Mustangs' QB Preston Stone Not Trying Be Any Kind of Hero

Ponies' offensive coordinator Casey Woods on offense in loss to Oklahoma

One of brightest spots for SMU in a 28-11 loss at Oklahoma over the weekend was the play of the offense that managed to move the ball at times and didn't have a lot of turnovers.

"He's really playing good right now," offensive coordinator Casey Woods told the media Tuesday. "He's confident. I think he's seeing it, he's not putting the ball in jeopardy. He's doing exactly what we ask him to do." And not trying to do more than either he or the guys around him are ready to do right now, especially against the Sooners in hostile environment.

SMU got within 3 points, 14-11, in the fourth quarter on a touchdown pass from Stone to Stone Eby (I knew all along that was going to sound awkward reading in a sentence). There was 12:09 left in the game and it probably was a wake-up call for OU they probably didn't really expect.

"He's not trying to be a superhero," Woods said about his quarterback. "You see some of those plays kind of manifest themselves sometimes, which we thought would happen naturally anyway, but he's trying to operate within the confines of our offense and he's being smart and distributing the ball. Twelve different guys had touches. That's like that's 10 players in Game 1, 12 players in Game 2, so there's a there's a distribution of wealth going on right now, which is exciting."

The Ponies had more total offense in the game than the Sooners. It was 367 yards, which was slightly ahead of OU's 365. Hey, it's still statistically more. Take away a blocked punt that gave the Sooners an easy score and you have a completely different game, but that's raising a hypothetical that didn't happen.

"We wanted to stay aggressive in the game and we wanted to continue to do that," Woods said. "It's why we went for it on fourth down as many times as we did even when, we had confidence enough in our defense, put them in a bad situation there late in the game. That's just trying to continue to be aggressive and give those looks and we got a couple of guards hurt during the game, we were kind of struggling more in the middle so we were trying to get on the perimeter. Oklahoma's very talented defense, they're obviously very fast."

Probably as fast as anybody they'll play on the schedule. It was just the second week of the season, so let's wait a bit to see how everybody else on the schedule develops over the course of the season.

The Mustangs have a week that should be one to fine-tune some things they've seen in a 1-1 start having shown they can play with maybe the best team on the schedule already.

SMU will host Prairie View on Saturday in Gerald J. Ford Stadium, kicking off at 6 p.m. on ESPN+. You can hear the game in the Metroplex on The Ticket 1310 AM / 96.7 FM.