Offense: F through first half. A plus in the fourth quarter.
Defense: B for the whole game. They stayed solid.
Kicking: B. Not great, but not bad. Didn’t cost the Sooners the game.
Coaching: B. They didn’t pull out Baker Mayfield.
Other: The Wow Factor. A.
Let’s get this out on the table now. The Sooners are not going to win at Tennessee.
And, it won’t be because there are 105,000 orange-clad Volunteer fans yelling in the stadium — a statistic lazy sports writer nubes harped about all week, as if the Sooners have never before played in a big game or in a big stadium.
It will be because the Sooner defense hasn’t proven to me they can step up against a strong offense.
The Tennessee volunteers have a strong offense.
The key matchup will be the Vols running game vs. the Oklahoma run defense.
Tennessee ran for 399 yards in a 59-30 victory over Bowling Green last week, which marked the Volunteers’ best single-game rushing total since 1994. Alvin Kamara and Jalen Hurd each went over 100 yards. QB Joshua Dobbs added 89 yards.
It’s hard to get excited about a 41-3 victory over an overmatched Akron team.
What makes the victory even more hollow in my opinion is the lack of any kind of run game from the Sooners. That may sound harsh, but that’s where I’m at right now. I know the argument. Akron loaded up to stop the run and OU beat them through the air. You take what the defense gives you.
But if you watched closely, I didn’t see the Zips commit eight men in the box very often. For most of the game I thought they played OU pretty straight up. And the Sooners could not run on them. They couldn’t run on Akron.
Now don’t get me wrong. Mayfield and the receivers did live up to the hype after the first quarter. Baker was slinging it all over the field to a plethora of playmakers, one after the other. The Air Raid is alive and well in Norman. And that’s great against Akron. But the Sooners are going to need the running game to be a big part of this offense when the big boys start lining up against them. And if they couldn’t get it rolling against the Zippies?
To me that’s a pretty big red flag because as they say, this sh$t just got real. Tennessee and over a hundred thousand fans await this Saturday in Knoxville. The size, speed and athleticism just jumped exponentially.