Coach Speak: Oklahoma Attacking Mental Mistakes Head On After Loss
NORMAN — Oklahoma has plenty to fix before taking the field against TCU.
The No. 18-ranked Sooners committed mistake after mistake against Kansas State Saturday night, resulting in a 41-34 defeat at Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium.
From tackling issues to procedural penalties, both sides of the ball contributed to the defeat.
OU has just one week to iron out all the problems as the Sooners hit the road this weekend to play an explosive TCU offense.
Offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby and defensive coordinator Ted Roof met with the media on Monday, and outlined the areas where Oklahoma will have to improve during their weekly press conference.
Tackling Problems Return
Whether it was Adrian Martinez, Deuce Vaughn or Malik Knowles with the football for Kansas State, the Sooner defense struggled to get any Wildcat playmakers on the ground on Saturday.
Brent Venables’ defense was moved at the point of attack, and the linebackers and secondary struggled to tackle in open space both by taking bad angles and failing to break down and tackle Martinez and Vaughn.
Physicality hadn’t been a problem for OU at any point during the first three weeks, but it’ll be back to the basics this week at practice for the Sooner defense before headed to Ft. Worth.
“It’s something we focus on every week,” Roof said about the lack of physicality. “We fell short last week, but our approach each and every week is to be a physical football team, tackle well, limit yards after contact. We didn’t do that. We didn’t do very good job at the end of the night. Again, everything that went wrong is my fault. I’ve got to help everybody get it fixed.”
After the loss, the defense admitted there was a bad practice on Tuesday last week. But Roof didn’t think a lack of focus in practice was the reason for the poor showing against K-State.
“On Tuesday, yeah there were [signs],” Roof said. “But we picked it up on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. We addressed it, and if we would’ve thought our guys weren’t ready to play, we would’ve tried to do something to address that. But after our meetings and practices, we felt like our guys were ready.”
Tackling will remain a focus for the defense this week, and Roof said it’ll be highlighted both on the practice field each day as well as in the film room ahead of the matchup with the Horned Frogs.
Avoiding Drive-Killers
OU quarterback Dillon Gabriel moved the offense against Kansas State, but procedural penalties killed numerous drives
BRYAN TERRY/THE OKLAHOMAN-USA TODAY NETWORK
Oklahoma averaged 6.5 yards per carry against Kansas State, only allowed one sack and finished with 550 yards of offense.
But in key moments mental errors killed drives and took points off the board.
“The frustration is in the fact that five offensive penalties and they killed drives,” Lebby said. “… We were really bad on third down and we had five third-and-7-plus where we didn't convert a single one. Three of those five were because of pre-snap penalties. One of them was because of a drop.
“And so you look at that and you think, ‘man you got a chance to be a lot more efficient if those things don't happen.’ And obviously again it's going to start with me and with us and finding a way to make sure we're playing cleaner and smarter.”
On top of the pre-snap penalties, quarterback Dillon Gabriel missed key throws, two of which to Drake Stoops, that would have resulted in either touchdowns or fourth down conversions.
And while Gabriel himself said he simply had to make those throws after the game, Lebby said the issues against Kansas State couldn’t be laid at the feet of any one person.
“I thought (Gabriel) played his butt off,” Lebby said. “He played incredibly tough. He led. He did a lot of things really, really well. But he's gonna want some of those back. He wants a couple of those back. And just like I said right after the game, I want a couple calls back, too.
“… We want him to play perfect, but that’s not a reality with everything that we ask him to do. Just continue to get better and to create a sense of urgency with everybody in that locker room and with us as a unit offensively to make sure we’re playing cleaner and cleaning up the penalty part of it. If that’s better, we’re sitting here, and I think it’s a little bit of a different story.”
No Running From Defensive Issues
TCU quarterback has averaged 51.6 rushing yards per game against Oklahoma in the last three seasons
Kevin Jairaj / USA TODAY Sports
Regardless of if the Sooners see Max Duggan or Chandler Morris this week at quarterback for TCU, they’ll have to handle a quarterback who can make plays on the ground.
Duggan has rushed for 1,466 yards in his four seasons for TCU, and Roof has no doubts that the Sooner defense will have to contend with similar concepts to what they struggled with on Saturday night.
“If you don’t take things off tape and correct them and fix them, they show up,” Roof said. “They keep showing up. So we’ve got to make sure that we take… that we get those issues corrected and fixed moving forward.”
On top of needing to bottle up the run game, Oklahoma will also have to contain Horned Frog receiver Quentin Johnston.
The 6-foot-4 pass catcher has eight catches for 73 yards through three games this year, and will be able to hurt the OU defense deep down the field if the secondary isn’t on top of him.
Oklahoma has rebounded off losses pretty well as of late, but the Sooners have plenty of work to do to play a clean football game this Saturday.
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