2016 OU Sooners Football

[Throckmorton]

[Throckmorton]

#3 in the AP's Preseason Top 25, behind Alabama and Clemson. Cowboys at #21.

Preseason AP Top 25 poll: Alabama, Clemson, Oklahoma top first 2016 rankings

[Throckmorton]

Welp.

[dcsooner]

Welp.

Sooner Magic is DEAD! NO magic in Norman. They are who we though they were.

[venture]

Well i'm fully expecting to get a lambasting in a couple weeks...by family and friends up here in Ohio. It is going to be ugly.

[reverend]

I hope Stoops know the Heimlich maneuver because the Sooners choked.

[Jake]

At least OU got the disappointment out of the way now instead of giving fans false hope.

[jerrywall]

Look, not an OU fan, but this is the time to work out the kinks. There is a long season ahead and a loss this early won't necessarily keep them out of the playoff picture.

[Laramie]

OU's offensive line will continue to be its Achilles heel.

[Throckmorton]

Sooners fall to #13 in the Coaches Poll.

Link

[Bill Robertson]

OU's offensive line will continue to be its Achilles heel.

I just painfully rewatched the game. Most of the time Mayfield had plenty of time. He often ran out of the pocket when he still had protection. Or skipped over an open receiver to look for a better gain. They need to work on keeping Mayfield's head in the game, stop making stupid penalties, cover all possibilities on kicks and not let the other team pass downfield at will.

[Jake]

[Laramie]

Give it up to the Ohio State Buckeyes; Coach Urban Meyer & staff. OSU continues to attract top notch recruits to their program.

Our OU Sooners need to continue to get better. We still have the Big XII conference to go through. A week off to prepare for TCU in Fort Worth.

Let's support these guys, they gave it their best shot. Just lost to a better team.

[chuck5815]

A 1-4 start seems like a distinct possibility at this point. Shades of the John Blake Era, I'd say.

[soonermike81]

Don't think we will lose to TCU like many were predicting preseason. But yeah,1-4 seems very possible. Can't even imagine that

[BG918]

What was supposed to be a promising season has turned into a disaster. I hope the Sooners can turn it around but I'm not very optimistic based on what I've seen.

[dcsooner]

Many of us have settled into apathy about OU football. This scenario has played out too many times in the past 8-10 years. B12 conf championship does not carry any cache. Weak teams. OU will continue to fall after entry of Houston cutting off Houston recruiting. Move now or become even more mediocre. BS is not longer hungry, he has made his milllions and these Bozos have already made a statue of him, What is his motivation? Not excited about OU or big12 currently or expansion candidates. Lost a big opportunity to move to PAC 12

[Martin]

it sucks entering conference play at 1-2... but losing to two top ten teams isn't exactly the end of the world. -M

[SoonerDave]

Give it up to the Ohio State Buckeyes; Coach Urban Meyer & staff. OSU continues to attract top notch recruits to their program.

Our OU Sooners need to continue to get better. We still have the Big XII conference to go through. A week off to prepare for TCU in Fort Worth.

Let's support these guys, they gave it their best shot. Just lost to a better team.

We've got two distinct problems, in my view.

First, Mayfield has lost his focus. I don't know if he's feeling the pressure of living up to the expectations created for him by virtue of last year's run, or if he felt that last year was just a natural "thing" that would just happen again this year, I don't know. I think that's Riley's biggest job going forward - getting Mayfield's "head game" reset. He's *got* to stop pressing to make every play a monster. The absurd 3rd and short cross-body deep throw vs tOSU where he had acres of room to scramble for an easy first down and keep a drive going is emblematic of his poor decision making this year. This offense is perhaps too predicated on having early momentum and "rolling downhill" - when Ford went down with the broken leg and the OL got shuffled, we seemed to instantly lose momentum, and when Seibert clanked the FG...we became a bit psyched out offensively.

Also, I think the off-season surgery on Perine's foot has ever-so-slightly-but-critically affected his ability to rebound off tacklers. He just seems to have lost a fraction of that "x-factor" that made him such a beast the last couple of years.

When you hear people or Stoops talk about making mistakes, to me that's got to be aimed at the offense. Mixon drops a good throw on an underneath route where it appears he has a *monster* chance to split two defenders and snag a *huge* play. Mayfield misses a *wide open* Andrews on a really nice TE drag to the right - again, another *huge* play miss - possibly a TD run if Andrews is hit in stride. And Andrews dropping the TD right in his hands...dang. In this offense, you can't miss those. I think Riley's offensive gameplan was sound and had potential - until we got so far behind.

Defensively is where we suffer from *talent* and *technique* issues. We simply do not have and have not recruited and do not run the type of defense we need to stop a physical team like Ohio State. We haven't had the likes of a Tommie Harris, a Dusty Dvoracek, a Teddy Lehman, a Curtis Lofton etc in a *looong* time. We don't have the size or the speed, and our secondary is just gasping for answers. Our tackling technique is abysmal. We seem to struggle with basic positioning and assignments.

Does that latter paragraph sound a little familiar, however? I fear we might have masqueraded these shortcomings with talents like Striker who turned into this guy opposing offenses *had* to account for on each play, and sometimes even then it didn't matter. That can disguise the fact that your down linemen aren't big or physical enough to get off blocks and either create pressure and penetration themselves or create lanes for your LB's or safeties to rush. That said, our interior linemen had a decent game - but when you see your LB's struggle to wrap up and watch the other guy's RB just bounce to the outside for 8 yards a whack, and things start to disintegrate pretty quickly. I've lost count of how many years now it seems our guys don't have good fundamental technique on tackling.

Bob Stoops has the toughest job ahead of him in his tenure IMHO. He's got to keep this team focused and playing for something. National title hopes are obviously out the window. In two weeks, they face a decent TCU team with just the kind of QB that can leverage our problem at corner, and if Mayfield doesn't figure out what's wrong with himself, that can turn a 1-2 disappointment into 1-3 disaster. And let's not even talk about what happens in Dallas in three weeks if that one goes south.

Aside from possibly the 2005 season, I can't recall any year in Stoops' tenure wherein there existed a legitimate chance that *every possible goal* you put on the map could be *gone* coming out of the Texas game. A 1-4 start for a team starting at #3 is going to be yet another penny in the well of antagonism toward the OU program as one that chronically underachieves, and one that increasingly tends to suggest 2015 was an aberration due to a lightning-strike confluence of opposing quarterbacks getting hurt, and a playmaking WR in Sterling Shepard that's now earning a paycheck in the NFL.

As a fan, I'm still trying to be optimistic, but as a realist its very hard for me not to see a lot of dark clouds on the horizon. Offensive issues are fixable, but I don't know the same can be said about the talent issues on defense, especially in the backfield. I fear we're seeing some poor recruiting decisions come home to roost, and I'm not at all sure Mike, Cooks, or Kish know what the solution is. Scary part may be that there *isn't* one - short of a defensive overhaul similar to what Bob did on the offensive side year before last.

I'm always a Sooner fan, and I've already got my Dallas trip planned, but man, I've got to tell you, it's awfully hard to be optimistic right now. Fandom gets slapped around by the reality of the product on the field, and right now, that product, quite frankly, just isn't very good.

[SoonerDave]

Many of us have settled into apathy about OU football. This scenario has played out too many times in the past 8-10 years. B12 conf championship does not carry any cache. Weak teams. OU will continue to fall after entry of Houston cutting off Houston recruiting. Move now or become even more mediocre. BS is not longer hungry, he has made his milllions and these Bozos have already made a statue of him, What is his motivation? Not excited about OU or big12 currently or expansion candidates. Lost a big opportunity to move to PAC 12

I don't think there's a chance of a sneeze in a windstorm that Houston gets a B12 invite. Outside of Texas' support (which is political) and, I think Texas Tech, I don't think another school is interested in Houston joining this conference. Why on earth would anyone want to *invite* a team to join that inherently already competes for recruits on their own turf?? That makes *zero* sense.

I think Boren's telegraphing something to someone with his comments about expansion not being a given, whether it really is the fact that none of the expansion candidates really helps the conference, or that the networks have ponied up extra cash to perpetuate this ramshackle conference as-is, or if UT and OU have jointly or separately decided to ride out the GOR and then go their own ways, I don't know. But conference affiliation is a different thread, I suppose.

[warreng88]

I watched the game beginning to end on Saturday and I kept asking, why is Mixon not getting the ball more? It's like in basketball when the player has a hot hand, you don't just take them out, you wait for them to cool, then take them out. Every time Mixon touched the ball, he made plays (except for the drop in the flat in the first quarter, of course). Why when he was running and picking up 5-8 yards per carry/catch would you take him out in favor or Perine would was stuffed at the line most of the plays? It's like when we played LSU in the Sugar Bowl, we were driving down the field, running it down their throat and then we decided to pass when the run worked every time.

[jerrywall]

it sucks entering conference play at 1-2... but losing to two top ten teams isn't exactly the end of the world. -M

But barring some major chaos, it is likely the end of any chance of making the playoffs.

[Martin]

But barring some major chaos, it is likely the end of any chance of making the playoffs.

true, and i totally understand how that's frustrating for fans... i just don't see it as justification for the various "the sky is falling" and "it's time for a new head coach" rumblings i've been hearing. -M

[dankrutka]

I'm not a sky-is-falling type. But it is worth pointing out that OU didn't just lose both games, they were dominated in both games. They were clearly inferior across the board. If OU has two close, competitive losses I think fans would be less worried. We'll see OU has two more tough games coming up...

[jerrywall]

A 1-4 start seems like a distinct possibility at this point. Shades of the John Blake Era, I'd say.

John Blake had a win percentage of .383 IIRC. Stoops has never had a losing season at OU. His W/L percentage is .789. I'd say that's a far cry from the Blake era. Although we've now hit the longest gap since 1950 without a national championship, which is concerning.