Oklahoma football: Defense finally matters again in Sooner football
By Chip Rouse
During Lincoln Riley’s time at Oklahoma, defense was an afterthought, an element of the game that didn’t really matter as long as you were able to score more points than the opposition.
Riley was brought to Norman by head coach Bob Stoops for his offensive mastery. That turned out to be a genius move on the offensive side, but as Oklahoma’s offensive numbers got better and better under Riley’s direction, including seven consecutive seasons in the top-10 in scoring and four in the top three in total offense.
Meanwhile, the Oklahoma defense was becoming progressively worse, going from 29th in the country in total defense in 2020 to 76th in 2021, Riley’s final season at OU, to almost rock bottom last season, finishing 122nd out of 131 FBS teams, one of the Sooners’ worst defensively in the modern era.
The 2022 season was under the watch of Brent Venables, considered one of the best defensive minds in the college game. Everyone falsely assumed that Venables would come in and immediately turnaround Oklahoma’s floundering defense. That, of course, didn’t happen and, in retrospect, probably didn’t have much of a chance of happening given the underlying circumstances.
The reality is, didn’t attract elite defensive talent under Riley and defensive coordinator Alex Grinch, and the defensive roster that Venables inherited was critically deficient in both depth and talent.
The good news for Sooner fans is that the situation is finally changing. Venables and his staff recruited especially well on the defensive side in its top-five 2023 class and that is continuing again with the 2024 class. Both classes are loaded with elite defensive talent, including five-star prospects that wouldn’t even look at Oklahoma previously. Venables has also attacked the transfer portal, bringing in solid defensive help with experience to fill short-term needs and add depth to the defensive roster.
The fruits of those actions were on full display last weekend with the Sooner defense posting its first shutout in two years and the first over an FBS opponent in the previous seven seasons (56-0 over Kansas State in 2016).
On the way to pitching the shutout, the OU defense, going two and three-deep in the depth chart, held Arkansas State to just 48 yards on the ground and 208 yards of total offense, something the Sooners had not done in the last two seasons. It’s just one game, of course, and against an FBS opponent that is far inferior to Oklahoma or any team in the Big 12, but it is clearly a positive performance and one to build on.
This week’s opponent, SMU, a team with more offensive weapons than Ark State, will pose a much stiffer challenge to the Oklahoma defense and will give us a much better read on its level of improvement over the past several seasons.
One addition to the Sooner defense who is already making and seeing a difference is former Texas Tech transfer Reggie Pearson. Pearson has been on the other side against the Sooners the last two season and is the starting free safety for OU this season.
Pearson told reporters after last week’s season-opening win that there is a difference between last year’s unit and this year’s unit.
“We are a fast, complete, suffocating defense,” Pearson said. “I feel like that’s what has changed from last year from what I’ve seen from OU’s defense to now.
“Just being on every single play and rallying to everything and making sure we get guys down. We’re super physical and faster than a lot of people thought we were.”
Playing together, playing physical and aggressive to the ball. That was a huge difference in Game 1 this season from what we saw a year ago. As well as the Sooner “D” performed in Game 1 of the 2023 season, it was far from perfect, as Venables pointed out in his postgame press conference and again in his weekly television show on Monday night.
One of the major emphases in spring practice and in fall training camp was getting more pressure on the quarterback. Against Arkansas State, the Sooners recorded zero sacks. Venables said that was largely because the Arkansas State quarterback was taking quick drops and because of maximum protection by the offensive line on deep pass patterns.
“You’re rushing four and they have seven or eight-man protection (of the quarterback) several times,” Venables explained.
With SMU’s explosive offense, you aren’t likely to see that kind of max protection on Saturday. So if the OU pass rush isn’t able to get home a second week in a row. that could spell future problems for the Sooners as the schedule gets increasingly more difficult in the weeks ahead.
To be continued…