Kentucky Wildcats vs. Oklahoma Sooners

Happy Saturday, Sooner fans. Everyone should have a little extra bounce in their step this week after the Sooners pulled off one of the most exciting victories in recent memory last week. After an abysmal first half for the offense, the Sooner defense and special teams played well enough to keep things close and then the offense and, John Mateer in particular, managed the game, the defense had a chance to make some big plays, which they did, and Tate Sandell brought it home with a winning field goal as time expired.

This week Kentucky comes to Norman, themselves fresh off a big home win against LSU. The angle on this one, to me, seems to be who can avoid the letdown. 

OFFENSE

The Sooners found something in the second half last week, particularly with Lloyd Avant in the running game. More importantly, John Mateer demonstrated the importance of taking care of the ball. He didn't turn the ball over and made some big throws when it mattered. Hopefully that helps the entire offense coming into this week. 

It also appears the Sooners could be getting some offensive lineman back this week, another big plus. These Sooners are at their best playing a methodical, pro style offense. They went back to Mateer under center, traditional formations and they did a good job of working the ball downfield. 

They need more of it today and I will ride the hot hand of Lloyd Avant for my OPOG, although if the line can take another step forward this week, I think Jonathan Hatton is about to have a bust out performance.

DEFENSE

The Kentucky offense might be the most dynamic the Sooners have faced so far this year. Will Stein is obviously missed at Oregon. This will be a big test for the Sooner D.

However, there is no doubt this will be the toughest test for the Wildcats as well. And at home, fresh off the big win, the Sooners should be confident and flying to the football.

I'm going to go with a wild card here and take Reggie Powers for my DPOG. If there is one thing you can count on with a Brent Venables defense, it's a well timed blitz at a big moment and, to my mind, Reggie Powers is as good as anyone at getting to the QB when it matters.

THE SCORE

One team comes off a legendary win against an arch rival, the other a field storming home win to celebrate the start of a new chapter in an inglorious football tradition.

I think OU will be the one ready to meet the moment today, although Kentucky will be tough. 

I'll take the Sooners 31, Kentucky 27

Boomer to the motherfuckin Sooner

Kentucky

 I still can't believe we beat texas last week. We certainly had no business doing it. But I laid out a script in my post, not to pat my own back, and they basically followed it. Which is to say, they miracled a win with special teams and defensive touchdowns. The offense was as limp dicked as it's been all year. But this defense, it's pretty damn good. Solid coverage in the secondary, made to look better by a dominant D line, and a LB corps that is damn good top to bottom. If only our QB and OC weren't completely useless, this team would be legit. Alas, they are not and we aren't. Regardless, that was a fun one last week and if you're going to beat anyone via miracles, it couldn't be against a better team than texas.

Kentucky comes to town this week and I know exactly nothing about them. Well, I know they have one loss and are ranked 15th, but that's about it. Allegedly they have a good offensive line so it should be a strength on strength matchup on that side of the ball. I don't know anything about their defense, but if they have 11 conscious college athletes out there they shouldn't have any trouble shutting us down.

Offense

I'll go with Rocky Beers today. Absolutely no reason or thought applied to this pick whatsoever.

Defense

I'm going to go with Owen Heinecke today. He's always solid if not flashy. I think today we see him flying around out there racking up about a dozen tackles. With the D line occupying their front, I think he's free to make tackles in bulk.

Score

Last week was a complete joke as far as our doing the right things on offense. As I said before, we had no business winning. However, I think Kentucky is a bit overrated (this is based on pure hypothesis) and we have a little wind at our backs after the texas miracle. I think our Sooners continue to play great defense and the home crowd gives us enough on offense to pull off another upset. Sooners win this 20-16. 

Boomer to the Motherfuckin' Sooner

texas longhorns vs. Oklahoma Sooners - The Red River Rivalry

Happy Saturday, Sooner fans. Our Sooners, 2-2 overall and 11th in the SEC are fresh off a bye week and an exasperating loss at Georgia two weeks ago. The Sooners were hoisted by their own petard yet again as John Mateer turned the ball over 3 times in the resulting blowout.

The bye gave the Sooners the opportunity to make any number of changes to try and get the season back on track. Brent Venables instead made no personnel changes and is pinning his hopes on his offense, his coordinator and his quarterback miraculously improving.

The only material change for the Sooners was the length of the injury report, which one might have expected to get shorter. But no, not only are key players like offensive lineman Michael Fasusi and Eddy Pierre-Louis still likely out, but the Sooners lost Eli Bowen to an "ankle" on Wednesday. 

I know I said this last year and possibly the year before, but losing players to injury in practice is not bad luck. It's bad coaching, and with this team, it's systemic and really needs to be challenged.

OFFENSE

There is a non-zero chance the Sooners and John Mateer in particular, can hang onto the ball and perhaps put together something resembling a competent offense that is designed to create and exploit weaknesses against the longhorn defense.

There is a much higher probability that Ben Arbuckle will stick to what he is most comfortable with in hopes that John Mateer won't shit the bed. 

Best case scenario for the Sooners is they have some early success moving the ball and can, at minimum, flip the field and give the defense a fighting chance to force a punt. 

If the Sooners can get a little confidence and energize the team and the crowd, anything can happen in this one. But so help me if the first couple of drives result in 3rd and long situations, 3 and outs, and short fields for the longhorns. 

Undoubtedly the Sooners will look for ways to get Isaiah Sategna the ball, most likely with predictable jet sweeps. But I stand in solidarity with Natey and refuse to pick Mateer for my OPOG, so I'll go with Sategna, the most electric of anyone on the offense. And maybe he does something big on special teams. 

DEFENSE

You know these guys will do the best they can with what their dealt. I just hope for their sake that they find themselves with a fighting chance, meaning a one score game, in the 4th quarter. I would love to see them at their most hyped, with a chance to finish the longhorns off. They deserve a good result.

Eli Bowen out is a major blow to the secondary though, and you better believe Steve Sarkisian is going to let Arch Manning take shots over the top early and often to see if the next man up can handle Cam Coleman.

This is a matchup between the best offensive play caller in college football against the best defensive play caller. If the Sooners offense could hold up their end, this could be a thriller.

I've got to go with my man David Stone in this one for DPOG. I want to see him pissed, fired up and blowing people up. I want him to get Arch throwing off his back foot. 

These guys are going to have to overcome the Sooners offense and hang in there. They cannot commit stupid penalties to extend drives. Courtland Guillory cannot have more than one pass interference. 

THE SCORE

I'm going full reverse jinx for the second week in a row. I am resigned to the idea that Brent Venables and the entire offense, coaches and players, have learned nothing in the last two weeks. They are who they are. They do what they do. QB draws out of empty backfield shotguns. Jet sweeps. Two yard runs off tackle.

I think the Sooners can score. I think the D will play lights out. But the Sooners offense is just too inept and stubborn to do enough. And god do I hope I'm wrong. 

Sooners 13, texas 24

Boomer to the motherfuckin Sooner. 

texas

 Buckle up Sooner nation, this one could get ugly in a hurry. Two weeks after getting our pubes shaved off and fed to us at the 50 yard line by Georgia, we face texas who happen to be ranked higher than said pube feeders. It has been a long time since this game looked so lopsided on paper. At least with us being the bitch bois to the top ranked horns. I'm probably just flexing my old man brain (read: forgetting several obvious things) but my mind goes back to the fall of 1996 when mitch and I were just fresh faced pups at OU enduring a rather intense pledgeship and fully into our beloved Sooners even though they really stunk. We made the trip down to Dallas and with no money and a mouthful of braces admirably fending off any female advances, I found myself in a hotel room watching our, at that point, winless Sooners taking on Ricky Williams and the top ranked Longhorns. Hopes were low, but we stepped up as those pesky underdog rivals are known to do and ended up winning that game against all odds. 

While I don't expect a repeat of that miracle, my point is that these things can happen. The Sooners have been absolutely atrocious on offense this year. I don't expect that to change, but if they can get some big stops and hang around, stranger things have happened.

Offense

Whew, this is really becoming a demoralizing area to pick. The offense is just so inept in all phases. Mateer is a disaster. He looks completely lost when trying to read a progression, his accuracy sucks and apparently he just fumbles unprovoked now. Anyway, I'll go with the X man, Xavier Robinson for no good reason. 

Defense

I gotta go with my guy Taylor Wein. He's a monster. He's our best defender and we will need everything from him if there is any chance of an upset. 

Score

I have no idea how it can happen. But that's usually how things go when a rivalry game gets weird. I think we hang around and get texas tightened up enough that they make some mistakes. Manning is a great player, but I think he gets a little "chokey" at times when momentum swings away from him. Sooners turn the tables on texas  this year, 24-23. Long live the ghost of James Allen!!

Boomer to the Motherfuckin' Sooner

Georgia

 Hello Sooner fan(s)! Coming off an, ahem, uninspiring win against New Mexico where our Sooners mustered up a staggering 14 points, the crimson and cream go on the road today where the gauntlet begins at UGA. Georgia is one of the best teams in the country, and we are, well, not. Ben Arbuckle's seat is nuclear reactor core at this point. Venables towed the company line in supporting him, blah blah blah, but I'll be surprised if Arbuckle is our OC at the end of this season. The defense has been good enough, no question, but they can't do it alone. If only we could combine our teams from 2015-2021 or so, we'd have an undefeated team and a winless team. Alas...

Offense

I'll be surprised if we score 10 points on offense today. We just execute poorly designed plays shittily, it's a bad combo. But, I have to pick someone and that someone is Rocky Beers, for no real reason. 

Defense

The defense is going to need to make some huge plays to prevent this game from being a laugher. The front is where it starts but the secondary needs to get a pick or two and my man to get one today is Courtland Guillory. I think he makes a pick and some key pass breakups today.

Score

Last I looked, the line is -13.5 for Georgia. That is both embarrasingly long for a conference game between two supposedly good programs and also shockingly low for a Sooners team that couldn't score against New Mexico. The only way we hang around with a shot in this thing is defense and special teams scores. I'll borrow Mitchy's glasses today and say we get it done in the upsettiest upset that ever upsetted, Sooners win this thing 17-14. 

Boomer to the Motherfuckin' Sooner.

Oklahoma Sooner vs. Georgia Bulldogs

 Good Saturday, Sooner fans. The weather in OKC this morning was rainy and gloomy, a perfect match to the current outlook of this Sooners football team. The Sooners are coming off a, shall we diplomatically say, uninspiring win against the New Mexico Lobos.

Confidence is not high. John Mateer turned the ball over. The offensive line had no push. The offense is a disaster. The Sooners now take the show on the road to perennial power Georgia. The question is, can the Sooners make enough improvement to keep it close? I don't think so.

OFFENSE

14 points against the New Mexico Lobos is just unbelievable after an off-putting performance against Michigan. What can the Sooners do? Ben Arbuckle has to go. I will be shocked if he's still calling plays by the Kentucky game.

Alas, today I think the Sooners best bet is to utilize multiple tight end sets. Go big with extra blockers and run a lot of play action with some boots for John Mateer. He runs for his life anyways. He can't go through a progression. Get him in situations where Georgia defenders have to choose between spying on the running QB or defending a RB or TE in that second level. 

I'll take Rocky Beers today because he has been a bright spot. Fire Arbuckle on the spot if he runs an empty backfield shotgun QB draw or jet sweep on a 3rd down.

DEFENSE

The problem today for this defense is not getting off the field or having the personnel to match up with Georgia. It's whether or not they can win turnover margin. Unfortunately, Mateer puts them in a real bind that's tough to overcome. The next three weeks are going to be brutal for these guys.

Today, I bet Owen Heinecke continues to do his thing. 25 tackles through three games is pretty tough.

THE SCORE

Look, I'm not suggesting the Sooners are going to wave the white flag against Georgia today and Texas in two weeks. It would be a season changer to go 1-1. But I do fear Arbuckle just isn't a guy who is going to do anything other than continue to try to jam a square peg through a round hole.

It's too much to expect the playcalling to become competent, the offensive line to suddenly own the line of scrimmage and your quarterback to be able to work through progressions and not make at least two dumb passess per game. That's just what we have. 

Best case, Arbuckle's headset is turned off and someone else is running the show behind the scenes. We get through the next two game and cut Arbuckle loose and try to make something of the rest of the season.

Georgia 28, Sooners 6

Prove all us haters wrong, boys.

Boomer to the motherfuckin Sooner. 

New Mexico

 What a mess last week was. Our Sooners looked absolutely impotent on the offensive side of the ball. And the D softened just enough to let the sad Michigan offense get some points. It helps when Mateerrible throws an absolutely brutal pick in a tie game that led to an easy 6. This is year two of the Arbuckle Mateer experiment and so far it's been bad. The play calls generally range from unimaginative to completely head scratching. And aside from the first three or four games last year Mateer has looked, well, like ass. His accuracy is mostly terrible and he's caught the same virus that Jackson Arnold and Landry Jones had where the QB is absolutely unable to look anywhere beyond his first read. In short, he stinks. NM comes in to town and I know really nothing about them. But honestly, and I really hope I'm wrong, the season looks like a lost cause already. We have a murderers row of conference games and the fact that we couldn't win the non-conference "test" against a clearly bad Michigan team does not bode well. We basically can afford (maybe) to lose one more game. I don't see that happening. On to the optimism!

Offense

Mateer is officially in my doghouse and I refuse to pick him again. Granted I will at times pick receivers which he is directly involved with, but not him. Today I will go with Lloyd Avant. He's been very good when given an opportunity. Unfortunately, he's been the victim of Arbuckle's "if it ain't broke, let's go ahead and fuck around with it a bit". Maybe today he'll get a more extended opportunity. 

Defense

Taylor Wein is awfully hard not to pick. Dude is just a great player. But I really like David Stone today. He's been extremly solid up front and I think he gets to the QB today.

Score

I didn't bother looking at the spread but this feels like a game where we look good enough that everyone has some since of hope going into Athens next week, where we will get smashed. Sooners win this one in convincing fashion 27-7. 

Boomer to the Motherfuckin' Sooner