Oklahoma football: Close wins have been too common under Lincoln Riley

For as many points as the Oklahoma football offense puts on the board, it is troubling how many close wins the Sooners have had with Lincoln Riley as head coach.

A close game is typically defined as a game that is decided by seven or fewer points. Oklahoma has 14 such games in the last three seasons.

The Sooners have won 36 games in Riley’s three seasons as head coach, 11 of those have been by a touchdown or less.

Oklahoma is 11-4 the last three seasons in games decided by seven or fewer points. O.K, yes, a win is a win and will always be better than a loss, but a team that has averaged 45 points a game the last three years should not be playing in that many close games.

In 2019 alone, the Sooners won three games by four or fewer points and two others by just seven points. Their only regular-season loss was by seven points to Kansas State.

Over a stretch of three straight games late in the 2019 season, OU registered three wins by a combined total of eight points. That’s hardly bragging material for a team that was ranked among the nation’s top 10 teams most of last season.

Oklahoma has finished with a 12-2 record in each of the last three seasons, and that is a little deceiving because the Sooners have averaged at least three net close wins a year over that same period.

Here’s something that will shake Sooner fans to the core: If those three close wins a year instead had resulted in losses, OU could easily have been looking at a 9-4 record in any of those seasons and clearly would not have made three consecutive College Football Playoff appearances.

College football stat master Phil Steele has been studying close games for the past two decades. Teams with three net close wins, on average, have  a 68-percent chance of performing worse the following season and an nine-percent chance of staying the same. Obviously, Oklahoma has defied the odds the last three seasons, but that is not a sustainable formula for continued success.

Poor defensive performance obviously has been critical factor in those outcomes, and the Sooner defense did show marked improvement in his first season under defensive coordinator Alex Grinch last year. But the fact remains that close games are becoming too common for the Sooners, and that is concerning.

This troubling trend is becoming way too close for comfort for a program that prides itself on being in national championship contention every season.