OU-Baylor: Game Book

NORMAN — Postgame notebook on Oklahoma’s 27-14 victory over Baylor on Saturday night:

Mission Accomplished … Somehow

Through everything — the loss of spring practice, the disruption of classes, the pandemic, the mask-wearing, the virtual meetings, the individual workouts, the decision of some players to opt out, the programs first 0-2 start in 22 years, the postponement of last week’s game, the ensuing shutdown of all football activities, the many, many absences of both players and coaches on Saturday night, the dissolution of Senior Night — Oklahoma has once again accomplished the program’s most primary annual goal:

Get to the Big 12 Championship Game.

Thanks to Oklahoma State’s loss to TCU earlier in the day, OU needed only to beat Baylor in the home finale at Memorial Stadium to earn a spot opposite Iowa State in the Big 12 title game in two weeks in Arlington.

Lose next week at West Virginia, and the Sooners are still in the game, still very capable of winning a sixth consecutive conference championship.

“Says a lot,” head coach Lincoln Riley said. “I think it says a lot about the culture in this program. Again, I’m excited. This team’s been able to uphold the fighting spirit that OU football is. That was put in by so many coaches and players before all of us. It’s important we continue to push that, do our part here.

“When you come to OU, that’s just part of the deal. You’re always going to be on a big stage. Expectations are always going to be to win and to win championships, and those things aren’t easy, year in and year out. There’s always different challenges. This year, there have been plenty. I’m proud of the culture and proud to work and coach at a place that that’s the belief regardless of what’s stacked up against you.”

The fact of the matter is that OU could mathematically stay home next week instead of risking — well, a lot — and playing a game in Morgantown.

But that’s a loser’s mentality, Riley said.

“Because we believe in competitiveness,” he said. “And we believe in not backing down from anything. And that’s one of the best parts of college, and that should always be preserved in every league. All the time, if possible.”

“How many championship games have we been in here? The very first two years here, we end up playing games, we’re the outright (regular season) Big 12 champion, and we end up playing Oklahoma State and all that, and we kind of had nothing to lose. Or even like our third year here, we played TCU after beating them, being the outright champion. You gotta go to the championship and do it. That’s part of what it is. We know the schedule. In all years, but especially this one, the opportunity to play another game? If we can do it, we’ll be there.”

Defense Carried the Offense

If this team has had a moment that fits into the zany 2020 narrative, it was Saturday night: Lincoln Riley’s offense stunk it up, and Alex Grinch’s defense carried the team.

Think about that.

And Grinch’s group did it without four starters — three in the secondary — and, in Robert Barnes, a safety who hasn’t played a single snap at safety this season, and really hasn’t played it much at all since 2018. The Sooners gave up a 96-yard touchdown drive in the final minute, allowing Baylor to finish with 288 total yards, and not much else. The Bears got a touchdown after a fourth-down stop was wiped out by penalty, and then tacked on the garbage-time TD at the end. Baylor rushed for 26 yards on 25 attempts, and the Sooner defensive front batted down six passes at the line of scrimmage.

“I’m excited about the way we played defensively,” Riley said, “especially down the number of bodies that we were across the whole team and certainly there.”

What about the offense? Baylor did nothing and still got more yards than Oklahoma (288-269), more first downs (19-16), had more quarterback sacks (4-3). OU averaged just 2.5 yards per carry. Rhamondre Stevenson gained just 50 yards on 15 attempts (he also had 48 yards receiving but dropped two passes — two of five drops for the team). Spencer Rattler threw for just 193 yards. The offensive line struggled — especially in the first half, when Rattler was sacked three times and the Sooners just 1.6 yards per carry.

“I don’t think our guys were coached worth a damn this week, to be completely honest,” Riley said. “Not going to get too much in the weeds with it, but I don’t think us as offensive coaches did a very good job putting our guys in position to succeed, just the way we set up practice. Then it was just kind of a game full of mistakes. We just weren’t very sharp, we weren’t crisp. We had some opportunities to make big plays, and we didn’t make ‘em. We had a lot of mental errors, we had a lot of bad play calls.”

Riley’s offense has carried this team’s water a lot over the past five seasons, while the defense tried to stay out of the way. It was really something to see the diametric turnaround Saturday night, and Grinch sounded pretty satisfied.

"I think there’s a number of different benchmarks, if you want to call them that, that you look towards,” Grinch said. “And I think the biggest thing that I would say is making sure that our performance becomes independent of the performance on offense. And one of the things that we've talked about in the past, you got the greatest get out of jail free card, if you're willing to use it, when you have an elite offense like we have. And there's no doubt about it.

“You can tell me whatever struggles we had tonight, there's a lot more quality football than that. So, we know what we have on the other side of the ball. In so many ways, you got to make sure you're an independent contractor. Certainly, we're their No. 1 fans on Saturday. They frustrate us over the course of the week (in practice), but we’ve also got to obviously build off each other in terms of working to get better on a day-in and day-out basis from a practice standpoint.

“You want to pound the table and say, ‘Not surprised at all.’ … You see guys taking pride in that this is the expectation. The expectation that when you take the field with this group, you’re supposed to perform at a certain level. I don’t know if ‘surprised’ is the right word, but ‘proud’ certainly comes to mind. The other thing I would say it’s a step in the right direction.”

Special Recognition

Special teams coach Shane Beamer is the new head coach at South Carolina. News of that hire actually came down late in the fourth quarter on Saturday night.

“I’ll wait (on making a comment) to talk to him first,” Riley said. “Obviously, he wasn’t available to coach for us tonight. So it’s not like I’ve been able to sit and visit with him. If it is true, certainly be thrilled for him. Those are opportunities that you don’t always get. If it is the case, great decision by South Carolina.”

OU’s special teams were mostly average without Beamer. Only two of Gabe Brkic’s six kickoffs were touchbacks., and Baylor's Josh Fleeks popped a 29-yarder on one of his returns. Reeves Mundschau only averaged 37.2 yards per punt, including a 12-yarder in the first quarter. Marvin Mims returned a punt 7 yards to set up OU’s first touchdown — and that was it.

Still, Brkic stood out by putting OU on the scoreboard first with a 20-yard field goal on the Sooners’ opening drive, then knocking through a 50-yard bomb early in the fourth quarter to make it 20-7.

Hey, all things considered, special teams gets a passing grade, too.

“I was also proud from a special teams standpoint,” Riley said. “When you have close to 20 players out, as a head coach that’s one of your first primary concerns, is what do special teams look like? And I thought in large part, the guys executed there pretty well. Did some really good things.”

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