Ten thoughts about OU-UHouston

[Plainosooner]

1. The challenge for Speed D moving ahead is depth and endurance. If you're relying on speed, will it all fit together when guys are breathing hard. Last night when everybody was fresh, and Houston hadn't figured out OUr game plan yet, the defense looked oppressive. On a warmer day, on the road, against a no huddle offense, how long will the defenders look fresh enough for the defense to be outstanding? Or even decent?

2. On Hurts' fumble, the ball wasn't pulled out by a Houston defender. His elbow holding the ball hit Basquine's knee just before Jalen was down, knocking it out.

3. Rhamondre's fumble might not have been on him. He never got the handoff. The ball was out before contact, because of the exchange. Only the coaches will know who was more responsible. Maybe Stevenson has been getting more handoffs from Mordecai, and not as many practice snaps with Hurts. The ball is higher on a read handoff.

4. OU outplayed Houston by a lot more than 11 or the 18 from mop up time late td. But missed field goals, and a bunch of post whistle penalties by the Sooners, really helped the Cougar cause.

5. Lamb was mega unhappy about the lack of a call on the non DPI call in the end zone. Rightly so. And how did they screw up the call on Hurts' sneak touchdown.

6. It sure seemed like Murray had more than 13 tackles.

7. When the flag was thrown on Hayes for the hit out of bounds, it sure looked like there was a late hit on Brooks at the end of the run. The penalty seemed to run a good drive when they weren't stopping us. But the O was so dominant that we scored anyhow on Hurts' knee first touchdown in the corner of the end zone.

8 OUr front seven was really good most of the evening. The secondary not so much. A good thing.

9 Concerns: Kicker, Left tackle, more of the OLine, Will linebacker, the whole dang secondary. Good thing that Tre Brown got to get a new jock strap at halftime. He lost his on Houston's first half touchdown. And Bookie doesn't look that much better to me.

10. I know that Lincoln for recruiting purposes was really thrilled to play Sunday night. But the coaching staff is going to have challenges this week getting everything taken care of, grading video, putting a game plan together. Yes, I know it's South Dakota. The crowd seemed loud and involved all night. Maybe it was beer sales.

 

[UofOKalum]

Maybe, we don't want the defense to pitch a shutout and have the offensive and defensive starters off the field after the half. More reps = more practice and post season awards. I think other teams are doing things to keep their starters on the field too.

3. "Rhamondre's fumble might not have been on him" Hurts has a history of exchange fumbles and I'm sure he has worked on that and feels he needs more work.

4. "Missed field goals, and a bunch of post whistle penalties" = more starter reps, more post season awards.

I saw some selfless and smart players out there. Wow!

 

[Plainosooner]

Maybe, we don't want the defense to pitch a shutout and have the offensive and defensive starters off the field after the half. More reps = more practice and post season awards. I think other teams are doing things to keep their starters on the field too.

3. "Rhamondre's fumble might not have been on him" Hurts has a history of exchange fumbles and I'm sure he has worked on that and feels he needs more work.

4. "Missed field goals, and a bunch of post whistle penalties" = more starter reps, more post season awards.

I saw some selfless and smart players out there. Wow!

I'm pretty confident that post season awards mean almost nothing. This is about winning games, winning the conference and winning championships. And all that means getting some no starters more time, because you always have attrition, and need backup guys who've had real game reps.

And I'm pretty sure that if we win by two more touchdowns, that post season awards are more likely, but the teams with the most impressive won-loss performance, have the most post season awards.

I'm very interested to see how well Houston does under Holgerson. They have a chance to win a lot of games if King stays healthy, and they should be getting their number one RB back in the next week or two. Holgerson did some things schematically in the last 40 minutes of the game, that saw what we were doing, and took advantage of some of it. His team got helped by some stupid OU penalties. And a couple of unlucky ones.

But my guess is that by November, last night will look like a pretty good win.

 

[veritas59]

I was encouraged by the defense. It was nice to see the DBs, at least on a few occasions, turn and look for the ball. We're limited on what we can see on TV, but the fact that King had to pull it down and run on multiple occasions tells me that our coverage was good most of the night. We were stronger up front than I've seen in a while - I saw Perkins flat out run over his guy a couple of times. We got a good push from the front 4 all night. A guy like King is going to break free every once in a while, so while we could have done a better job on a few occasions, we have to understand that you're not going to completely shut down an athlete like that all night. Houston's offense was really good last year, and I expect they'll put up good numbers again this year. Again, I'm encouraged.

Really happy with kickoff coverage. Really concerned about placekicking.

Offensively, I'm not nearly as excited as the talking heads. Houston's defense was terrible last year and they don't look to be any better this year. Jalen looks like he's pretty quick to pull it down and take off. He made a few nice throws on time, but he didn't appear to be a threat to throw over the top of the defense. Save a few, most of his completions were short/medium routes to wide-open receivers. Wish we would have given a little more work to Brooks, and was disappointed that we didn't see Major. I think I heard that he didn't dress for the game??? Receivers looked really good, every one of them. I expect to see Hazelwood's workload increase as the season progresses. The O-line will be fine.

I liked Jalen's attitude after the game. A lot.

 

[Plainosooner]

I agree with you about the offense. Hurts obviously had a pretty good night, setting the school record for total offense in an OU debut by over 100 yards. But there were a few throws to the perimeter downfield, that seemed to need just a little more pace. Receivers got hit pretty good because the ball seemed to hang a bit.

And Hurts carrying 17 times, plus throwing hits, seems like a recipe to end up playing a 2nd team qb some. But he is a LOAD to tackle. I just don't want him ending up taking the kinds of hits that have made Ehlinger shake out the cobwebs too often. We have too many skill position weapons to be so reliant on qb run. I was wondering if maybe Kennedy was dinged a little. He carried very little. and in the first half, ineffectively. They finally got the blocking scheme repaired after halftime.

We look back at Kyler's Heisman year in 2018 and remember amazing. But Kyler's game one didn't look that good. Good, but not great. Jalen hasn't been in this offense before, with this mentality before and he's going to get better. Interesting to me will be how the OLine improves. There is plenty of room for it.

 

[Scottsdale.Sooner]

OU radio (Toby) mentioned on a few occasions that OU had 3 or 4 true freshman playing defense on a few given plays. Grinch seemed to be rotating frequently and kept fresh legs in the game. I'm not a football guru but I watched the game on Youtube and it seems to me most of our mistakes can be corrected.

 

[Plainosooner]

I know Jaden Davis played as a true freshman, but he looked better than the upper classman he was filling in for. At least as good. It's hard to get info from the official site about who played and who didn't. They had at least one player, who was not suited out, as making a tackle. He was in street clothes.

Ugwoegbu played. Stripling played a lot. A couple of redshirt freshmen played.

 

[WhyNotaSooner]

Your #4 nailed it. It basically summarized the game.

Look, the game rolled out pretty much as everyone expected. The over/under totals points I think was 85 the last time I looked. Houston's defense sucks. So giving major kudos to the OU offense will be fools gold. The good news is the OU defense started strong enough that they earned a W. If this game was played with last year's defense, the game would have went down to the very last few seconds of the game.

Poor kicking. Bad P.I.s kept Houston in the game. Remove these two equations and the game would have been pretty lopsided. Good Win for the good guys.

 

[OUnabomber]

We still don't know anything about this defense. We'll have to wait until the Texas game before we can make that determination.

 

[kcstorm06]

We still don't know anything about this defense. We'll have to wait until the Texas game before we can make that determination.

Yes agree with that assessment. Taco Tech might be our next “test”. But have to give them credit for showing great energy in the first half. I like the new and improved K-9....instead of acting like Lassie...he played like the junk yard dog. He made a big step and kudos to Coach Odom for getting him back on track.

 

[Plainosooner]

TTech is better than Houston, with a qb who is a much better passer than King. OUr db's will get more than just a test.

 

[Phaeded]

My biggest D concern: The D limited downfield passing through decent coverage and the pass rush, but when Houston adjusted by throwing RB swings and WR screens into the flats, as well as more QB runs (King ended up with 100+ rushing, despite the sacks)...we did not adjust. That's on Grinch. I'm sure he'll adjust but disappointed that was not an in-game adjustment. Hell, give Bookie something useful to do and spy the mobile QB. And I know covering WR swings and RB dump-offs is pick your poison - your CBs may be sucked up and then beat deep, relying entirely on our safeties - but we need a better option here than just sticking with the original game plan. I am very much encouraged by the D overall (we have one!) but greedy in having all of our bases covered. Fields and Bookie should split time with others to see if we don't have better options.

My biggest O concern: I'll just echo everyone else - I don't care how strong Hurts is, that many QB draws up the gut are begging for injury. His biggest run on the night was taking off from a called pass. Its good to see him galloping in open space, so roll him out more with the run-pass option and of course continue to green light him to take off when the field is open but a WR is not (ND's QB killed Louisville last night doing that).

Finally: only 4 rushing attempts for Brooks (11.5 avg.). Why?

 

[Zgeo]

FG kicking was an issue, as were the initial Kick Offs....Birjck improved the Kick Offs to what we need once he came in, maybe he can do the Field Goals too.....

The penalties probably took about ten points from us and provided about ten points to Houston, so a swing of twenty points overall could have been as much as 28 points overall......

 

[Salt City Sooner]

My biggest D concern: The D limited downfield passing through decent coverage and the pass rush, but when Houston adjusted by throwing RB swings and WR screens into the flats, as well as more QB runs (King ended up with 100+ rushing, despite the sacks)...we did not adjust. That's on Grinch. I'm sure he'll adjust but disappointed that was not an in-game adjustment. Hell, give Bookie something useful to do and spy the mobile QB. And I know covering WR swings and RB dump-offs is pick your poison - your CBs may be sucked up and then beat deep, relying entirely on our safeties - but we need a better option here than just sticking with the original game plan. I am very much encouraged by the D overall (we have one!) but greedy in having all of our bases covered. Fields and Bookie should split time with others to see if we don't have better options.

My biggest O concern: I'll just echo everyone else - I don't care how strong Hurts is, that many QB draws up the gut are begging for injury. His biggest run on the night was taking off from a called pass. Its good to see him galloping in open space, so roll him out more with the run-pass option and of course continue to green light him to take off when the field is open but a WR is not (ND's QB killed Louisville last night doing that).

Finally: only 4 rushing attempts for Brooks (11.5 avg.). Why?

It was actually an RPO. Orlovsky diagrammed it on Sportcenter the following day. If that initial LB followed Lamb on that shallow cross (he did), Hurts does what he did, w/ a designed lead blocker from the opposite side. If the LB had stayed put, it's pitch & catch w/ CD time.

 

[owenfieldreams]

According to HCLR, we played 26 players on D in the game.

 

[OUnabomber]

FG kicking was an issue, as were the initial Kick Offs....Birjck improved the Kick Offs to what we need once he came in, maybe he can do the Field Goals too.....

The penalties probably took about ten points from us and provided about ten points to Houston, so a swing of twenty points overall could have been as much as 28 points overall......

I don't know if we have anyone else, but I would try him next game if we did. 0-2 in your first game....and one of them a chip shot just isn't going to cut it.

 

[Medic007]

It was actually an RPO. Orlovsky diagrammed it on Sportcenter the following day. If that initial LB followed Lamb on that shallow cross (he did), Hurts does what he did, w/ a designed lead blocker from the opposite side. If the LB had stayed put, it's pitch & catch w/ CD time.

 

[veritas59]

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I saw that. That was a great breakdown of the P R O