Oklahoma football: Three big learnings from OU’s reunion with Nebraska
Knowing the past is consistently 20/20, as it's been said. Oklahoma football trainer Lincoln Riley has said a few times over the most recent few weeks that the Sooners are genuine near playing at a tip top level.
The issue is, it's difficult to accommodate that visualization with how Oklahoma has showed up on the field in its two nonconference prevails upon FBS rivals. Indeed, even with the victory prevail upon Western Carolina, Riley conceded, wasn't close to as ideal a game as the scoreboard would have shown.
In ongoing seasons, it has been the hazardous Oklahoma offense that conveyed the heap. Twice over the most recent four years, the Sooners drove the country in all out offense. Protectively, notwithstanding, the Sooners have battled dialing back contradicting offense and keeping focuses off the scoreboard. Against happy occasions, this isn't a formula for winning.
So far this season, the battles have all the earmarks of being favoring the hostile side, while the protection, generally, seems, by all accounts, to be standing its ground. Limiting the Western Carolina game, the Sooners' two different successes are more the aftereffect of cautious play than hostile execution, which is an altogether different and fairly upsetting example for a group expected to seek a public title.
The Sooners were champs on Saturday and stay undefeated, however dubiously so. The following are three prime perceptions from the success over Nebraska:
Oklahoma has prided itself, since Riley assumed liability for the offense around six seasons back, of hitting rapidly with dangerous plays and drives that burn-through a fraction of the hour of other more deliberate, ball-control offenses. This season, adversaries have been removing the profound ball from the Sooner offense and compelling Spencer Rattler and Co. to be more persistent and support long scoring drives.
Rattler doesn't show up absolutely open to making profound efforts and is experiencing issues sorting out the delicate zone inclusion that groups are utilizing against the Sooners.
Through three games, Rattler has tossed only six passes of longer than 20 yards and finished two. That is a normal of two such passes a game. For a group with various breakaway playmakers, that appears to be traditionalist. Rattler through only one pass of no less than 23 yards on Saturday.
A year prior, he tossed 57 passes longer than 20 yards, finishing 29. Expert Football Focus gave him a quarterback grade of 98.1 in 2020, which positioned third to BYU's Zack Wilson and Alabama's Mac Jones, both now beginning in the NFL.
Oklahoma ran for 194 yard and passed for 214 yards on Saturday, showing great equilibrium yet far underneath what the Sooners' standard hostile yield, especially in the passing game.
A piece of that is credited to Nebraska's durability, constancy and course of action on guard. Another part was OU's predetermined number of hostile belongings (nine complete for the game). The two greatest plays of the game for Oklahoma were on guard and the Sooners' were credited with five sacks and 10 handles for misfortune, both season highs. Be that as it may, Nebraska was as yet ready to maintain, long, tedious drives, which at last removes Oklahoma hostile open doors. You must have the option to get off the field on safeguard, and the Sooners presently can't seem to show that with any consistency so far this season.
The OU protection recorded only one three-and-out the whole evening, and that was right off the bat in the subsequent quarter.
Oklahoma worked really hard of closing down the Nebraska hurrying assault, particularly in containing the speed and tricky Husker quarterback Adrian Martinez. Nebraska was held to only 95 yards on the ground and 2.5 yards per surge. Martinez acquired 34 surging yards.
Nebraska's taller recipients messed up the OU optional, something that has tormented the Sooners in past games. Not ordinarily a passing group, Nebraska outgained Oklahoma through the air 289 to 214, and Martinez finished 19 of 25 passes. Oklahoma's Isaiah Coe impeded a Nebraska extra-point kick toward the finish of the second from last quarter, and the Sooners' D.J. Graham returned the redirected kick 100 yards for a three-point swing. The two focuses added to the OU side of the scoreboard gave Oklahoma a 16-9 benefit rather than 14-10, which the score would have been had the point-after attempt been fruitful.
That solitary play brought about a significant force shift in the game. On the accompanying OU ownership, the Sooners walked 75 yards in 12 plays, with Kennedy Brooks going the last two yards for a score that put Oklahoma up 23-9.
Graham acquired a second cap sticker just minutes after the fact, pulling down a feature reel block attempt of a Nebraska fourth-down pass at the OU objective line. As incredible a capture attempt as it was, it wound up costing the Sooners' a short field that under two minutes after the fact brought about a Cornhusker score, slicing the OU lead to 23-16.
Lincoln Riley said after the game that he really considered testing the capture attempt as a fragmented pass. Had the pass been batted down or fallen fragmented, Oklahoma would have been granted the ball at the OU 24 rather than the three-yard line. Riley said that may have been the initial time in history a mentor tested a guarded block attempt
