Oklahoma-TCU: Three Keys to the Game

Strength on strength

Oklahoma’s single biggest improvement from Brent Venables’ first season is a drastic surge in third-down efficiency — on both offense and defense.

It’s really shown up the most on defense, where the Sooners couldn’t stop a nosebleed last year (41 percent for the year, 46 percent in the losses). This year OU ranks 10th in the nation in third-down conversions.

For the season, opponents are converting just 29.3 percent of their third-down plays.

TCU, on the other hand, is converting 46.9 percent of their third-down plays on offense, a number that ranks 17th in the nation.

Even in their two losses — on the road against some fairly efficient offenses — the Sooner defense gave up third-down conversions just 9-of-29 times, or 31 percent.

In 11 games so far, only one opponent — Tulsa — has converted better than 40 percent on third down against the OU defense.

While TCU has played two straight home games, including an easy win over Baylor last week, the Sooners are coming off a long, physically taxing road trip to BYU. If TCU is able to approach its season average and convert more than 40 percent on third downs, it might be a sign the OU defense is fatigued — and that would spell trouble for a Sooner offense that potentially could be led by a true freshman quarterback (Jackson Arnold) making his first career start.

Strength on weakness

When TCU quarterback Josh Hoover throws the football, expect good things to happen for the Horned Frogs’ offense — to an extent.

Hoover and TCU rank ninth nationally in passing offense at 309.3 yards per game, while the Oklahoma defense ranks just 77th in passing yards allowed at 232.9.

But the Frogs also rank 117th out of 130 teams in interceptions thrown (14), while OU ranks second in the nation in passes intercepted (18).

One team’s strength is the other team’s weakness, and if the Sooners can get some takeaways through the air, they’ll gladly yield the passing yards to do it.

One other note on TCU’s aerial attack: the Horned Frogs have three receivers who have caught right at 500 yards in passes, and they have 11 who have at least 100 yards this season. The scheme of Kendal Briles — Jeff Lebby’s brother-in-law — is well equipped to spread the football around and keep the Sooner defense guessing.

Red zone execution

In another example of strength against weakness, TCU’s red-zone offense has been abysmally bad this season, scoring just 68.9 percent of the time the Frogs reach the red zone. That ranks 127th in the country — almost dead last.

Oklahoma, meanwhile, has been great at red zone defense, allowing points on just 75.8 percent of drives into the red zone. That ranks 22nd nationally.

Although TCU has a 1,000-yard rusher in Emani Bailey (21st nationally at 96.3 rushing yards per game; he averages 5.24 yards per carry), Briles will try to trick things up a little when the Frogs get into the scoring zone, with jet sweeps and lots of motion and switches, misdirection plays, screen passes, even some double-passes or throwbacks.

Oklahoma has seen it all before from UCF, Kansas and others, and rather than be bothered by all the eye candy and window dressing, the Sooner defense just needs to stay focused on being gap-sound against Bailey and making Hoover uncomfortable in the pocket.

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