BAYLOR MORE THAN OU COULD BEAR

BAYLOR 41

OKLAHOMA 12

There Was Reason For Hope

"Yeah, I gave up drinkin' and took up churchin' 

and for a while it wasn't tough..." - Daryl Dodd

In my opinion, it was all there for the taking last Thursday night in Waco, Texas....at least for a while anyway.

•  Mike Stoops had a very good game plan in place.  The Sooners were getting good pressure on Baylor QB Bryce Petty by blitzing a linebacker or a safety.  The secondary was able to get away with man-to-man coverage and was doing an excellent job of defending the long downfield passing game that Baylor loves to employ.  The defense was also doing a decent job of bottling up the vaunted Baylor rushing attack by using various stunts and run blitzes.  The Baylor offense came into the game averaging 64 points a game...midway through the second quarter Baylor had a grand total of 3 points.  The defense was doing their part.
• With RB's Lache Seastrunk and Glasco Martin no longer available due to injury, the Bears were down to their third team tailback....some dude named Shock Linwood.  That was a good thing right?
• Baylor was understandably jacked up for this game...but maybe a bit too much so.  Sloppy ball handling, penalties and personal fouls and some pretty good OU defense prevented the Bears from finding any kind of rhythm early on.  The Bears were flagged for a laundry list of fouls and infractions, many of which was due to their over aggressive play.  Baylor would end the night being flagged 12 times for 119 yards in penalties. 
• The Baylor crowd was restless and tense and not much of a factor. 
• Even after Baylor regained the lead at 10-5, the Sooners were in pretty good shape.  With Baylor facing 3 and 9 from their own 8 yards line, the Sooners looked to have made a key stop when Petty's pass over the middle was incomplete....but another offside penalty gave Baylor the last second chance they would need.  9 plays and 93 yards later...for all practical purposes...it was over.

Yes, in my opinion, the #5 ranked Baylor Bears were ripe for an upset last Thursday night...but just not by the likes of a very average football team like Oklahoma. 

Hopeless For So Many Reasons

The Cliff-Notes Version

"It's not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, 

then do your best" - W. Edwards Deming

You don't win big ballgames when your defense:

• Can't achieve the simple task of lining up or staying on-sides 
• Can't tackle a QB
• Has all the depth of a kiddie-pool at the defensive line position
• Can't stay off the field due to the offensive units incompetence
• Allows a third string guy who calls himself Shock to run for 182 yards. 
• Is so injury ravaged that is has become absurd

Rarely do you beat undefeated teams on the road, or any team anywhere for that matter, when your offense: 

• where do I even begin...
• Can't snap the football within the allotted time to do so
• Scores like a bad youth league soccer team inside the red-zone
• Doesn't get a first down without the benefit of the other team cheating until the 12:00 mark of the second quarter
• Doesn't use their running backs to run the ball...1st carry for a Sooner RB wasn't until third offensive series
• Doesn't have a tight end
• Has a 260 lbs. QB who's running style has migrated from Bell-Dozier to Ballerina-Dancer
• Has an offensive line that moves more before the snap than after...and has to zone block more than one defensive player each on the goal line and in short yardage
• Either won't audible/can't audible in time/or doesn't feel confident enough to audible out of a running play when the defense brings 8, 9 and sometimes even 10 defenders within five yards of the line of scrimmage
• Has no quarterback
• Has an offensive coordinator that might be in over his head
• & has no idea who they are or what they are trying to accomplish

Knee Jerk...or Just a Jerk

"Our age knows nothing but reaction, and leaps
from one extreme to another"  -Reinhold Niebuhr

I wrote the first draft of this Baylor blog update when I got home from Waco last Thursday night/Friday morning, but decided to sleep on it before posting. When I woke a few hours later to find that the sun had come out, the sky hadn't fallen and that the world hadn’t come to an end…I reread my thoughts and decided that maybe I should soften my position on things just a tad.  Firing Stoops, cancelling the season and discontinuing the University of Oklahoma football program seemed a reasonable course of action when I was finishing off my last cocktail at 3 AM; but now…not so much. So I scraped it.

The second draft I pounded out on Monday was a more detailed review of Thursday night’s first half than what I outlined above.  My rant documented every little brain dead mistake, every single bonehead miscue, every costly penalty, every ridiculously inept play that was called and all the atrocious QB gaff's that the Sooners committed in that first 30 minutes of the game. The problem with version #2 is that it was turning out to be longer than War & Peace.  If I had printed out the draft, it would’ve looked like the Houston phone book. I realize that I have a tendency to get a little long winded but this thing was a network time slot and a commercial sponsor away from being a mini-series.  Frankly, it was more complaining than a 48 year old should be directing at anything or anybody, much less a group of student athletes.  Besides, if you’re a Sooner fan you’ve already seen the movie, so there’s not much need to read the book.  So I trashed it.

Now it’s Tuesday and I’m starting from scratch for the third time. Of even more concern is that I’m still struggling to find a focus or an identity for this update…and then it dawned on me. No identity? No clue as to what the game plan is or what you're going to do if encountering resistance? Where have I seen that just recently? 
The OAS loves him some irony.

WE ARE WHO WE ARE.  BY THE WAY- 

WHO ARE WE AGAIN?

"You have to find what sparks a light in you so that you in your own way can illuminate the world" -Oprah Winfrey

You know something is desperate when I have resorted to quoting Oprah....The most glaring problem with this football team is obviously on the offensive side of the ball.  The offense has no idea of who it is or what it is that they are trying to do.  One minute they try to be a read option, run first and throw occasionally type unit...but one that is being led by a QB (Bell) not as well suited for the task as maybe Knight or Thompson would be.  Next thing you know, they want to spread four receivers out and try to immulate what they did with Landry Jones...throw first, second and then if it hasn't been intercepted yet...throw it again.  Unfortunately, no QB that they would consider playing this year is capable of running that kind of offense.  Bell is probably the most qualified and he turned in a QB rating of 5.7 against Baylor.  That 5.7 is on a scale of 1-100 by the way....not 1-10.  5.7?  How is that even possible? He might have score higher if hadn't played.  Hell, I got a 1.7 QB rating just for driving to Waco; or maybe that was my blood alcohol level...but regardless...5.7 sucks.

Just thinking about our QB issues makes me want to revisit my therapist.  Maybe it's time to give her a call

More to follow....

Just the opinion of one mildly interested guy

The Overweight Armchair Sooner

Buddy Putty