Oklahoma-Texas Tech: One Big Thing

After so many close games, OU needs a comfortable win heading into the open date, and it starts with a defensive resurgence — and practicing every day this week.

Lincoln Riley / Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports

Spencer Rattler said it last year, and it came true: It’s time for Oklahoma to embarrass somebody.

That was the Friday night before the Sooners’ Halloween game at Texas Tech, and after two losses and a series of close victories, they pounded Tech 62-28.

This year, on Saturday night, the night before Halloween, OU hosts the Red Raiders.

Coming off a 35-23 nail-biter at Kansas last week — Kansas! — OU dropped two spots in the coaches poll and one spot in the AP Poll.

Now ranked No. 4 one week before the initial College Football Playoff rankings come out, Lincoln Riley’s squad faces a Texas Tech team that’s wounded and weak. The Red Raiders blew a two-touchdown halftime lead at home last week to Kansas State — it was the Wildcats’ first Big 12 Conference win this year — and then fired their coach.

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"If I had it to do over again knowing the result, I probably wouldn’t."

— Lincoln Riley on giving players Monday off practice last week

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Sonny Cumbie — Riley’s former teammate and staff mate at Texas Tech under Mike Leach — replaces Matt Wells and has never been a head coach before. But he’s got the reins of his alma mater on at least an interim basis.

All that is to reiterate: it’s time for Oklahoma to embarrass someone.

Any surge from the Sooners this week needs to start on defense. OU is ranked 59th in the nation in points allowed, 69th in yards allowed, and 112th in passing yards allowed. Recently it’s been an alarming combination of no pressure on the quarterback (one sack over the last two games, and that was on KU’s final drive) and wide open receivers in the secondary.

“Can we be better on the front? Yes,” Riley said. “Are there things we can do schematically to better help that, yes.

“Those things play in tandem. The better you do on the back end, makes quarterbacks hold the ball and vice versa. I don’t see groups that are incapable. I don’t see groups that aren’t showing signs of it. We need to do on all three levels more often.”

Said defensive coordinator Alex Grinch, “It should be cranked up to another level. I don’t think I’ve seen that in the last couple of weeks. So to just assume we’re going to do that now — what’s the breaking point? What’s that line in the sand that you can ultimately draw? In the end, you have to get a group of guys over it and perform up to an actual standard.

“To assume now is the time to change behaviors because we’re fatigued with poor performance would be an understatement. It’s long overdue.”

The Sooners (8-0) have been surviving each week, sometimes by the skin of their teeth, and are now 2-5 against the spread in games versus FBS opponents. The line in Saturday’s game opened at 19, quickly moved to 22 after Wells was fired, and has since returned to 19.5.

OU players and coaches have been talking for weeks about getting to next week’s open date and about how the grind of nine straight football Saturdays has worn them down.

But Tech also has played nine straight Saturdays and, with as many as six starters possibly sitting out Saturday afternoon’s clash in Norman, are also beaten up.

“We’ve managed,” Riley said Thursday. “I told the guys this week, ‘This is what we do. We wait all offseason, just dying for the season to get here, and here it is. The fact that it’s nine straight weeks,’ I told them, ‘I’ll be disappointed when we get to next Saturday and don’t have a football game. This is what we do. It’s what we love to do.’

“Look at the NFL teams this year, you’ve got damn near half the league that’s playing 8 or 11 or 13 straight. And those guys, as I told them — it doesn’t get any easier on your body as your body gets older and older.”

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“To assume now is the time to change behaviors because we’re fatigued with poor performance would be an understatement. It’s long overdue.”

— Alex Grinch on OU's repeated poor defensive performances

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Defensive lineman Jalen Redmond is supposed to be back in the fold this week for the Sooners. A couple of defensive backs may be further away — possibly targeting the Baylor game in two weeks. A couple of wide receivers could be back this week as well.

Riley acknowledges that the team came out unusually flat against Kansas and he recognized that giving players Monday off from practice might not have been the best strategy.

“Yeah, looking back on it, I don’t disagree,” he said. “When you try, at that time, to put forth a plan, what you think is right for the team — yeah, if I had it to do over again, would I have done it again? Knowing what I know now, probably not.

“Can I go back and look at it and say things that we didn’t do well last Saturday, I can draw parallels to not practicing on Monday? I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. I own that. If I had it to do over again knowing the result, I probably wouldn’t, either.

“That’s the nature of the beast. If we went out there and looked sluggish at practice on Monday, then we might be saying we should have given them off. That’s the way it works.

“But — we did practice this Monday.”

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