Oklahoma Football: Where Do the Sooners Go From Here...and How?

The bye week couldn’t have come at a more opportune time for an Oklahoma football team that is down in the mouth and in some disarray after just three games.

Sep 17, 2016; Norman, OK, USA; Oklahoma Sooners head coach Bob Stoops watches his team warm up prior to action against the Ohio State Buckeyes at Gaylord Family – Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark D. Smith-USA TODAY Sports

No one really saw this coming. Oh, sure, there was reason to believe, given the quality of teams they were facing to start the 2016 season, that the Sooners would not make it through the first three games without a blemish.

At the very least though, it was expected Oklahoma’s early season matchups with highly underrated Houston and always powerful Ohio State would be competitive and closely contested.

After all, this Oklahoma team was believed by some to be as good, if not more so, than the one that advanced to last season’s College Football Playoff. The Sooners were in practically every conversation this preseason about teams that were in great position to play for college football’s ultimate team prize.

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All Bob Stoops and Co. had to do was get by a determined Group of Five opponent on the road to open the season and protect its home turf, which the Sooners do as well as any team in college football, against one of the blue bloods of college ball and a preeminent powerhouse.

Win all three, and they would be well on their way to a return visit to the CFP. Even with just one loss and a couple of competitive showings against two ranked opponents, they would still be in the hunt, especially were they to run the table in the Big 12 over the remaining nine games.

Flashing forward to the beginning of Week 4 in the 2016 season, we not only are all painfully aware of what happened on two of the past three Saturdays, but mortified at how it happened.

If past performance is a strong predictor of the immediate future, Oklahoma is definitely on the mat and wobbling in its effort to get up for the count. What we’ve witnessed so far is not very encouraging, and the road doesn’t get any easier anytime soon.

So what is wrong with this Sooner team, and how has a season filled with grand expectations taken such a sudden and sharp turn in a southerly direction?

My immediate reaction is that it is like the proverbial story about the little Dutch boy attempting to plug the holes in the dike with his fingers. In the case of the Sooners, there appear to be more holes than fingers to plug the leak.

Let’s be perfectly candid. Houston is a very good team with a dual-threat quarterback that always gives Oklahoma teams fits, and the Sooners were not as well prepared, mentally or physically, as they thought they were in that game, and it sadly resulted in sloppy and costly execution.

Sep 17, 2016; Norman, OK, USA; Ohio State Buckeyes players run onto the field before the game against the Oklahoma Sooners at Gaylord Family – Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports

Against the talent-rich Buckeyes, the Sooners were outplayed, outcoached and dominated by a much better team. I know OU fans don’t want to hear this, but if these two teams played nine more times this season, Ohio State would probably win seven or eight of them, albeit perhaps by not such a wide margin. That just the way it is.

Does this mean Oklahoma’s season is doomed? Absolutely not. This is still a very good football team that has been punched hard in the mouth and knocked down. Where the Sooners go from here is largely in their individual and collective hands.

Everything is in play here. Oklahoma needs to get better in all facets of the game. Quarterback Baker Mayfield needs to make better decisions when the ball is in his hands and play with more consistency. His receivers need to do a better job of getting open and completing catches they should make, and along those same lines Mayfield needs to put the ball where his receivers have the best chance of bringing it in.

The way the OU defense has been playing to this point, it would appear that the Sooners are going to have to regularly outscore the other team’s offense to have a good chance of winning. The deep pass is again causing all kinds of trouble on the back end of the Oklahoma defense. This is happening because the Sooner front seven has not been able to apply disruptive pressure on the quarterback, which leaves the secondary more vulnerable in pass coverage.

The age-old football philosophy that you must run the ball to throw the ball is the key element in Oklahoma’s Air Raid offense. The Sooners have arguably the best one-two running-back tandem in college football in Samaje Perine and Joe Mixon, but they’ve had some difficulty getting Perine untracked this season.

The Big 12’s leading rusher as a freshman two seasons ago, Perine is averaging less than 50 yards rushing per game. His first two seasons at Oklahoma he averaged twice that many yards on the ground every game. Some of that drop off in production this season could be attributed to the quality of the teams he’s going up against, but Perine also only ran for 58 yards against Louisiana-Monroe.

Also, when Oklahoma falls behind, as it did against both Houston and Ohio State, the Sooners have a tendency to get away from the run game, which makes them one-dimensional and more predictable on offense. This was a big problem against Houston, but wasn’t as much to blame in the loss to Ohio State. If anything, the Sooners may have stayed with the run game too long against the tough Buckeye front seven.

Oklahoma doesn’t have the same swagger about them that was apparent last season, especially over the second half following the unexpected loss to Texas. Losing has a way of sucking that right out of a team.

Again, it’s not so much that Oklahoma lost to two quality opponents. It’s the way they lost that is so troubling.

It’s probably not reasonable to expect that everything is going to get fixed all at once or that it will be a quick fix. But there needs to be considerable improvement if the Sooners expect to be a serious contender for a Big 12 championship, which is now the only major goal left out there to shoot for.

As we’ve heard Bob Stoops and others say many times over: If you’re not improving, you’re getting worse.

That’s the crossroads Oklahoma finds itself at as Stoops and his coaching staff search for solutions to stop the bleeding and stabilize a Sooner football team that still has much to play for this season.