Texas Tech

The 2019 conference schedule pulls out of the station today with the Texas Tech Red Raiders coming to Norman. The Sooners had a semi-eventful last weekend, falling in the rankings for committing two egregious crimes: 1) not playing and 2) not being in the SEC. A younger more naive version of myself would have much angst, hand-wringing and expletive laced complaints over this. But there is much football to be played this season and our Sooners could easily stumble (maybe that defense hasn’t really improved much) and those SEC teams will beat each other up a bit too. Suffice to say, let’s just TCB and hope that things work out for the best. 

Offense

Lincoln Riley just knows how to design an offense. Unlike some in our Sooner past (looking squarely at you Heupel, oh and you too, Chuck Long) he designs things to give his current group the best chance to have success and he adapts. It’s quite a nice thing. Today’s game looks like another opportunity to put up asinine numbers against possibly the only program in college football less interested in defense than OU. Jalen Hurts has been nothing short of fantastic. And while I think at the end of the day it will be hard to argue against him for OPG, the sieve-like Tech run defense looks ripe for a Trey Sermon explosion. I like him for 150+ and 2 TDs. 

Defense

I read something this week, which may be inaccurate (and of course I didn’t bother checking), but it said that so far the Sooner defense is essentially the same as last year in terms of yards to this point. I’ve not watched as much as I’d like but it seems they have improved to me. Regardless, we should know more after this one as this game is generally a shootout. Anything better than that I would view as a win. For no good reason at all, I’m picking Brendan “bookie” Radley-Hiles in this one. He seems to fly around to the ball and general play with a lot of energy. 

Score

I like that the Sooners open the conference slate at home and that they don’t have to go to Lubbock this year. I think the offense does Riley things and I’m cautiously optimistic that two weeks of prep by Alex Grinch has gotten the defense a solid enough game plan to make this one comfortable at the end. Sooners win this one 48-27. 

 Boomer to Motherfuckin Sooner