Oklahoma football: Three red flags as watchouts for Sooners heading into second half
By Chip Rouse
All’s grand in the Oklahoma football world right now with an unbeaten record, a top-five national ranking, a giant momentum-boosting rivalry win over a very good Texas team and a week off before resuming the gauntlet that awaits over the second half of every college football season.
What a difference a year makes. Oklahoma has had bad seasons before when the football team was only able to muster seven or eight wins. That qualifies as an unsuccessful season by OU standards. When that has happened, though, the team has always managed to get right back on its feet and to a state of normalcy, which in Norman is considered a minimum or 10 wins. and a conference championship.
Even the most loyal of Sooner football fans must have had some trepidation of what lay in store for the for the future of OU football after an almost unheard of losing season in 2022. You can actually count on your hand the number of losing season Oklahoma has had in football since Bud Wilkinson arrived on the scene in the late 1940s.
Everything has been coming up roses for Oklahoma over the first half of the schedule, but as head coach Brent Venables pointed out in his press conference this week, the second half of the schedule poses an even greater challenge, with three tough road opponents (Kansas, Oklahoma State and BYU).
Barring injuries to key players, here are three areas where the Sooners are most vulnerable heading into the second half of the 2023 season:
Avoiding complacency/responding to adversity
When you are having a lot of success, it is easy to fall into the trap of taking some of that success for granted and underestimating your opponent. Every team in the Big 12 is capable of beating any other team on any given day, and when you let your guard down, even a little, you set yourself up for failure. The other thing is when you are sitting atop the league in the standings with one or fewer losses, you are going to get every team’s best shot, and you have to be able to respond to that.
Because of Oklahoma’s historic success, the Sooners are always going to bring the best out in every opponent they play. Brent Venables and his coaches are keenly aware of how important it is to take every opponent seriously and the critical need to prepare for every opponent as if it was the biggest game of the year.
The Sooners have led for all but 12 minutes and 11 seconds in the first six games of the season, so they haven’t faced much in-game adversity. Arguably the most adversity they have had to face so far in the 2023 season was the comeback in the game with Texas when the Sooners found themselves down 30-27 on their own 25-yard line with just 77 seconds left to go in the game. They passed that challenge with flying colors, going 75 yards in five plays and with 15 seconds to spare. But what will the future hold if faced with similar challenges over the next six games?
Run game is highly vulnerable
Although Oklahoma has been moderately effective running the football this season, the team has struggled with consistency and finding the most effective running back combination. The Sooners have used five different running backs through six games. The team’s leading rusher, Junior Tawee Walker, has just 239 net yards through six games, an average of just 4.5 yards per carry. On a yards per carry basis, quarterback Dillon Gabriel has been the most effective at 4.8 yards per attempt.
The running back position was believed in the offseason to be the strongest position group on the team, but offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby and running backs coach DeMarco Murray are still looking for someone to emerge from that talented group as the No. 1 running back. Establishing an effective run game is a primary ingredient for Oklahoma’s No. 4-ranked passing attack and a balanced offense.
Giving up big plays downfield
Although Oklahoma is stronger at every level of the defense this season, the Sooners still give up an average of 353 yards per game. Most of that has come through the air, and several of the Sooners’ opponents have burned them on big downfield pass plays and a couple of their opponents (namely Iowa State and Texas) have gotten loose for run plays of 20-plus yards.
The good news for Oklahoma is the defense has been able to recover from those big plays, ranking 11th among FBS teams in third-down conversion percentage defense, and the Sooners are even stingier in the Red Zone, holding opponents to just 29 percent success in scoring from inside the 20-yard line.