Oklahoma-South Carolina: One Big Thing — Can OU Create Just One Big Play?

The Sooners need to get right, and fast, but Saturday they're facing a hungry SEC squad that nearly shocked Alabama and Ole Miss.

Texas Longhorns defensive back Michael Taaffe (16) sacks Oklahoma Sooners quarterback Michael Hawkins Jr. / Ricardo B. Brazziell/American-Statesman / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

NORMAN — Whatever that was that Oklahoma just put on the field for the last six weeks, it needs to change.

The Sooners look up at the midway point of the college football season with four wins and two losses. 

The SEC doesn’t care if your receivers are hurt. The SEC doesn’t care if your quarterbacks are green.

This isn’t a pillow fight with your little brother.

OU’s not going to win any more SEC games if the Sooner offense doesn’t come out of its shell.

• Out of 133 teams, Oklahoma ranks 127th nationally in yards per pass attempt, averaging a measly 5.8 yards per throw. 

• OU is 131st nationally in yards per pass completion, just 9.56.

• The Sooners are 128th nationally in yards per play at just 4.48.

• OU has just eight passes this season that have gained 20 yards or more. That’s 132nd in the nation.

• And the Sooners have just 13 total plays all year that have gained at least 20 yards. That ranks 133rd — dead last — in major college football.

The Gamecocks aren’t feeling bad for the Sooners. They’re coming to Norman to extend OU’s misery. 

Texas’ defense leads the nation in fewest yards allowed per play at just 3.69.

Tennessee ranks second at 4.04.

Are they putting up eye-popping numbers because they both got to play Oklahoma? Or is Oklahoma at the bottom in so many categories because they played Texas and Tennessee?

What matters now for the Sooners is who they’re playing next. 

South Carolina’s defense ranks 16th in the nation in yards per play allowed, just 4.61.

But that’s not the only bad news.

Ole Miss, next week’s opponent, gives up just 4.06 yards per play. That’s No. 3 in the nation. And Alabama, who awaits in November, is No. 17. Even Missouri is No. 26.

So clearly, the offense that Oklahoma has been running is bound to have little to no success against future opponents.

Sounds like a good time to change things up.

With its top four receivers out essentially all season and a fifth, Deion Burks, trying to get back from what Brent Venables calls a “soft tissue injury,” OU’s passing game this season features just six receivers who have caught at least five passes.

Two of those are tight ends, and one is a running back. 

That leaves Burks (7.73 yards per catch on 26 receptions), Brenen Thompson (9.62 on 13), Jaquaize Pettaway (17.4 on four) and Zion Kearney (11.4 on five) to try to contribute big plays in the passing game. Throw in J.J. Hester, who has only four catches but is averaging 22.5 yards per catch thanks to his 60-yard bomb at Auburn.

That remains the Sooners’ longest play of the season. It’s also their only completion on a deep shot (Jalil Farooq’s 47-yard grab on the second play of the season was a deep crossing route).

“We weren't explosive (against Texas),” Venables said. “That's a big difference. I thought the explosive plays (and) the turnovers were really the difference in the game, and our inability to create them on offense and sustain drives and their ability to create explosive plays.”

So what needs to change?

Forget who’s not here. Identify who is healthy, figure out what they’re good at. And then get them the football. Again and again.

Grip it and rip it. Let it fly. Swing away, Merrill. Chuck it deep. YOLO.

Whether it’s Michael Hawkins or Jackson Arnold, Oklahoma’s quarterbacks have been either unwilling to test the pass protection or unwilling to test the opposing secondary. They’ve not thrown it deep, and when they have, it’s often been in a cautious manner up the sideline — more accurately, too far out of bounds for receivers to make a play on.

Does Oklahoma’s offense even practice throwing deep balls?

Offensive coordinator Seth Littrell’s first job was four seasons under Mike Leach at Texas Tech. The first offensive coordinator he hired as head coach at North Texas was Graham Harrell, Leach’s most successful quarterback. 

Leach’s air raid offense certainly was never famous for throwing it deep. Leach threw it a lot, but he liked to use the pass game as an extension of the run game — a lot of short throws. That's Littrell's coaching DNA.

But if he can sprinkle in a few deep throws and a few intermediate throws, something out of Steve Sarkisian's pro-style offense, for instance, the OU offense might have a chance to climb out of the doldrums over the next two months.

Behind a rebuilt offensive line and with a run game that is every bit as dysfunctional as the pass game, Littrell’s operating system so far in his six games as Oklahoma’s OC has been to fall back on his air raid roots in the passing game — can’t trust the protection to hold off the pass rush, can’t trust the young, inexperienced receivers to fight for the football, can't trust the rookie quarterbacks to make great throws. Might as well play it safe.

Clearly, that strategy has proven to be untenable — OK, it’s arguably the worst in all of college football — and will be even more untenable over the next six games than it was in the last six.

If OU max protects with tight end or running backs (or both together, or maybe adds an offensive lineman to the equation) and Hawkins (or Arnold) has both the time and the courage to stand in and throw it deep, Thompson and Hester and Pettaway and Kearney and Zion Ragins and Ivan Carreon — and maybe even Burks, if he’s finally healthy — become Oklahoma’s best hope at finally taking the lid off one of the nation’s most anemic offenses.