Oklahoma football: Sooners show up and show out in season-ending loss

“You are what your record says you are,” a legendary NFL head coach liked to say, and the Oklahoma football team’s 2022 season came to a disappointing end with a 35-32 Cheez-It Bowl loss to Florida State and its first losing season in 24 years.

Brent Venables’ first season as head coach of the Sooners ended with a 6-7 record. Certainly not the kind of season that anyone in Sooner Nation is accustomed to or simply shrugs off as just one of those years.

Despite all the despair and frustration associated with the 2023 Oklahoma football season, there is a lot to be said for how they finished out the season, especially the way they showed up in Orlando on Thursday night against the No. 13 team in the country playing virtually at full strength.

The Sooners were on the short end of the scoreboard in four of their last five games, including the loss in the Cheez-It Bowl. But all four losses were by three points.

A loss is still a loss, but to hear Brent Venables and the guys talk in the press conference that followed the Cheez-It Bowl game, to the man they echoed several consistent themes:

• We are all scarred up from the challenging season.
• We all recognize that a 6-7 season is not acceptable at Oklahoma.
• We are all proud of this team and the brotherhood on the field and the locker room and are fully behind the culture coach Venables is building.
• We know what the future looks like. The foundation was laid this season. The winning will come.

This was not just Venables speaking, but numerous players said similar things in the postgame interviews.

No one gave OU much of a chance going into the game against Florida State. To further compound the Oklahoma issues, the Sooners took the field without their season leader in rushing (Eric Gray), without three starters on the offensive line (OTs Wanya Morris and Anton Harrison and center Andrew Raym), and a key edge rusher (Jalen Redmond) on the defensive line.

Despite all of these shortcomings, Oklahoma put up as strong of a fight as we’ve seen from this team all season. And, in truth, the Sooners actually could have won this game, had they been able to capitalize on at least one of several golden opportunities they were given.

Taking a deep dive into the Cheez-It Bowl game itself, here are three prime takeaways from OU’s performance:

• Oklahoma’s ability to run the ball — with two freshman running backs and behind a patchwork offensive line missing three starters — was truly impressive and bodes well for the Sooner rushing offense for the next several years. Both OU running backs reached the century mark, with Jovantae Barnes credited with 108 net rushing yards in the game and Gavin Sawchuk with 100. Both also had a touchdown run.
• Oklahoma’s 496 yards of total offense was the second most against the Florida State defense all season. The Seminoles led the Atlantic Coast Conference in total defense, allowing opponents an average of 307.3 yards a game.
• Early in the second quarter with Oklahoma leading 14-3, the Sooner defense stopped Florida State on a fourth-down try at the OU 43-yard line. Three plays later and after a 46-yard, tip-toe sideline pass caught by marvelous Marvin Mims, the Sooners were set up at the FSU 16-yard line. On the next play, Sawchuk took it 16 yards up the middle for an apparent touchdown that would up the Sooner lead to 21-3. The only problem was, there was a penalty flag thrown back at the line of scrimmage. The penalty was offensive holding on OU, which wiped the touchdown off the board. The Florida State defense held from there and forced an Oklahoma field goal attempt. Zach Schmit’s kick sailed wide right, and the Sooners came away with no points from a series that could have changed the outcome of the game.

Nevertheless, at the end of the road that was the 2022 season, there just wasn’t enough Sooner Magic in this game or throughout the season to change the course of the 2022 campaign for Oklahoma.

It will be a long offseason, but with a top-five recruiting class heavily loaded with elite defensive prospects and some big wins in the transfer portal, the future looks much brighter for the Sooners than the season just endured