FutureCast: Can Oklahoma fix its biggest flaws in just one week's time before heading to Dallas?
The question for Oklahoma is a simple one but — like defensive coordinator Alex Grinch said after Saturday night’s meltdown at Iowa State — it’s not an easy one.
Is Oklahoma’s fatal flaw of missed tackles fixable before the 1-2 Sooners take the field on Saturday morning against 2-1 Texas?
OU had one of its worst tackling games — maybe in history — at Jack Trice Stadium against the talented Cyclones. The Sooners missed tackle after tackle in surrendering plays of 65, 42 and 36 yards, with all three leading to touchdowns, plus the mundane gains of 3, 5, or 10 yards from quarterback Brock Purdy and running back Breece Hall that piled up all night long and produced points.
And this was just one week after missed tackles (and coverage busts) led to 155 yards and two touchdowns by Kansas State.
Clearly, whatever practice plan the Sooners worked on defensively in the span between K-State and I-State was a waste of time and needs to be scrapped permanently. But now, in an important rivalry game, can OU go back to the basics, back to the fundamentals, and get right for the Red River Shootout?
“The biggest thing is just focus on ourselves,” said safety Pat Fields. “There’s plays tonight that we got beat, we got out-executed, but the majority of our bad plays came from us beating ourselves, from us missing tackles, from us failing to come away with takeaways or whatever it is.
“So I think the biggest thing we need to do is focus on ourselves. Whenever we all focus on ourselves, whenever we’re playing elite football, it looks elite. Teams struggle to move the ball against us. But whenever we fail to execute our job and do the simple things, it looks horrible.”
Oklahoma goes into the Cotton Bowl with a 1-2 record. Texas also would be 1-2 if the Longhorns hadn’t overcome Texas Tech’s 99.9 percent win probability the weekend prior. Coming off a 33-31 loss to TCU — the Longhorns’ sixth in seven years against the Horned Frogs — Tom Herman’s crew also enters Dallas on wobbly knees.
“We have to learn from these past two games, see what we’ve been doing wrong and work our asses off to fix it this next week,” said OU center Creed Humphrey. “Texas is a tough team, it’s going to be a tough game and we need to come fully prepared for it.”
Since 1990, first-time OU-Texas quarterbacks going up against a QB who has played in this game before are just 3-14-1. One of those wins was last year by Jalen Hurts, who had played in plenty of big games and thus doesn’t quite fit the definition.
Sam Ehlinger is a senior and has played in three of these. Spencer Rattler is a redshirt freshman and stood on the sideline last year.
Advantage, Texas.
“Just prepare like we do every week,” Rattler said Saturday night. “We had a great week of practice this week. Our plan is to have the same mentality going into this week and just focus on what we need to focus on, get better on what we need to get better on overall as a team.”
That’s probably just Rattler playing it cool. Oklahoma players know they not only need this game — they need to beat Texas. And they know times are desperate.
Maybe there’s no better time to get right, to get focused again, than to just jump right into the hot water of the Red River Rivalry.
“I think the best way to put ourselves in a better position is just focus on us, focus on the standard of who we are as a defense, who we are as a football team,” Fields said. “Whenever we’re playing 11-man football, everybody’s on the same page, everybody’s focused on the details of the game, we look elite on defense, guys struggle to move the ball. But whenever we play with clutter, we get too antsy to make plays and things like that, that’s when we’re playing our B game and if we’re playing our B game, then anybody can beat us.”
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