The legend of Baker Mayfield grows.
Baker and Oklahoma dismantled Ohio St. last Saturday 31-16. And it shouldn’t have been that close. We blew so many opportunities to score in the first half I wanted to pull my hair out. Too many mistakes on our part and what should have been at least a 17-3 halftime lead, ended up deadlocked at 3-3.
But the writing was on the wall. OU dominated the first half in every category except the scoreboard. Unless Ohio St. somehow trotted out Cardale Jones for the 3rd quarter, the Sooners were going to win that game. And it all came down to the quarterbacks.
As I said in last week’s article, Barrett is not that good of a passer and boy did it show. Kevin Wilson played right into Mike Stoops’ hands and inexplicably tried to ride the arm of his senior QB. Big mistake.
After allowing the Buckeyes to score a touchdown after a great kick-off return that put them in Oklahoma territory to start the second half, the Sooner defense clamped down. Thanks in part to Wilson going away from the run game. A run game that scored him the only touchdown of the night for the Bucknuts.
The rest of the night the defense was able to get off the field and give the ball to Baker to do his thing.
And rumor has it Mayfield had more motivation in the second half courtesy of a couple Ohio St. fans behind the OU bench that clearly had consumed too much of grandpa’s old cough medicine.
Story goes these two fans were wearing Baker out and finally Baker had enough, jumped on the bench and yelled back. “Get ready, I’m about to hang six on you #@!%*&!’s.” So he promptly took the field and drove the team for a touchdown that tied the score at 10-10. After getting back to the bench, Baker yelled to the fans, “You like that one? Get ready, I got three or four more that’s coming.”
And what happened? Three more touchdowns and the ball game was over. Pretty much shut those guys up.
Then we come to the after game celebration and the planting of the OU flag. When it happened, I was ambivalent to bordering on I didn’t like it.
However, upon reflection, I don’t have a problem with it. It’s who Baker is. During a game he wears his emotions on his sleeve. Now I will be the first to admit that if I was a fan of any other team, I would probably hate Baker Mayfield. Oh I would be able to acknowledge his skill as a great football player, but I would probably hate him simply because he wasn’t on my team.
But he is on my team so I love the guy.
And think about how his teammates must feel about all this. My bet is they love it.
Baker is a leader. You don’t think when Baker trashed talked those drunken fans or when he planted that flag on the Ohio St. “O” his team didn’t love it? They didn’t get fired up even more?
All those actions and his play on the field show a confident leader who will give everything he has for his team. And my guess is his teammates would run through a brick wall for him.
And to those who didn’t like that planting of the flag, I get it. I get where you are coming from. But I would say that we don’t want to take all the fun out of sports. We want the emotions to show. It’s part of the human element that we can all relate to. Baker apologized and said he meant no to disrespect to Ohio St. He was caught up in the moment celebrating a huge win with his teammates.
It just adds to the legend of Baker Mayfield — quickly becoming one of, if not arguably the best quarterback the Sooners have ever seen.
But of course I am getting ahead of myself. Like Lincoln Riley said after the game. “We will be disappointed if this is the highlight of our season.” Bigger things are hopefully coming. Should be fun.
Oh, almost forgot. The Tulane Green Wave washes over Owen Filed this Saturday night in what should be a relatively easy win for the Sooners.
I would not be surprised if we look sluggish and let them hang around a quarter or two. Coming off such an emotional win in Columbus, how could you get really excited to play Tulane? And Tulane runs an option offense that parallels OU’s old wishbone attack. 
Any defensive coordinator will tell you that the wishbone, even today, is not easy to defend. It’s straight up assignment football. One blown read and they are gone for a touchdown.
But in the end it won’t matter. Sooners should pull away with ease and as such the Worry Meter is only at 5% this week. With all that being said….BOOMER!!!
— Dave
Photo credits: IAN MAULE/Tulsa World
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