Knee-Jerking: Oklahoma Sooners 59, West Virginia Mountaineers 31
Oklahoma has a phenomenal offense. I know I’m not blowing any minds when I say that. I could write after every game about its potency, but that would get pretty damn boring.
Even so, I can’t yada yada over what the Sooners did offensively in their 59-31 win over West Virginia. It was the definition of efficient.
OU scored touchdowns on eight of its first nine drives. The other possession came with just seconds remaining on the clock in the second quarter. It ended with Austin Seibert booting a 51-yard field goal as time expired.
Seven of the eight TD drives covered at least 64 yards. Four of the TD drives needed no more than four plays.
The Sooners averaged a cool 12 yards per offensive snap. In other words, on average, OU was gaining a first down every time it ran a play.
No one will mistake the Mountaineers’ defense for the Minnesota Vikings, but those would be pretty numbers against even a scout team. When you take into account that Lincoln Riley probably held some things back for the TCU rematch, it makes the performance even more impressive.
Other thoughts on the final regular season game of the year:
*As good as OU’s offense was, the defense left nearly as much to be desired.
WVU coach Dana Holgorsen consistently comes up with ways to demolish the Sooners on the ground, and this year’s game was no exception. The ‘Eers ran for 250 yards on 51 carries, and they put together a string of drives in which they methodically pounded the rock down the field.
To be fair, Mike Stoops’ game plan looked fairly vanilla in advance of the Big 12 title game.
*OU’s defensive line appeared particularly listless. WVU’s offensive line didn’t seem to have much trouble controlling the line of scrimmage for good chunks of the game.
*Regarding the generally chippy atmosphere, the Big 12 needs to give its officiating crews better guidance on how to defuse these kinds of situations. I have a hypothesis that they could head off a lot of the post-play shenanigans by calling offsetting personal fouls more often early on in games.
*That wasn’t Baker Mayfield’s best performance of his OU career, but he was still locked in. He put everything on the money in a first half in which he could do no wrong.
His second TD pass was a great example – an absolute seed to Mark Andrews.
*I know I bring him up a lot, but CeeDee Lamb looks like a future NFL All-Pro receiver to me.
*Given his slow start to the year and the time-sharing arrangement at running back, it’s wild to think that Rodney Anderson is on the verge of surpassing 1,000 yards rushing for the season. He’s currently sitting on 867.
*I’m actually excited to see how Riley structures the offense next season with Mayfield out of the picture. Kyler Murray can fly.
*All in all, a senior class that has won more than 40 games in four years received a fitting send-off. When you consider that this group helped work through the transition from a generational head coach, the program owes them a lot.