Sheesh...
Crazy times in Norman when the defense showed depth, a strong defensive front and turnovers that were forced. Good stuff guys. Unless we clean up the offense, we're gonna need it.
1. Qb - I'm satisfied with JFAs play tonight. Kid made some money throws, moved the chains with his legs and showed the ability to drives some balls, throw a change up as needed and scramble to run and pass. Kids gonna be solid. We'll learn later if he's "special. I have to add...Hawkins has a lil somethin, somethin. Him in the zone read will be scary and that sprint option was beautiful. Solid B for the qbs
2. Backs - meh...the two unknowns gave me the most juice. 8 and 20. The pup looks good and 20 gives me vibes of the kid who transferred out (don't mind me for forgetting folk who leave names). Today quickly reminded me that backs are a dime a dozen. 27 and 2 are really solid players but neither has shown they are "special" as in guys who can just make a big play...and that's okay but they can both lose their spot. 8 gonna be stealing folks reps before long. Ohh and 2 looked healthy, but he lumbers for me...im still "wait n see". Rbs were very average C
3. Wrs - injuries matter. 6 is a dude. I like that he's thick thru the thighs as he's gonna be a volume catcher. 15 needs to improve awareness but you can see some growth. 3 made a play and then I didn't see him again. We miss Gibson and Anderson. Their size and length is valuable and if 13 (my freakin number) is supposed to replace them...yeahhhhhhhhhhh. No! Or at least not tonight. Btw...5 looked rusty and may be a step slow. Between drops (13 had 2) lack of awareness on route depth and sometimes flat getting covered. I didnt see the best position group on the team. I saw Average. C
4. Tes - bright spot. Bauer is nice. Looks smooth, light footed and soft hands. I also like that he's an ex qb so he has a feel for coverage. Someone said I'd like him after 1 game and I agree. He's going to pay dividends this season. Keep him healthy bcuz Robert's looked lost. He makes me feel good about 11 personnel. Solid B
5. Oh 🤦🏾♂️ Line - that wasn't good. We didn't try to run downhill enough but our tackles and guards flat got whipped 1 v 1 quite often. I'd pick on one guy but guards got split. Tackles got swam and a lot of waste bending was happening as pass rushers got skiny or powered thru our guys. I never got the sense that we wanted to lean on anyone..until maybe q4. Now I will admit..wks 1 and 2 will allow for experimenting and working on Strengths and Weaknesses vs actually scheming our opponent. What I got from tonight was this rendition of our oline isn't mean or nasty. They looked timid. Brown on that right side 😬 buddy will not like film Monday afternoon. Also..the backup center is fine. His snaps and line protections...didn't see many glaring issues. Grade D
6. Dline - that unit looks DEEP and talented. They were proly the best unit of the night. I didn't see much of Williams, but Jackson, Terry, Halton, RMT, Downs..down to the pups like Strong and Sanders played well. More so than watching the opponent I watched how many times we won 1 v 1 and just about EVERY snap we did. Hard to gage just how good we are based upon this offense but we're a good group. B+
7. Backers - missed a few tackles early but man is it good to see 4 or 5 guys who look and play the part. 10 and 28 + 11 mean a really good trio. 20 had a few mishaps in coverage (getting caught by crossers and not sinking deep enough another time) but he also showed good signs. 24 looks LEGIT. I didn't see Dasan (I believe he's still nicked?) But when Kanak is bumping his head on the goalpost on specials...man you're cooking. 11 will hit yo ass I'm the hole too 👌🏽 Grade: B
8. Dbs - I didn't see much off Woodi and they rotated a ton of guys in. Safeties looked great. Corners held up well and Dolby was sound as a cheetah. But they missed some stuff and some guys were open in the intermediate that they just missed or bad throw. I can't knock us and we didn't have big issues but it wasn't anything to be too excited about. I like what I see but wanna see more. The back 4 is loaded and should play well all year. Grade: B
9. Specials - worth saying we kicked well on K.Os and fgs 🙏🏽 Peyton didn't get going but he looked natural back there. I have zero complaints. Anytime you have 2 40+ yard fgs look true like they did tonight...we're off to a good start. Grade: B
10. Coaching - interesting game. The OC was my fb so I'm bias (fight me 🤷🏽♂️) but I didn't love the scheme. I also had to remember that they didn't "scheme" Temple and probably spent most of the game working on concepts they wanna clean up by wk 3. No excuse, but im certain they just ran stuff and didn't try to take advantage of matchups and coverages they know they could expose. That said..execution was still subpar...PERIOD. Between drops, missed blocking assignments, holding on to the ball too long and some wtf play calls...it was extremely average. We got into some things I liked (2back gun, ZR, flood concepts between the hashes, etc) but the scheme wasn't it tonight. I look forward to seeing us bring more imagination against UH assuming we need it. Defensively I had fun. It was good to see the dline play 2 yards in their backfield and backers consistently fill the correct gap. I love seeing multiple 6'1 type corners and versatile safeties all in the mix. Our defense was pretty basic..no crazy risks or blitzes and yet we still dominated.
Solid wk 1 win. It's pretty easy to see and understand that the defense is ahead of the offense. We have talent and a lot of it was on the sidelines. We also rotated a bunch and guys like 13 killed drives. Not gonna dig too deep. We hung "half a hundred" and dominated on defense.
Guys like: Halton, McKinzie, Kani, Dolby, Burks, Bauer, Tatum and JFA stuck out. We'll have time to scream bloody murder in the weeks to come. Tonight ended about how we expected aside from wrs not dominating. Yes..I expected the oline wouldn't be ready yet.
#Boomer
