DALLAS (AP) – Bob Stoops can tell something must be going right if week after week, win after win, he keeps facing questions about what went wrong for Oklahoma.
His Sooners are 5-0 for only the second time in the last six years, following a 28-20 victory against rival Texas on Saturday that featured another wild finish. Winning ugly has become the standard of this season, even if it’s not what Stoops and those who follow Oklahoma football are accustomed to seeing.
“It’s what you want: to be criticized for winning,” Stoops interjected after two of his players were asked to talk about the Sooners’ fourth win by eight points or less this season. “We’re back to OU football.”
Or at least on the way back. Oklahoma climbed to No. 6 in the AP poll Sunday, its highest point of the season, and is showing that it’s not necessarily about how games are won but that they are won. Another seven teams fell from the ranks of the unbeaten this week, but the Sooners (5-0, 1-0 Big 12) found a way to survive again.
In perhaps the biggest scare yet, quarterback Landry Jones fumbled inside the 10-yard line on a botched play and Texas linebacker Jared Norton had a chance to scoop up the loose ball and take just a few steps into the end zone for a potential game-tying touchdown in the final 2 minutes.
Jones swiped at the ball, and it instead got out of bounds before Norton could recover it. Oklahoma escaped two plays later when Aaron Williams muffed a punt – the second straight week the Sooners’ benefited from such good fortune in the fourth quarter of a one-possession game.
“Coach Stoops is right about it. We are making these games closer than they need to be, but we are winning them,” defensive captain Travis Lewis said. “There’s a good and bad to that.
“We are 5-0, and I’ll take it.”
The Sooners will have this week off before trying to reach 6-0 for the first time since 2004 as Iowa State (3-2, 1-1) visits Owen Field. It’s the first time since 1999, Stoops’ first season as coach, that Oklahoma is off the week after the Red River Rivalry.
“We have seven straight games coming, hopefully eight (with the Big 12 championship). We’ll have to let it go, regroup and polish some things up,” Stoops said. “And we even found a way to make this one not so pretty.
“When you give yourself strong leads, like we have in these games into the fourth quarter, there is something to be said about that: that we’re still winning. And I do believe we will polish some things up and finish off better.”
Even with the wacky finish, the Sooners showed some signs of improving their fourth-quarter play that had seen opponents outscoring them 41-10.
Two plays after Texas defensive lineman Jackson Jeffcoat’s personal foul turned a fourth-and-20 into a first down, DeMarco Murray took advantage of the second chance by tiptoeing down the sideline for a 20-yard touchdown run. That was just Oklahoma’s second straight week with a fourth-quarter touchdown, with the other one following the muffed punt by Cincinnati’s D.J. Woods last week.
After Stoops’ fake field goal attempt gave the Longhorns the ball near midfield, linebacker Tom Wort blitzed in to sack Garrett Gilbert and put the Sooners on the way to forcing a three-and-out.
Then, after Texas used a 40-yard pass to reach the 6-yard line, Oklahoma limited the Longhorns to a field goal after a first-and-goal situation for the second time in the second half.
“We want to make sure that when teams get down there, we want to make them work for it,” Lewis said. “I think it’s just the toughness of this defense to go down there and say, `We’re not going to give up touchdowns. We’ll give up three (points) but we won’t give up seven.’
“At the end of these close games, it really matters.”
All that matters now is that the Sooners are right in the thick of the national championship race, no matter how they look getting there.
Add A Comment