Sooner Quotes on the Bearcats

After thrashing UT-Chattanooga 57-2 last Saturday in Norman the Sooners are now focusing on the Cincinnati Bearcats who will be a more formidable opponent. Bob Stoops and a few select players met with the media Tuesday to discuss the Bearcats and rehash their performance against the Mocs.

The Sooners tied a school record by scoring seven touchdowns on their first seven possessions of the game. Regardless of the quality of opponent you have to give Oklahoma credit because they didn’t do anything self-destructive. In all the offense, defense and special teams worked without any major concerns and Stoops addressed that.

 "I thought both Sam (Bradford) and Joey (Halzle) did an excellent job, along with the rest of the offense, with executing the offense for the first time along with the no-huddle. Some of the guys that were noted for player of the game on offense were Jon Cooper, Trent Williams and Manuel Johnson. They all did a great job, while the defensive guys were Auston English and Gerald McCoy, who had a lot of penetration and a lot of tackles for loss. Special teams guys were Lendy Holmes and Desmond Jackson. It was good to get started at home with a good win and now we have a big game with Cincinnati coming this week."

 Now with the attention turned towards Cincinnati Coach Stoops went out of his way to make sure that recognize that they are no slouch and Oklahoma is expecting a challenge this Saturday.

"Brian Kelly and his staff do an excellent job and have had a lot of success the past couple of years. If you look defensively, they have nine seniors and two fourth year juniors. They are very athletic guys with great experience. I love watching defenses and these guys are very sound fundamentally and play hard.
 
"Offensively, they do an excellent job spreading the ball around. They will throw a lot of three or four wide receiver sets out there and run a lot of zone reads and screens. They do an excellent job executing. If you look at it they brought back all of their receivers and their quarterback has been starting for a couple of years. He has excellent experience running the offense and has played well with the receivers. It's a big challenge. I think they have one of the best, if not the best, punters from a year ago. Defensively, they tied for the lead in takeaways from last year.
 
"I can go on and on, they are a very good team that we recognize it as a major challenge this season. We are focusing on having a great week of practice and coming out ready to play on Saturday."

Coach Stoops also took the time to sing the praises of Manny Johnson and to note that his level of play was nothing new to the coaches and team.

"He had a great game. I have said it, and people always forget it, but he was four or five times player of the game for us a year ago. He just didn't get as much notoriety for whatever reason. This isn't unusual to us though. Manny has been a mainstay in everything that we do for the last four years now. I do recognize that he is a little stronger and a little bigger. He is also a year more mature and he is ready to have a big year. Again though, his game didn't surprise us as coaches at all, he has always been a very good player for us."

 Player Quotes

"With Cincinnati coming in here, I don't think we have to watch someone else lose to realize that this is a good football team and that they could beat us if we are not prepared. We know that we are going to have a great week of practice and come out and play well on Saturday if we want to win." – Quarterback Sam Bradford on being prepared for Cincinnati

"Cincinnati is a great team, especially on defense. They have a great offense as well, but I just watched tapes of the defense. They're returning nine senior starters and two other guys that have a lot of experience, and that's a huge part no matter who you play for. That's going to be a big test for us on offense.
 
"We watched their first game against Eastern Kentucky and saw some tendencies and different things they do. We watched a lot from last year as well, just learning how the players played and some different schemes." - Center Jon Cooper on the Cincinnati defense

 

"I feel like everything went well. I think the defense played pretty well. We held them to 26 yards and it was in the negative at half time. It was really encouraging for week one but we have a challenge coming up this week." – Cornerback Brian Jackson on his first start as a Sooner