Oklahoma football: Where do the Sooners go from here?
By Chip Rouse
There’s no way around it. The Oklahoma football loss to Kansas State was a bad, bad loss, and one that will surely cost the Crimson and Cream.
But it isn’t as if the Sooners haven’t been in this position before — every season that Lincoln Riley has been in Norman, as a matter of fact — and overcome all remaining obstacles to claw their way back to the top of the Big 12 and national relevancy.
This season, however, the adversity has struck much earlier in the schedule than usual — save, of course, for the 2016 season, when the Sooners lost two of their first three games. This was a conference loss, though, and those hurt the most.
Losing the second game of the season is potentially both good news and bad news for this year’s OU team. Good in the sense that losses early in the season generally are less detrimental than losses in November and later. The bad news is, with only a 10-game schedule, you have fewer opportunities to recover and less margin for error the rest of the way to remain in the championship hunt.
And anything less for Oklahoma is not considered a successful season.
The loss to Kansas State on Saturday was a real punch to the gut. The Sooners had won 53 consecutive games when leading going into the fourth quarter, and on Saturday, they led by two touchdowns, 35-21. But the wheels fell off in every aspect of Oklahoma’s game over the final 15 minutes.
The Sooners allowed 17 unanswered points to the come-from-behind and double-digit underdog Wildcats in the fourth quarter, greatly aided by a fumble and a blocked Oklahoma punt that led to two K-State scores. Meanwhile, Oklahoma managed just 37 yards of offense in 12 plays after producing. nearly 500 yards of offense and 35 points through three quarters.
Oklahoma has shown throughout its Big 12 championship reign of the past five years that it is resilient and able to recover from a regular-season loss. The Sooners have not lost back-to-back games in the regular season since 1999, which is a positive note as they head to Iowa State this weekend.
But OU is also heading into the most difficult stretch in its 2020 schedule. Beginning this weekend at Iowa State, in successive weeks the Sooners will face Texas in Dallas in the annual Red River Showdown, and TCU and Texas Tech on the road before returning home to host Kansas on Nov. 7.
It’s true that the loss to Kansas State in the second game of the season is not a fatal blow to Oklahoma’s Big 12 title defense, but it is also safe to say that two regular-season losses probably is. So how the Sooners perform over the next four weeks will be absolutely critical. A loss to Texas on Oct. 12 probably means OU will be looking at a third-place finish in the conference at best.
On the brighter side, run the October gauntlet unscathed, and a warning will need to be issued to the rest of the Big 12: Watch out for the Sooners in November. Oklahoma has won 20 consecutive games in the month of November and is 64-11 in the month since 2000.
But first things first. Riley and his assistant coaches have a lot to clean up and improve on if this group is going to win any of its October contests. The offense — with a highly-talented, but also young quarterback who has had just two career starts at this level — showing several chinks in its highly polished armor this season, and a schizophrenic defense that is still struggling to find its way, the Sooners appear more vulnerable than they have been in any of Riley’s three previous seasons as head coach.
Was last Saturday’s loss an aberration or an early warning sign of the danger that lies directly ahead for the now 18th ranked Oklahoma football team. We will know the answer to that question in short order.