Oklahoma's Defense Needs Sharper Performance Against Michigan, but Confidence Remains High

NORMAN — Much was made about Brent Venables’ postgame comments about Oklahoma’s defense.

“Thought we were sloppy tackling on defense,” Venables said after the 51-0 win over UTEP. “I didn’t like that at all. We got a little loose in coverage as well. They didn’t make us pay, but good teams are going to make us pay moving forward.”

Some of what Venables talked about was borne out by the analytics afterward, which showed the Sooners with 15 missed tackles according to Pro Football Focus.

Tuesday, though, Venables didn’t exactly walk back his postgame assessment but was certainly less harsh.

“I don’t want it to be misinterpreted, like our guys weren’t ready to play or lackadaisical,” Venables said. “That couldn’t be further from the truth. Their hair was on fire. We just didn’t play with the cleanliness and discipline that you have to play with. Got a little nosy. Have to make plays. We were overly anxious.”

Heading into Saturday’s road matchup with Michigan (11 a.m., Fox), the Sooners need to play cleaner defensively.

“This game will punish you, no matter who you’re playing,” Venables said, “if you don’t do the little things, the basics, right. So hopefully we’ll do that a little better. We’ll need to.”

Even though the Wolverines struggled offensively in their opener, they certainly have the weapons to make Oklahoma pay, where the Miners didn’t.

Venables and several players who spoke this week said one of the issues was overpursuit, or pushing too hard to make an impactful play instead of staying in the framework of the defensive scheme.

Safety Peyton Bowen, the highest graded rotational defensive player for the Sooners in the opener, ran through a litany of things the Sooners needed to do better against Michigan — gap integrity, maintaining leverage, reading their keys, etc.

“I think it was just guys trying to make plays, and there’s nothing wrong with that until there is something wrong with that,” Bowen said.

Linebacker Kip Lewis isn’t worried about the trajectory of the defense.

“It’s the first game getting all the jitters and stuff out,” Lewis said. “... More and more you get into the game, the more comfortable we got. So just got to come out better and fix all (the areas) where we had the problems.”

The Sooners’ defense enters Saturday’s game fairly healthy, and is expected to get defensive end Danny Okoye, who missed the opener, back. Okoye figures to take some of the load off Taylor Wein and Adepoju Adebawore, who were two of the three OU defenders who played 35 or more snaps last week.

Adebawore had played that many snaps just once in his career. He played in 36 last season against Missouri.

Oklahoma played 34 players on defense against UTEP with 26 of those players playing 10 or more plays. That number will shrink drastically against Michigan, barring an unexpected blowout.

Bowen said the defense needs to improve “the whole nine yards. Top to bottom, D-line to DBs.”

“We’re not supposed to be at our best Week 1,” he said. “Week by week, we’re supposed to be taking steps. If we look the best we did (in the opener) … that’s not your recipe for success. So we’ve got a lot to work on. That’s good.”

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