Oklahoma football: Sooner pride bloodied, but not beaten

Spoiler alert: It’s probably time for Oklahoma football fans to face up to reality.

This is a good Oklahoma team, but not a great one. Not yet, anyway. Right now, good is the enemy of great.

Every great football school — yes, even the likes of Alabama, Clemson and Ohio State, who seemingly never experience a bad season — goes through a down period. I hate to bring it up, but this may be a slight adjustment period for the Big 12’s most dominant team for the past two decades.

Even under Bob Stoops, who won 190 games at Oklahoma, the most of any Big 12 head coach, and 10 conference championships in 18 seasons, the Sooners had several seasons in which they finished in the middle of the pack and sustained four and even five losses. And those weren’t Oklahoma teams that were void of star players.

The 2020 Sooners — favored by just about every college football preview publication and the media that cover the Big 12 to win the conference again this season — have started out with two straight conference losses. That hasn’t happened since 1998 under John Blake, when OU actually lost to their first four Big 12 opponents and five of eight total on the way to a 5-6 sub-.500 season. Oklahoma also lost its first two conference games the season before that and ended up winning just two Big 12 games that year.

Before 1997 and 1998, you have to go all the way back to the 1961 season to the last time an Oklahoma team lost back-to-back conference games to start the season.

I point this out not to suggest that OU is going to end this season with a losing record — which hasn’t happened, incidentally, since the aforementioned 1998 season, but rather to acknowledge that some years are better than others. And to their credit, the Sooners have experienced mostly great years under both Bob Stoops and Lincoln Riley. And the years were pretty outstanding during the Bud Wilkinson and Barry Switzer eras, as well.

The games Oklahoma lost the past two weekends were both winnable games and, frankly, games the Sooners could have and probably should have won.

But they didn’t, and the truth is they have only themselves to blame. In recent past seasons, the Sooners would have found a way to win those games, even if it meant coming back from a 25-point deficit (e.g., at Baylor last season).

Riley’s 2020 edition of Oklahoma football is loaded with talent and has plenty of playmakers, but it is a relatively young team, including at quarterback, where former No. 1 QB recruit, Spencer Rattler is the fourth new starter at that position is as many seasons. Rattler has unquestionable talent and ability. In fact, in both losses, he has been the best Sooner player on the field, but he has only started three games in his OU career. That’s actually good news, because it means he is only going to get better over time.

The same can be said for the young receiving corps and the young running backs, and with another outstanding recruiting class expected, we know Oklahoma is going to be back to its old self and a formidable force again in the coming seasons.

But what about the rest of this Oklahoma football season?

The Sooners are beating themselves, and that is the worst way to lose. They have jumped out to double-digit leads in both games they lost.

Oklahoma is outscoring its opponents 48-3 this season in the first-quarter alone and 79-20 in the first half. The second half has been a different story all together, however. In the second half, the Sooners have been outscored 55-34 by their three opponents. That latter statistic speaks to not being able to finish games.

Costly penalties have taken away big offensive plays by Oklahoma as well as allowed both Kansas State and Iowa State to sustain drives.

The Sooner defense, which was making important gains in its first season under new defensive coordinator Alex Grinch last season, seems to have taken a step back in the early going this season. The OU defense pitched a shutout in game one, but experienced miscommunication and big-time coverage breakdowns in the late stages of the Kansas State game and apparently forgot how to tackle and get a player to the ground in the loss on Saturday at Iowa State.

Coming into the season, the Oklahoma coaches believed that the team’s two biggest strength areas were at defensive back and on the offensive line. Neither of those two areas has performed well the past two weeks, which could be cause for bigger concern as the season moves forward.

Oklahoma’s rushing production is down from the past several seasons, but the Sooners continue to produce offensively, averaging 513 yards and 38 points a game. Those kind of numbers rank among the best in the college game so far this season and are going to win you more games than not.

There’s no question, though, that Oklahoma needs to get better defensively and provide more support to the offense. Much of OU’s extraordinary success over the last 20 seasons has been the result of simply being able to outscore everybody. This team is still capable of putting plenty of points on the scoreboard, but not quite with the same consistency or efficiency as in year’s past.

That means the Sooners are more vulnerable than they have been the past five seasons, and a couple of Big 12 teams have already capitalized on the opportunity. The next three games are going to pose a stern test to Oklahoma’s long-standing pride and perseverance. As a 13-time Big 12 champion. the Sooners are always going to get everyone’s best shot.

OU does not play at home the rest of this month. In between time, the Sooners have the annual Red River rivalry battle royal with Texas this weekend, followed by successive trips to TCU and Texas Tech before returning home to host Kansas on Nov. 7.

Under both Stoops and Riley, the Sooners have shown numerous times the attitude and ability to bounce back from adversity. Now with two losses, three games into the season, Oklahoma’s back is definitely against the wall, but those two losses are not final nor fatal. There is still two-thirds of the season remaining.

The Sooners have lost a midseason game in each of Riley’s three previous seasons as head coach. Their response was to win all of their remaining regular-season game on the way to the Big 12 Championship. They can still play for and win the Big 12 with two losses,

That is a tall order after witnessing what we’ve seen from OU so far, but still achievable.

Even if the Sooners are not able to defend their Big 12 crown this season, all is not lost. Sooner fans would do well to accept the fact that Oklahoma could easily lose one or two more games. While that would not be considered a successful season by Oklahoma’s high standards, perhaps the best way to think about it is like a temporary rest stop.

This group is definitely going to get better — whether yet this season or next — and the pipeline of incoming talent is as strong as ever. The message for the rest of the Big 12: Enjoy it while you can.