Game Book: OU-TCU

OU grows up, takes down TCU

FORT WORTH — A notebook-style breakdown of Oklahoma’s 38-35 loss to Kansas State:

Growing up I: Throwback to 2005

Lincoln Riley was only 21 years old, but the evolution of his football team in 2020 looks an awful lot like the evolution of the Sooners’ 2005 team.

They both have hotshot, 5-star quarterbacks coming off a redshirt season. They both have painfully raw but stunningly impressive receivers. They both have a defense directed by an energetic, gravelly-voiced, young, second-year coordinator.

That OU team came off a 12-win season and a lot of people thought it would be more of the same. It wasn’t. The ’05 Sooners were young in a lot of areas and played like it early. Losses to TCU, UCLA and Texas and a 2-3 start wobbled their knees.

This OU team is coming off a 12-win season, and a lot of people assumed a sixth Big 12 title was given. It’s not. The ’20 Sooners are young in a lot of areas and played like it early. Losses to Kansas State and Iowa State and almost to Texas — and, after Saturday’s jarring 33-14 victory at TCU — are 3-2 and seem, finally, to be growing up.

Another striking parallel presented itself visually on Saturday: the game after Texas, OU was still not quite sure what it was. Athletic? Quality? Young? Fragile? There were a lot of ways the season could still go.

But just as Malcolm Kelly did 15 years ago in a 19-3 win over Kansas at Kansas City’s Arrowhead Stadium, when he leaped skyward and caught a game-breaking, 25-year touchdown pass from Rhett Bomar over a KU defender, freshman wideout Marvin Mims went high over a TCU defender to bring down a deep ball from Spencer Rattler. This one was a 61-yard touchdown that made it 17-0.

Both catches were a statement about the immediate future of the Sooners. Kelley became a two-time All-Big 12 receiver. Mims — with Kelly on the Horned Frogs sideline as an assistant coach — looks like an All-Big 12 talent, too.

Like it was 15 years ago, the future has arrived. That team needed a strong finish from Adrian Peterson in his sophomore season and needed its defense, led by Brent Venables (a year after he took over from Mike Stoops) to come together after losing key players to the NFL.

Both of those things happened, and the Sooners went on to win six of their last seven games and took down No. 6 Oregon in the Holiday Bowl.

The only loss in that stretch? A fluke, a replay-addled setback at Texas Tech.

At least these Sooners have a chance next week to avoid that parallel.

Growing up II: Before your eyes

One of the key points in Saturday’s game happened when what looked like a TCU touchdown catch was ruled to be incomplete and then was confirmed by replay.

Had Blair Conwright caught the football, his touchdown would have cut the Sooners’ once 17-point lead to 17-14.

Instead, OU got a call, the Sooners forced a punt, and the Sooner defense sparked to life. Between the replay and TCU’s late touchdown in garbage time, the Horned Frogs’ offense managed just 74 yards and four first downs on 21 plays.

If this had been any time in the previous four weeks, Oklahoma might have begun to fold in that moment. But hard lessons against Kansas State, Iowa State and Texas made this team tough enough to persevere and, eventually, pull away.

“Are we growing up in front of your eyes?” said Lincoln Riley. “Yeah, I think we are. I mean, I think, you know, this team has just kind of stayed the course, they keep getting better, they want to play.

“I think it’s great point: every possession kinda has a life of its own,” said defensive coordinator Alex Grinch, “and so it’s important that we attack it in that way. The scoreboard, how it reads at that particular moment, should not have any impact on what that drive happens to be for us. There’s video evidence over the first several weeks that it has a tendency to have an impact on how we play.”

Grinch said that moment in the game could very well have provided a painfully familiar feeling.

“ ‘Here we go again,’ ” Grinch said. “We’ve been here before and it’s like, ‘OK, wait a second, are we waiting for the other shoe to drop?’ Obviously, that’s a responsibility on us as coaches to make sure that doesn’t take place.

“I think there’s some growth. I absolutely do, just as you approach specifically the second half. But obviously, there's a lot more out there for us.”

Riley saw the turnabout and how his team took off as perhaps turning some kind of corner. He knows winning a Big 12 game like this on the road shouldn’t be taken lightly.

“I think we got a lot of good things inside of us,” Riley said. “I was really proud of how we handled the bye week. I know I’ve hit on that so much, and people are probably saying, ‘Why do you keep talking about that?’ But everything’s a challenge right now. I mean, everything. It’s almost more of a challenge when you don’t have a game and don’t have all the stuff surround a weekend just with all that we’re dealing with. So, just really proud of how we handled that.

“I think it’s a team wants to find out how good we can get. I said, in the way we practiced, the way we respond, when we coach these guys or ask them to do something, they’ve been very willing. And so I’m just excited about where this team can go. And I think our whole team senses it. We’re not even scratching the surface of what we can be. But we’re getting closer. And we keep doing that, then by the end of this thing, we might be pretty decent. So, we’ll just keep plugging away.

“I really feel like, more than ever, this team really wants to find out what we can be. And doesn’t want this year to all of a sudden be over and it’s such a quick year, you know, with the reduced schedule and everything else. You know, we don’t want to get to the end of this and not have a good taste of what we feel like the potential was. And they’ve done that in the way they’ve worked, and the way they’ve handled all the adversity.”

Frog hunting

TCU’s defense has been largely feast or famine this season. Saturday was more of the same.

After giving up 259 yards on five big plays against Iowa State and 225 yards on five big plays against Texas, OU struck for pass plays off 61, 50, 44, 43 and 33 yards — 231 yards on five big plays.

Quarterback Spencer Rattler completed only 13 passes, but averaged 25 yards per completion.

“We had a lot of deep ball plays dialed up in the playbook for this game,” Rattler said, “just going through this week of practice. That was a weak part of their defense that we could attack, and we did that pretty well this game.”

“We hit our share,” Lincoln Riley said. “I thought we had potentially shots at a couple more. Our guys did a good job. I think anytime you start wanting to put the ball downfield, the first key is protection. I thought our line and backs did some really nice things there. They gave Spencer time and confidence to let him loose.

“Guys won some one-on-ones, which against a Gary Patterson-coached defense, you have to. They do such a good job in the secondary of being very aggressive in a very smart way. When you are able to get those one-on-ones, man you have to make them. We made a few big ones at key times. I think loosening them up helped open things up in the run game.”

Defensive dominance

TCU scored two touchdowns. The Horned Frogs had two offensive possessions that amounted to anything. A third, late in the second quarter, resulted in a missed desperation field goal. The Frogs’ second TD was strictly garbage time.

That means for the meaningful portion of a 60-minute football game, Oklahoma’s defense yielded just one scoring drive.

TCU’s other drives were 20 yards, 18 yards, 5 yards, 27 yards, 30 yards, 5 yards, 27 yards, 4 yards and 9 yards.

It was easily the best performance of the season by Alex Grinch’s bunch.

“Everybody’s ready for their moment, you know?” said safety Brendan Radley-Hiles. “They’re ready for their moment. When their number’s called, it’s just about just accepting that this is your time, this is your moment and just playing football. When you all have been playing football since we were 5, 6 years old, it's just the same game, same guys, just a little sped up, little bit faster at the end of the day. Being ready for your moment and then actually doing it.”

Radley-Hiles led the Sooners with nine tackles, but with just 60 offensive plays, OU’s tackle totals were otherwise low. The Sooners compiled nine tackles for loss, three quarterback sacks of Max Duggan, and broke up two passes. Even late in the game, Grinch subbed his entire defensive backfield with confidence.

“Overall, right now, I believe that we’re consistent,” Radley-Hiles said, “and we’re finding confidence within our consistency.”

“I'll say it: It’s hard to win football games. It is,” Grinch said. “And I’ll also say that we made it look awfully hard through x-number of weeks this year. But there’s lessons there.”

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