Oklahoma football: Sooners’ defensive numbers sparkling in double-digit win

Coming into Saturday’s contest, Iowa State had suffered four consecutive losses by a combined 14 points. The Oklahoma football Sooners handed the Cyclones a fifth straight defeat by that same two-touchdown number, winning 27-13.

It was a grind-it-out kind of game with offensive numbers tough to come by on both sides. Brent Venables and offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby knew going into the game with Iowa State that the Sooners were going to have to be patient on offense and pick their spots carefully in order to advance the football and put up points against the country’s 10 best defense.

When Iowa State had the ball, it was a matchup of the nation’s 88th-best offense going against an Oklahoma defense that has been struggling again this season and entered the game on Saturday ranked 116th out of 131 FBS teams.

OU’s performance was far from perfect on both offense and defense, but the Sooners were able to make the plays they needed to at the right times in the game to come out on top and post a second consecutive Big 12 win after suffering three consecutive losses to open conference play.

It was a complementary effort by both the offense and defense, and even special teams, and when Oklahoma plays like that, the Sooners usually win.

The Sooners have now won 25 of the last 26 times they have gone on the road to play in Ames, Iowa. OU is 18-2 in the Big 12 era against Iowa State, and 15 of those wins have been by at least 10 points. All-time, Oklahoma has won 79 of the 88 games played against the Cyclones, the highest winning percentage by any Power Five team against an opponent in a series of at least 50 games

Here are some of the other numbers that help tell the story of Saturday’s OU win:

0 — Oklahoma did not allow a touchdown by Iowa State in the first half. It was the first time the Sooners had held a Big 12 opponent without a touchdown in the first half this season.

1 — Eric Gray’s fumble inside the red zone on the Sooners’ second possession of the game was his first this season and just the fourth of his career. That thwarted another potential OU scoring opportunity that might have made the final margin of victory even wider.

3 — The Oklahoma defense picked off three Iowa State passes in the game. The last time the Sooners had that many interceptions in a game was 2020 in the Cotton Bowl against Florida.

13 — Kicker Zach Schmit accounted for all 13 of Oklahoma’s first-half points with a 41-yard field goal and a two-yard touchdown run on a fake field-goal attempt.

49.3 — OU punter Michael Turk averaged 49.3 yards on six punts, one of which was for 61 yards and was downed at the Iowa State two-yard line. He also threw the first touchdown pass of his career, flipping a fake field-goal attempt to Zach Schmit, who ran it two yards for a touchdown in the second quarter.

66 — Oklahoma held Iowa State to just 66 yards on the ground, the second fewest rushing yards in a game allowed by the Sooner defense this season. Iowa State has just nine rushing yards in the first half and was minus-14 yards in the second quarter.

101 — Eric Gray finished the game with 101 yards rushing and 5.0 yards per rush. It was the fifth time this season that Gray has eclipsed the 100-yard mark. Entering the game, Iowa State had allowed an average of just 3.3 yards per rush.

144 — Total yards of offense by Iowa State in the first half against OU, the fewest yards allowed by the Sooners defense to an opponent this season.

182 — Oklahoma had 182 rushing yards in the game. That was 77 more than the 105.3 average rushing yards Iowa State had allowed per game this season.

58, 716 — Attendance at Iowa State’s Jack Trice Stadium on Saturday.