{"id":4367,"date":"2011-11-20T02:58:58","date_gmt":"2011-11-20T07:58:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.soonerguys.com\/?p=4367"},"modified":"2011-11-26T02:16:45","modified_gmt":"2011-11-26T07:16:45","slug":"reasons-for-sooners-loss-to-baylor-were-obvious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.soonerguys.com\/?p=4367","title":{"rendered":"Reasons for Sooners loss to Baylor were obvious"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Texas Tech loss<\/strong> was not the worst under Coach Bob Stoops.<\/p>\n

This one was.<\/p>\n

Oklahoma lost for the first time ever to Baylor, 45-38.\u00a0Repeat. First time ever.<\/p>\n

More importantly, a Sooner win would have moved them up to No. 3 in the country in the BCS and a good chance to play for the national championship.<\/p>\n

The reasons for this loss were obvious.<\/p>\n

About as obvious as all those Baylor receivers who ran past the OU secondary to be five yards open to receive deep passes by Robert Griffin III. Again. And, again.\u00a0 And again.<\/p>\n

They’re probably still running open in Waco.<\/p>\n

Then, even after Landry Jones<\/strong> brought the Sooners back to tie the ball game, 38-38, it was obvious that Baylor (without any time outs) was content to run the clock out and take the game into overtime.<\/p>\n

But Stoops called a time out.\u00a0 Huh?<\/em><\/p>\n

The obvious best choice would have been to let the clock run out, not give Robert Griffin III even one extra second<\/em> to do his magic.\u00a0 Take the game into overtime, where\u00a0 the Sooners “Belldozer” offense would have been perfect to run.<\/p>\n

But, Stoops called time out.\u00a0 That too was obvious. Obviously outrageous.<\/p>\n

(To put this in perspective, the last coach to call a more improvident time out was Pat Jones many years ago in Stillwater. He did it on a Sooners fourth down with seconds left before the half in Bedlam.\u00a0\u00a0Oklahoma, which had been content on running the clock out before the time out, threw a touchdown pass.\u00a0 So, we can officially\u00a0say that Stoops made an “Aggie” move in Waco.)<\/p>\n

\"\"Make no mistake, Robert Griffin III gets our Heisman vote, if we had one.\u00a0 Nothing written here should be construed as disrespecting Griffin, Baylor and Coach Art Briles.\u00a0 Baylor was the best team on the field Saturday night.<\/p>\n

But as good as Baylor was<\/strong>, that doesn’t explain why Oklahoma lost this game.\u00a0 Or the Texas Tech game.\u00a0 Or the Bedlam game that I’m predicting they will lose in two weeks.<\/p>\n

It doesn’t explain why this former national champion contender turned two-loss team is so disappointing.\u00a0 Or that it’s likely to be a three loss team going into bowl season.<\/p>\n

My conclusion is Oklahoma is not that good.\u00a0 Especially on defense.\u00a0 True, there are some very talented players.\u00a0 Roy Finch and young Brandon Williams. And Jaz Reynolds. The O-line has some talented pass blockers, but not run blockers.\u00a0 Landry Jones had a pretty good ballgame.\u00a0 He got the Sooners back in it.\u00a0 Those are all \u00a0offensive players.<\/p>\n

The so-called “Sharks” in the defensive secondary are a less talented football players who, for whatever reason, struggle to grasp the\u00a0coverages that secondary coach Willie Martinez dials up for them.\u00a0 They played with heart.\u00a0 But, if they are sharks, then they are those whale sharks that don’t bite people.<\/p>\n

The defensive coaching staff has shown it can’t consistently get its teams prepared to play inferior, but well schemed and motivated talent.\u00a0\u00a0That’s especially true in the secondary.\u00a0 As Defensive Coordinator Brent Venables said after the game, his secondary did not play disciplined.\u00a0 That was the same problem against Texas Tech.<\/p>\n

How bad is the problem? This defense gave up 620 yards offense on Saturday night.\u00a0 That’s more than any Oklahoma defense in the 116 year history of the program.<\/p>\n

Still, regardless of preparation or talent<\/strong>, this Oklahoma team has a more serious weakness. These guys do<\/em> play with heart. With emotion.\u00a0 But this team\u00a0lacks the leadership and character to face adversity.\u00a0 I hate to say it, but this defense looked<\/em> like it was beginning to lay down in Waco —\u00a0more out of\u00a0frustration —\u00a0with more than eight minutes left in the game.\u00a0 The last two Baylor scores were by Bears walking into the end zone untouched.\u00a0 I won’t say they gave up,\u00a0that’s probably not fair to these young players.\u00a0 But,\u00a0they were in disarray.<\/p>\n

Coach Stoops talked all week about players needing to step up this week at Baylor, given the season-ending injury to Ryan Broyles.\u00a0 We all were looking to offensive players when he said that.\u00a0\u00a0We should have been looking to defensive players, because it was more than offensive production that the Sooners lost when Broyles went down. They lost a leader.<\/p>\n

The Sooners needed character and leadership on defense to step up to face the great challenge from Griffin’s play.\u00a0 They didn’t step up.<\/p>\n

And “in the end”, neither did Stoops.<\/p>\n

When it was time for the coach to step up, Stoops called a time out. That decision was the coaching equivalent of jumping a route and letting Art Briles run past him.\u00a0 It was like Javon Harris biting on that inside fake of Kendall Wright.<\/p>\n

Baylor had no time outs left and was content to run out the clock and send the game into overtime.<\/p>\n

The time out gave Baylor\u00a0 the extra time to march down the field, and with :08 left, throw a touchdown pass to yet another receiver who got behind a Sooner safety in the end zone for the winning touchdown.\u00a0 Game over.\u00a0 — Mike<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Texas Tech loss was not the worst under Coach Bob Stoops. <\/p>\n

This one was.<\/p>\n

Oklahoma lost for the first time ever to Baylor, 45-38. Repeat. First time ever.<\/p>\n

More importantly, a Sooner win would have moved them up to No. 3 in the country in the BCS and a good chance to play for the national championship.<\/p>\n

The reasons for this loss were obvious.<\/p>\n

About as obvious as all those Baylor receivers who ran past the OU secondary to be five yards open to receive deep passes by Robert Griffin III. <\/p>\n

Again. And, again. And again.<\/p>\n

They’re probably still running open in Waco.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4369,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gameday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.soonerguys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.soonerguys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.soonerguys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.soonerguys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.soonerguys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4367"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/www.soonerguys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4372,"href":"https:\/\/www.soonerguys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4367\/revisions\/4372"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.soonerguys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.soonerguys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.soonerguys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.soonerguys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}