Oklahoma-Maine Preview: One Big Thing

The Sooners need to stay healthy for their final stretch run in SEC play, and that means getting as many backups onto the field as possible.

Oklahoma wide receiver Jaquaize Pettaway. / BRYAN TERRY/THE OKLAHOMAN / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

NORMAN — This week really is all about one thing for Oklahoma: staying healthy.

Oklahoma should obliterate Maine on the scoreboard Saturday, and neither the team nor Sooner Nation should read too much into OU’s margin of victory.

Mired in a ragged season, OU’s motivation might not seem very high for stepping out of Southeastern Conference play. 

That’s not the case, said linebacker Dasan McCullough.

“This team, we’re just wild dogs ready to go bite at this point,” McCullough said. “We’re just ready to play, ready to against whoever, whenever.” 

As a program playing in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), the Black Bears are limited to 63 athletic scholarships (there are 112 players on the roster). And while 100 percent of the players who received scholarships are good football players, only one of them was offered by an SEC school (DB Jayden Curry was courted by Texas A&M before beginning his career at South Florida and then transferring to Maine). The disparity in athletic talent is, strictly speaking, unfair.

(A caveat: Historically, Maine has four wins against FBS opponents, beating UMass in 2021, Western Kentucky in 2018, UMass in 2013 and Mississippi State — yes, of the SEC — in 2004.)

This Maine squad comes in 4-4 — that’s double the Bears’ win total from each of the last two seasons — with some impressive wins over FCS No. 5-ranked Villanova (35-7) and No. 21 Albany (34-20). But they’ve also suffered four double-digit defeats.

“I’ve got respect for them,” said OU cornerback Dez Malone. “I think we all should. That’s the last thing you want to do is kind of fall asleep on an opponent. This still is the game of football.”

The Black Bears do have 20 graduate students and six seniors on their two-deep, which seems to cause concern on Brent Venables' part. They also have four FBS transfers — two of whom are backups, two of whom don’t appear on the two-deep.

“What does that mean? They’ve got a lot of experience,” Venables said. “Nobody cares. We’re focused on Oklahoma like we always have been.”

The Black Bears’ depth chart does show some capable bodies. Maine’s defensive line averages 273 pounds per man, and the offensive line averages 307. All eight defensive backs are 5-11 or taller (six are listed above 6 feet). 

But this will be a mismatch.

Once the Sooners establish that a comfortable victory is secure — start of the third quarter, perhaps, or maybe a couple possessions after halftime — it’s time to dump the bench.

“Big opportunity,” said linebacker Kip Lewis. “Big chance to get momentum for this next stretch, this next run. And so we gotta come out here and capitalize on it.”

Expect significant snaps for QB Michael Hawkins, and maybe even Casey Thompson could finally see his first action in Crimson and Cream. Jaquaize Pettaway, Zion Ragins, Zion Kearney, Ivan Carreon and Jacob Jordan should all have a breakout day catching the football. OU should get its first 100-yard rusher of the season, and then should expect another — maybe Sam Franklin. 

And most importantly, Isaiah Autry-Dent, Eddy Pierre-Louis, Eugene Brooks and Josh Aisosa should expect to play significant snaps on the offensive line. For that matter, if Daniel Akinkunmi is healthy enough to play and in shape enough to hold up, this would be a great time to unleash him into the world of American football.

This is when Bill Bedenbaugh finds out if those freshman can play, and that’s big because the offensive line in its current iteration isn’t good enough to push the Sooners across the finish line and into a bowl game. Bedenbaugh needs to start thinking about the future, and that starts Saturday.

OU needs to make a bowl not to keep alive its 24-year bowl streak, but to be able to schedule up to 15 more practices, where those young players can get frontline reps and really start to show improvement for 2025 and beyond.

“It's actually pretty important because, win this (and) we're one more closer to getting to a bowl game,” said defensive end R Mason Thomas. “I know that's huge because we have a bowl streak going back a long time. We're not trying to look forward, but we know we have to win to make a bowl.”

“We’re going to keep fighting until the season’s over with,” said wideout J.J. Hester. “That’s what Coach V emphasizes, and we’re just going to keep going.”

Oklahoma started the season with high hopes but now begins the final third of 2024 with a 4-4 record and, at 1-4 in league play with a daunting finishing stretch of Missouri, Alabama and LSU, is in danger of finishing at the bottom of the SEC standings.

“What's in the past is in the past,” Thomas said. “We’ve got to move on and if we’re going to let last week and the week before or the weeks before that define what we can do this week, then we might as well forfeit all the rest of the games.”