TCU Loss Showed Oklahoma May Be Still 'Afraid to Make Mistakes' Going Into Texas Showdown
NORMAN — Oklahoma coach Brent Venables said last week — after losing to Kansas State, before last week’s crushing defeat at TCU — that he saw a football team that was playing with a fear of failure.
“What I saw,” Venables said last Tuesday, “was guys afraid to make mistakes. We played on our heels. … I saw guys pressing; trying to do a little bit too much.”
Did that fear manifest again last week in Fort Worth?
“I don’t know,” Venables said. “ … Again, guys can press, you know? It’s a very real thing. You can't see it on a stat sheet.”
“We lost a little bit of confidence,” wide Jalil Farooq said Monday night, “so we were focused on not making mistakes.”
That focus actually might have showed up on quarterback Dillon Gabriel’s stat sheet. He completed just 7-of-16 passes before leaving with an apparent head injury — well below his season average of 67 percent to that point.
“Yeah, I think I think a lot of things can break down or maybe you're just — maybe you get antsy,” Venables said Tuesday during his weekly news conference. “There's a lot of things that can be a factor in not being as accurate as you need to be.”
There’s no room for that mentality this week as Oklahoma readies for its annual clash with Texas. The Sooners and Longhorns are both 3-2, both unranked (for the first time since 1998), and the winner might be able to salvage its season.
The loser? Things get really tough. For Texas, another season of being “not back.” For OU, a third straight loss (also for the first time since ’98).
“You can’t play this game nervous,” said running back Eric Gray. “You can’t play this game scared. You’ve got to know what you’re doing and you’ve got to give it all you got. When you’re timid and you don’t know what you’re doing, it doesn’t allow you to play fast.”
Gray said he didn’t necessarily think there was a paralysis factor happening against the Horned Frogs.
“I wouldn’t say it was happening Saturday,” Gray said. “… It was like 5-7 plays in that game where we just didn’t execute well, and we’ve got to execute better.”
Wide receiver Marvin Mims also said he wasn’t sure if fear of failure was at play against TCU like Venables said it was against Kansas State. But something odd was happening, he acknowledged.
“You could tell guys were overthinking a little bit, stuff like that, just from watching film,” Mims said. “Just a lot of little things — those little things add up.
“Right now we’re just focused on going out there and playing football. Just like when we were kids, just going out and playing freely. You know, at this level, everybody knows how to play football. So we gotta do it to the level we’re most comfortable at.”
“I think we made a little mistake the first game when we played Kansas State,” Farooq said. “ … So we need to come back mentally stronger and ready to make plays.”
Venables boiled it down to the very essence of football: it all goes together.
Mistakes can happen when players are going full speed. So the response tends to be to slow down and process the game. When that happens, mistakes can compound.
“My charge to the defense,” Venables said, “is when when you're making things easy for the opponent, next thing you know, it's 20-3, the offense will have a tendency to try to press and make a play instead of (saying) ‘Oh man, let’s just get in a rhythm and settle down. Let's play with poise and still be patient. It's a long game.’ That's a very natural thing.
“So maybe you get a little hurried to make a throw. Or yeah, you maybe overreach (as) a blocker and he comes underneath and makes a play. A lot of little things like that, you know, lead to that when you get behind like we did.”
