Sooners' offense still seeking solutions, now steely defense is showing slippage
By Chip Rouse
The Oklahoma offense shockingly has been a train wreck all season, leaving most of the heavy lifting and victory prospects up to a much improved defensive unit.
Last Saturday against Ole Miss, the offense showed the most spark and forward progress since defeating Tulane 34-19 in the third week of the season. That's the good news from last Saturday. The bad news is that the Sooners were only able to sustain the offensive effectiveness for a half. The second half of Saturday's 26-14 loss at Ole Miss was marred by costly breakdowns on both sides of the ball.
Oklahoma held a 14-10 lead at the half and outgained Ole Miss by almost 50 yards in the opening half, 128 to 80. A stellar defensive effort by the Sooners against the country's No. 2 offensive unit.
Unfortunately, the second half was a completely different story. The Oklahoma defensive front had effectively shut down the Ole Miss run game. The Rebels were averaging 200 yards on the ground through seven games, but were held to just 69 total on Saturday. Instead of settling for checkdowns and intermediate throws in the passing game, as was the case in the first half, Ole Miss started taking more deep shots after halftime and connected on at least five of them against a Sooner secondary that has been exposed over the top by several SEC opponents this season.
Ole Miss completed three passes of over 30 yards in the second half and a couple more of 26 and 28 yards, Of the Rebels' 311 passing yards in the game, 192 of that came in the second half and much of it the result of busted coverage in the back end of the OU defense. Those explosive pass plays contributed to 16 unanswered second-half points by Ole Miss which ended up being the difference in the game.
"At the end of the day, we ended up beating ourselves with some explosive plays on defense," head coach Brent Venables said after the game in the postgame interview session.
"Everything starts and ends with discipline," the Sooner head coach said. "You have to play with it. It can be the smallest fundamental mistake. Putting your eyes where they belong is what it's all about on defense...
"You have to have poise under pressure. Teams are too good. When you make mistakes, they'll punish you."
Oklahoma's defensive lapses in the second half were bad enough, but the Sooner offense also lost its momentum, which pretty much shut the door on a Sooner comeback.
The Oklahoma performance in the first half against Ole Miss, both on offense and defense, was one of the best examples all season of complementary football, which is what the Sooners absolutely need to get back to if they want to win in the SEC.
"We just got to play four quarters of that," said junior linebacker/safey Dasan McCullough after the Ole Miss game. "Third quarter is where we began to fall off the slide a little bit and trying to come back in the fourth quarter, it's a little late."