Oklahoma football: Sooners’ finish the chilling opposite of how they start
By Chip Rouse
If it’s not how you start but how you finish that matters most, Oklahoma football is failing this season.
The Sooners are 2-2 through four games and could easily be 4-0 if not for their inability to finish off games. In back-to-back losses to Kansas State and Iowa State, Oklahoma squandered double-digit first-half leads and were outscored in the second half by a combined margin of 55-27.
Oklahoma led Kansas State by 21 points in the third quarter and allowed that advantage to slowly slip away, ultimately losing by three. The Sooners were up by a touchdown midway through the final quarter at Iowa State and ended up being outscored 14-0 over the final eight minutes to lose by seven.
Even in a game the Sooners won, against Texas, they were ahead by 14 points with less than four minutes remaining and ended up going to four overtimes before pulling out the win.
So what is it that’s causing the fatal fourth-quarter collapses?
Lincoln Riley doesn’t believe its a physical or conditioning problem, even though he acknowledges that offseason training and preseason practice schedules have been greatly impacted this year because of the coronavirus pandemic.
"“I think it’s us maintaining our focus,” the Sooner head coach said in his weekly briefing with reporters on Tuesday.“We’ve had some major errors in some of these fourth quarters that have kept us from winning ball games or being able to separate further.”"
“We see it. We’re addressing it, were emphasizing it as much as we can,” Riley said with a tinge of frustration in his voice. “It just comes down to, we’ve gotta play cleaner football and out brand of football at the end. I think we’ve had some opportunities to close out games, and at times your mentality does shift a bit.”
If you discount the Missouri State game, which was a giant mismatch from the get-go, the brutal facts are Oklahoma has outscored its three conference opponents 27-3 in the opening quarter and outgained them by a startling 478 yards to 189. Over the same time frame, the OU offense is averaging 7.47 yards per play.
By the time the fourth quarter rolls around, however, we’re seeing a completely different Oklahoma team — and not just on the defensive side, on offense and special teams, as well.
In the fourth quarter alone, when many games are won or lost, the Sooners have been outscored by their Big 12 opponents a staggering 45-10. Moreover, they have been outgained in the final 15 minutes 357 yards to 193. The Sooners are not only running fewer plays in the final frame, but are only averaging 3.45 yards per play, less than half of their first-quarter production.
And here’s an even more chilling fact if you are an OU fan: The Sooners have been outscored 31-0 in the final eight minutes of games this season.
Riley pointed out that OU has won a lot of games in recent seasons by being able to close them out in the fourth quarter, typically with a punishing running game and with the defense perhaps bending a little in terms of yards allowed but not breaking, making it difficult for teams to score.
“That’s probably the thing for us,” Riley said. “We’re putting ourselves in some decent situations (late in games). We’ve gotta execute in those situations much better and we’ve gotta coach better in those situations.”
One thing is fairly certain: If Oklahoma doesn’t get its fourth-quarter problems fixed and soon, the Big 12 preseason favorite could easily find itself finishing in the bottom half of the conference