I can still taste it. Every born and bred Sooner fan can. Come on, don’t pretend you don’t know what the H-E-double-hockey sticks I’m talking about. I’m sure Alex Grinch does.
It’s that bittersweet taste that’s still camping out in our mouths and heads over that debacle of a college playoff loss. As my good friend, die-hard Sooner man and Anadarko boy Jason Glidewell would lament: “I Spit On The Floor!”
Don’t get me wrong. I’m only mildly disappointed we lost to LSU (where’s that dang cussing emoji when you want it?) and Glidewell has probably emerged from his comatose state.
Seriously, it isn’t like most Sooner fans, Jason and I included, didn’t know we were likely in over our crimson-colored heads against the juggernaut Tigers.
Nope. NOPE! Don’t you people go there.
Don’t try to convince me that you Aggie-beating, Texas-Hating Sooners didn’t think we were likely to lose. I mean LSU had been ahead of us in the polls all season long. They had a Heisman Trophy winner at quarterback. They were undefeated against a much tougher schedule than ours. The could score like, well, like OU! And, they have a top-notch DEFENSE.
We’ve been on the good side of that type situation more than not throughout much of Sooner history. Well, except for much of the last decade.
But 60+ points given up? Even to a powerhouse and consensus number one?
I’m pretty sure Jesus was weeping at 11:59 p.m. on Dec. 28th.
Not since the happily forgotten days of Schnelly and Blake has an Oklahoma football team had their backsides handed to them in front of a national television audience as badly our boys in crimson and cream did only a handful of holiday-hours ago.
LSU’s massive double-digit-beat-down can only be likened to those pre-conference clubfests we regularly administer to the orphan-sisters-of-the-poor that we devour prior to conference play every year.
I don’t care what your arguments are or what the score was whenever in the play-off contest you want to point out. We really were never in that game.
Which means our still-new defensive coordinator Alex Grinch likely didn’t go to bed until early the next morning after having downed a few stiff drinks and bashing his head into the concrete exterior of the team hotel wall a few times. (Hope the mild concussion symptoms end soon coach!)
Who wouldn’t in his position?
Because the truth he faces today and every day until the end of next season is an ugly one.
Our defense still stinks. And not just a little bit.
Now, before you call for me to be hanged naked on the 50-yard line of Owen Field, hear me out.
The strides our defense made this year were tremendous. They saved us time and time again against the bulk of our opponents, except Kansas State, and (crying emoji) LSU. We didn’t stink every play. Just a few scores of them. It would have been much worse if our offense wasn’t one of the finest in the nation.
But the D did fail against one of the strongest current powerhouses in college football. And not even how bad we stunk is really debatable either. Let me type it in caps – we stunk BADLY!
LSU was the primary reason for that.
However, a championship defense is still further away, in all likelihood, than any of us care to admit.
We still have a secondary that can’t cover a top-10 receiver worth a hoot most of the time. We still can’t sack the quarterback when we have to and stopping the run game of the best teams also is, far too often, a middling success.
It’s not that Grinch doesn’t have bodies. He just doesn’t have top-15 powerhouse defensive bodies of Sooner legend. There aren’t any Selmons on this team. There aren’t any Randy Whites, Roy Williams, Jimbo Elrods or Rod Shoates.
And it’s likely going to be another two years at least before there are. In fact, I’m not sure we can ever reach our glorious defensive heights again with the way Big 12 football is being played.
Quick: Name a proven difference maker on the defensive side of the team next year? I’d need to see a depth chart and analyze defensive substitution patterns for the season to even have a slither of an idea, and so would all of you.
Who knows how good our defense will be in the heat of Saturday in 2020 battles when the play of a single man really counts?
You rarely make a steel wall out of untested tin and balsa wood. And that’s what the OU defense really consists of now.
You rarely make a steel wall out of untested tin and balsa wood. And that’s what the OU defense really consists of now.
Moreover, should we count on more of the same next year?
Probably (crying and angry emoji typed here). Where’s my bottle of Tequila?
Defensively, we lose: Defensive linemen Neville Gallimore, Kenneth Mann and Marquise Overton. Linebackers Kenneth Murray and Mark Jackson Jr. Cornerback Parnell Motley. (Senior LB Caleb Kelly, whose injury allowed the Sooners to redshirt him, will return next year.)
That’s the experience-laden guts of OU’s defense.
There are plenty defensive starters or second-teamers who will definitely see time and get their chance to start in 2020.
However, you rarely make a steel wall out of untested tin and balsa wood. And that’s what the OU defense really consists of now – and Grinch knows it. Riley too. Every Sooner fan also should.
There was progress this year. Just not as much as wanted or needed by any and every one. Next year is clearly a gigantic rebuilding year.
Now that the tequila bottle is empty, I’m switching to gin. Coach Grinch – care to join me?
Joking aside, the days of yesteryear are coming though. It’s probably going to take a while longer than anticipated before we can continuously challenge a Heisman quarterback, running back or receiver.
Next season’s rebuild will see to that. We have to believe, though, that top-caliber defensive players are on the way to the rescue.
There seems to be plenty already on the roster and plenty potentially great players coming in defensively next season.
I just hope Grinch can right the ship sooner rather than later.
So, to sum up this season, let me select a favorite quote Jason Robards as Ben Bradlee in the Watergate film All The President’s Men.
Ben/Jason says this to Dustin Hoffman (Carl Bernstein) and Robert Redford (Bob Woodward) in the early morning darkness standing outside his home:
“You know the results of the latest Gallup Poll? Nobody gives a s*** about Watergate. You guys are probably pretty tired, right? Well, you should be. Go home, get a nice hot bath. Rest up…15 minutes. Then get your asses back in gear. We’re under a lot of pressure, you know, and you put us there. Nothing’s riding on this except the first amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press and maybe the future of the country. Not that any of that matters, but if you guys f*** up again, I’m going to get mad. Goodnight.”
Let’s all pray Alex Grinch doesn’t get mad next season – at least not all the time.
— Michael C.
Photo credits: Caitlyn Epes/Oklahoma Daily; Wildwood Enterprises (“All the President’s Men”)
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