Shades Of 2005 OU Drops Season Opener

Okay, let’s find out who has the OU Voodoo Doll and get it back. OU has enough problems to deal with it as it is than to have to deal with injuries to key personnel. We’ve been waiting since about 11:00pm CST to see OU take the field again and every since Bradford and Gresham announced that they’d be back we’ve had visions of another shot at a BCS championship shot on the mind. All of that came crashing down hard Saturday night in Arlington, Texas.   

With a 14-13 defeat at the hands of BYU Oklahoma lost more than just a season opener Saturday night. The Cougars, a team thought to be slower and athletically inferior, took Oklahoma’s manhood. The BYU defense smelled blood when Bradford went out of the game and forced the Sooners, with Landry Jones at quarterback, to attempt OU beat them through the air and when OU put themselves in position to take a commanding lead they did what they’d done all night, made a mistake.

Oklahoma committed Oklahoma committed twelve penalties on the night but none were more crucial than when OU took a delay of game at the 12:14 mark of the fourth quarter while parked inside the BYU 1 yard-line. Without that penalty Oklahoma has a great chance of punching it in and expanding the lead to 17-7. With the penalty the Sooners settled for a field goal and left the backdoor open for the Cougars to win 14-13.

Oklahoma played directly into the hands of BYU by turning the ball over, committing so many penalties and failing to establish dominance along the line of scrimmage. The Sooners shot themselves in the foot so many times that you would think that they’d run out of bullets. However, they just kept reloading and blasting away!

You win as a team and you lose as a team but if we’re going to cast blame for this let’s throw it at the offensive line. The line committed three penalties to kill Oklahoma’s first drive, then they had two more drives killed by penalty and another two killed by turnovers. Even with Bradford out of the game opportunity was in the air. The Sooners just failed seize it. In fact, the entire night was an exercise in failure. The offensive line failed to show that they can lead this team, the skill position players failed to take care of the football and the coaches failed to have the team prepared.

How many, BYU’s, Boise State’s, TCU’s and West Virginia’s to the Sooners have to lose to before this staff swallows some pride and takes every opponent serious regardless the situation, regardless the venue. There are suddenly some major issues looming over the remainder of the season. Can the offensive line pull it together? When will the quarterback situation be resolved? Who will emerge as a primary receiver? Meanwhile Texas and O-State are looking mighty strong. I feel like we’ve gone backwards four years to 2005.