Good morning, Sooner fans. Warmest of greeting and salutations to you on this fine Saturday. Today our Sooners travel to Ames, Iowa to take on the Cyclones in what will hopefully be a pretty entertaining game.
We last saw our Sooners two weeks ago against Kansas. The situation was bleak at best and dire at worst. The Sooners had to win it and a path forward was difficult to find. Well, the Sooners beat the spread and eked out a 52-42 victory over the Jayhawks. Thankfully, the home faithful did not storm the field, but it did feel like a massive relief mixed in with a little bit of hope for something positive the rest of the way.
The Sooners follow that up with a well-timed bye and now face the surprisingly hapless Cyclones.
CUE GUS JOHNSON VOICE
It's the Battle for the Bottom in Ames!
OFFENSE
It turns out that competent quarterback play is important and, against the Jayhawks, Dillon Gabriel put on his best performance as a Sooner. The offense looked, dare I say, modern and more often than not had the Jayhawk D grasping for straws and trying shit that you just don't see football teams do like play a prevent defense in the red zone.
The Cyclones will be much better, in spite of their record. The Sooners have to keep Gabriel comfortable. The backfield combo of Eric Gray and Javontae Barnes is becoming pretty lethal and opening things up for Marvin Mims and Drake Stoops. Gray, in particular, has made a leap and the Sooners need to find six ways from Sunday to get him the ball.
Eric Gray is my OPOG but the offensive line needs to play their best game of the season so far to really give the Sooners their best chance of winning. DG doesn't take many sacks and his TD:INT ratio is fire at 13:1. Good things happen when DG is not getting terrorized.
DEFENSE
The bye week could not have come at a better time for this unit. They have been getting their asses kicked for the better part of almost two months both on the field and off. They looked better against Kansas and still allowed 42 points.
Billy Bowman still appears to be out for the Sooners and he might be the piece that makes this unit go just as DG does so for the offense. In his stead, Key Lawrence has been the most competent but is inconsistent.
The other story thus far is the lack of pass rush. Maybe that changes today since quarterback play seems to be a weak point for ISU.
The key, though, is the Sooners selling out to stop the rush. They have to get back to basics against a quarterback that is prone to turning the ball over. There can't be any bailouts on obvious running downs or first downs on "white flag" long down running plays.
I'm not going to pick a DPOG because they are playing like such shit but I have a feeling that the off week gave some younger guys a chance to get some reps in practice and the staff is really separating wheat from chaff.
Why not spend the rest of this season working on cohesion amongst guys you see as future pieces? Today is the perfect opportunity to identify the pieces that give you the best chance the rest of the way.
THE SCORE
The Sooners are favored by 1.5 and ESPN gives Iowa State a 65% chance to win. That...doesn't seem good. It's predicated on the idea that the Cyclone D will give the Sooners fits and that the Sooner D can't contain a wet fart and also ISU has been close to beating the Sooners in recent years while coming up just short.
It's mostly about the Sooner D though and I am truly interested to see if this coaching staff can take advantage of the bye week and is able to solve any of the issues that have plagued it ever since the Nebraska game.
Obviously, I have faith they have and, as such, I like the Sooners today in a somewhat surprisingly dominant fashion.
I like the Sooners 34-17
Boomer to the motherfuckin Sooner
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