OU continued a run of odd strategies and in-game decisions in a too-close-for-comfort victory over lowly KU.

The Oklahoma Sooners’ 35-23 win over the Kansas Jayhawks last weekend looked like the latest in a string of generally uninspiring wins on the road to an 8-0 record.

While it’s not uncommon for the Sooners work out the kinks early in the year, the 2021 OU team is taking starting slow to another level. Five of eight wins have come by one score or less. The Sooners overcame a 21-point deficit to beat Texas. KU might have been the most unsatisfying performance yet, with OU needing a comeback in the fourth quarter to squeak out a 32-23 win over one of the weakest teams in the power conferences.

Normally, the bottom falls out on teams that have scraped by in such a fashion. OU could definitely end up that way this year. Keep in mind the Sooners still have arguably their three toughest games remaining – road trips to Baylor and Oklahoma State and a home date with Iowa State.

But something about the way Lincoln Riley is approaching the 2021 season feels strange. I had the same experience watching the KU game that I’ve had multiple times already this year:

Although a stank showing on defense against the Jayhawks is drawing the ire of Sooner Nation this week, let’s talk about what OU was doing on offense.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: When the Sooners had possession, the Jayhawks played soft zone coverage to prevent big plays. OU has seen some version of this bend-but-don’t-break scheme from opponents five or six times this year. Here’s an example of what it looked like before the snap:

On its second possession of the game, OU is facing second and 10 from its own 36 yard line. The Sooners line up in 11 personnel with running back Kennedy Brooks and H-back Jeremiah Hall flanking quarterback Caleb Williams in the backfield. The receivers aren’t doing anything exotic.

The Jayhawks are playing a standard 4-2-5, and the defensive backs are giving the Sooners generous cushions. Thanks to the camera angles in Lawrence, we can’t see the cornerback and safety lined up to the boundary side of the field. We can surmise, however, that both are playing way off the line of scrimmage. The CB across from Marvin Mims to the field side of the formation is off about 10 yards. To the inside, the nickel across from slot receiver Drake Stoops is roughly eight yards back, while the strong safety sets up shop around nine yards from the line.

On the snap, Williams fakes a handoff with Brooks moving to the right. KU brings four rushers, while the two inside linebackers and the SS hedge momentarily based on the play action from Williams. The CBs, free safety and nickel bail on the snap. Essentially, the Jayhawks are playing Cover 3 with the two CBs and FS dividing the field into deep thirds.

For OU, Brooks sprints right to the flat, and Hall stays in to block. Mims runs a deep post, Stoops is on a deep slant route across the field and Jadon Haselwood is running an over route from the left side of the formation to the right.

The above image is what Williams sees from the pocket, where he is facing zero pressure. (Much obliged to ESPN analyst Robert Griffin III for providing a passing cone.) At this moment, the QB has three very good options:

• Throw down deep to the opposite sideline for Haselwood;
• Throw short to Brooks all by his lonesome in the right flat;
• Tuck it and head for all that green to the right.

Williams walks through door four. He holds the ball, rolls right and takes a 50/50 shot on the move down the field Haselwood, who ran out of open real estate once he got to the sideline. Interception.

We can conclude in this case that Williams made a poor decision, which is true. But consider the context in which this specific play happened.

The Jayhawks’ opening drive of the game, which ended in a touchdown, consumed 80 yards in 14 plays and took more than nine minutes off the clock. OU responded with a drive of five plays that took two minutes and 45 seconds in game time. It ended with a punt after a busted blocking assignment resulted in a sack. KU drained nearly seven minutes off the clock on the ensuing drive and came away with three points. Now trailing 10-0, OU’s shorthanded defense had been on the field for 26 plays.

That’s a long-winded way of saying the Sooners could have used some points on this drive – preferably from a long possession. Riley could have called an untold number of plays against that particular D to chew up an easy eight-ish yards and stay on schedule. Instead, the play call played right into the what the Jayhawks telegraphed they were doing from the jump.

Jay Biggerstaff-USA TODAY Sports

So why call that play in that situation?

And that’s just one in a series of curious decisions. For instance, Williams’ legs have arguably provided the most effective weapon in OU’s arsenal for the last three games. He has averaged a whopping 10.3 yards per rush during that stretch. If you exclude sacks from his attempts, that increases to 13.3 yards.

On called run plays involving the QB against KU – all of which came in the fourth quarter – Williams had 82 yards on just four attempts. What does the final score look like if Riley unleashes the QB run from the jump?

I could keep going. The Sooners called one WR screen pass against KU despite all that ample room for receivers to operate around the line of scrimmage. Honestly, you could apply some of the same logic to the defensive side of the ball. It started with the liberal substitution patterns on defense from the first game of the season against the Tulane. Against KU, OU held out available players from the first string to give them an extra week off to recover from injuries.

It would make fans like me feel better to watch OU wipe the mat with teams like KU and Tulane. It’s entirely possible that this team just isn’t good enough to do that.

But it also seems clear to me that Riley isn’t coaching this team in ways that would maximize the quality of its play. (Texas excluded.) I don’t really see plans of attack intended to exploit the other teams’ weaknesses. Instead, I see game plans built on objectives like preserving players’ health and and testing how a freshman quarterback reacts to different situations. I’m guessing that’s not unintentional.

Combine that approach with almost every opponent playing to shorten the game and you get… well, whatever this season has been.

If that is true, it’s undoubtedly a gamble on Riley’s part. His team has played with fire week in and week out.

But the team currently sits at 8-0, and a win over Texas Tech this week would make OU the first team to go 9-0 in the first nine weeks of the college football season since 2010. If the goal was simply to survive and crank things up in November, the Sooners are approaching the stretch run intact.

The fifth-year head coach addressed some of the mounting concerns surrounding his 8-0 football team.

The No. 4 Oklahoma Sooners boast a perfect record at 8-0 (5-0 in Big 12 play), but after coming as close as they did to suffering the ultimate upset in Lawrence, Kansas, not to mention the other five close games this season, OU is a team that desperately needs to find some definitive answers to its rapidly growing list of questions before a daunting November stretch.

Lincoln Riley, winner of the last 16 games he’s coached, addressed many of those questions on Tuesday in his weekly presser. When asked to assess the issues that have continued to plague his team this fall, he went on to say that “I’ve been around here long enough that if you keep winning, things tend to work themselves out. We have eight wins. We have the longest winning streak in the country. The sky is not falling. Don’t write us off yet.”

Not to look too far ahead, the Crimson & Cream are set to host Texas Tech (who recently fired head coach Matt Wells on Monday) this weekend before closing out the month of October and entering an off-week that’s been long overdue. On Tuesday, Riley met with the media for his regularly scheduled Week Nine Press Conference (full presser link here).

Presser highlights

Riley on the status of injured players

It’s no secret that OU has lost a high number of players to injury over the course of this season, but Riley shared some relatively positive news on that front regarding a couple key wide receivers (Mario Williams and Mike Woods) and one very talented defensive lineman in Jalen Redmond.

“Receiver-wise, I think we’ll have to see. I think Mario and Mike both have a chance, but they’re still a little limited right now. Neither one of them were very close to being able to play the other day. I hope to have them available this week.”

Regarding Redmond: “We do anticipate having him available this week.”

Riley on the lack of defensive pressure up front

Oklahoma’s highly-touted defensive front has been borderline ineffective in generating pressure or forcing stops over the last few weeks. Riley spoke about what the reason could be for the unit’s recent lack of production.

“I thought we were a little bit better (against Kansas) than we were against TCU. Some of it comes with just kind of the nature of that game and the way that it played out. It was a much different game than TCU against so much run game, kind of controlling the clock, play-action. Could we be better on the front? Yes. Are there some things we can do better schematically to try to help that? Yes. […] I think the answer is nobody’s way off. We just need everybody to be a little bit better.”

Riley on his level of concern for the defense

When Kansas is moving the ball at will for four quarters, there are some serious defensive issues that need to be addressed. It’s not only the yards and points that OU is giving up in bunches as of late, it’s the methodical, time-consuming drives that are wearing down the Sooners from the very beginning of the game. Riley talked about his current level of concern for his defense on Tuesday.

“I think we know over the last two weeks we haven’t played up to our capability. You turn on the tape, and I think as a coach you look at it and you say ‘Alright, what’s the cause of this? Why is this happening? Is it capability? Is it guys schematically? What’s causing it?’ The biggest issue I see with us, and it’s certainly not to take anything away from Kansas, but the majority of breakdowns that we have, we’re causing. […] My confidence level is still very high. There are things, obviously, that we have to correct with the guys that have been playing.”

Riley on if he was shocked by the team’s flatness

Ask anybody who watched Oklahoma’s first half performance against the Jayhawks and they’ll tell you that was a team that looked completely flat with no energy or sense of urgency. Riley was asked about seeing his team look almost lifeless for a half on both sides of the ball.

“Was I shocked? I don’t know, I don’t get shocked at football games very often. I mean, anything can happen. […] You know, I had to learn this being (at OU), and I would compare it to you guys or our fan base, you take how we feel, and I’m talking as a fan base, people that watch the program, this that, how do we feel about going to play Texas? That week to everybody here feels different. Okay, understand that everybody that plays us, that’s how they feel about playing us. That’s the world we live in every single week, so when you ask me about my shock factor, no, because I know nine times out of ten the team that we see on tape against somebody is not going to be the same opponent we’re going to play. It’s just the nature of the beast, and that’s fine.”

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