Oklahoma football: Sooners need to take a breath, finish with a flourish

Seven straight Oklahoma football wins have now been followed with back-to-back losses.

Before the Kansas game a little over the week ago, the ESPN computers were giving the Sooners the best chance of not just making the College Football Playoff but coming away with the national championship trophy. That may have been a little far-fetched and now, of course is out of the question.

After the 27-24 loss to Oklahoma State on Saturday, many fair-weather fans are now writing OU off and wishing the Sooners best of luck when they join an even stronger conference.

Pump the brakes, people. The doomsayers have short memories. The 2023 Sooners have already won more games than they did all of last season, and there are still three regular-season games remaining plus a postseason bowl.

Sure, the Oklahoma goal every season is to win a national championship. Why not reach for the brass ring, right? Realistically, however, Brent Venables and Co. believed OU could legitimately compete for the Big 12 championship. And after seven games and seven wins, the Sooners were in the driver’s seat to accomplish just that.

Then came the back-to-back road losses to Kansas and Oklahoma State, and the Sooners’ sit at a modest, by Oklahoma standards, 7-2. This is not the same Sooner team that outmuscled top three-ranked Texas in the annual Red River Rivalry. For one thing, OU can’t seem to get out of its own way. The Sooners committed three turnovers in each of the last two games after committing just five total in the first seven games.

The main thing Venables wanted to see out of the Sooners in his second season at the helm was improvement. You can check that box. The OU offense, despite its stumbling and sputtering the last two games, ranks seventh best in the nation with the eighth best scoring offense. The real improvement, though, is on the defensive side. The Sooners rank 75th among FBS teams in total defense, an upgrade from 122nd in the rankings last season, and are 27th in scoring defense, from 99th a year ago.

The question now is where does OU go from here? Contrary to what some may believe, there is still much to play for. Start with a 10-win season, which would be four games better than in the 2022 season. With the Sooners’ impressive start, fans forget the win projections for Oklahoma by the Las Vegas oddsmakers in the preseason was 9.5.

Sooner players like six-season veteran Drake Stoops believe there is still much to play for in championship November.

“I come in here day in and day out, 10 hours up here every day, and for me there’s a lot left to play for,” Stoops told reporters on Monday. “I’m not really listening to what people say. I don’t care if we’re 0-8.

“I’m playing ball because I love to play football. I love my teammates. I love my coaches. I love the University of Oklahoma. It’s really that simple. I got a lot of pride for this place.”

It would be easy to consider packing it in and just go through the motions in the final three games this season, but that does not appear to be the mental makeup of this Oklahoma team, and it clearly is not the mindset of the Sooner head coach.

The rest of the season begins this Saturday with a home game hosting West Virginia. That is followed by a final road trip of the season to BYU, and then it’s back home on the Friday of Thanksgiving weekend to take on TCU.

According to the ESPN Matchup Predictor, the Sooners’ win probability against West Virginia is 89 percent, 91.7 percent on the road at BYU and 84.7 percent in the home finale against TCU. That would give Oklahoma a 10-2 record to the regular season and a chance to make it 11 wins in the postseason.