From the Texas State Fair website: When Burnt Orange collides with Crimson Red, watch out!
Indeed.
I'm a big fan of the intangibles in sports so this one is right up my alley. Each team is playing to save a coaches job. Charlie Strong for Texas and it should be Mike Stoops gainful employment on the line, at minimum, for the Sooners.
The Texas powers that be have been fed up with Charlie for about two years it seems. Last year beating the Sooners seemed to buy him another year. Houston's Tom Herman is probably already working out the details of his contract in the backroom of Houston strip club as we speak. I don't think Charlie can lose another game this year if he wants to stay. That's a tall task because they suck. That's why he's in this position after all.
For the beleaguered Mike Stoops he just can't seem to get his defense to improve. In fact, they seem to be regressing. If you throw out the Louisiana Monroe game (and they racked up 350 yards), the Sooners gave up 80 plays and 410 yards to Houston, 68 and 443 to Ohio State and 74 and 514 to TCU. And he's getting no sympathy from the masses.
Fortunately for Mike and unfortunately for Charlie, their teams offenses are headed in opposite directions. The Sooners have figured out, and are starting to behave accordingly, that Joe Mixon is probably the best player on the field for either team, every game, from here on out. The Texas offense is average at best. Their D is historically awful. This bodes well. But then back to those intangibles...
OFFENSE
As mentioned the Sooner offense did something resembling hitting its stride against TCU and played its best football of the year by far. So that's great news. Joe Mixon is in full on beast mode. Semarje looked like he benefitted from the off week and looked healthy again. Dede Westbrook had a great game. Hopefully he can pick up where he left off.
Until further notice, I'm going Joe Mixon for OPOG. Feed this young man the football. Dude is ready to go beast mode. Although, the Sooners love adding a new wrinkle for this game. Demitri Flowers would be a good dark horse bet for that pick.
DEFENSE
RB Chris Warren is out which helps curb the ground game. QB Shane Beuchele of the Beuchele clan is only a Freshman but seems to be the QB of the future. He's hitting 65% of his passes which scares the hell out of me. That season percentage is probably going to edge up higher after this week.
Charles Walker is out on account of being concussed. Tay Evans career is over for the same reason. Matt Dimon is out. Will Johnson is out. DJ Ward might play. This is a lot to overcome admittedly. Good luck accepting that when the freshman is torching the Sooner secondary and the D-line is getting zero push up front.
For grins I'm going to pick Neville Gallimore. I think he should play a lot anyway. But with all the injuries up front I think he can make an impact. I can't tell if this is even a remote possibility though because those shit-for-brains over at soonersports.com took down the link to the depth chart. I wish Yahoo! gave half the shit about privacy that these guys seem to think the game of college football requires.
THE GAME
I don't trust the Sooners as 12 point favorites. I don't trust that psychologically the Sooners can bring more energy than the Longhorns. I don't like that Charlie Strong is playing for his job.
I don't think the Horns can stop our offense either. This could be a game worthy of it's name and, if it goes down like last week, could be historically fun to watch.
I really think every game from here on out is going to be a shootout. I'll take the Sooners, of course, 45-38.
Boomer to the motherfuckin Sooner.
No comments:
Post a Comment