners overall body of work was good enough to earn them the No. 2 seed.
So what do the now 10th-ranked Sooners have in front of them? The month of November brings two home games (the Nov. 9 contest with Iowa State and Nov. 23 with TCU) and two away contests (a huge game at Baylor on Nov. 16 and at Oklahoma State for Bedlam on Nov. 30) to complete the regular season.
Although making the College Football Playoff for a third consecutive season, and fourth time overall, is a long shot at best, it is still mathematically possible. For any chance at all, however, Oklahoma must go undefeated, and probably in decisive fashion, the rest of the way. That includes a victory in the Big 12 Championship game on Dec. 7 at AT&T Stadium in Dallas.
Refrain from waving the white flag. For the glass-half-empty crowd, here’s some food for thought: Oklahoma has not lost a game in November since 2014, and the Sooners have prevailed in nine of the 10 Big 12 Championship games they’ve played in.