I guess I'm a masochist, watching OU-Texas again...

[MI Sooner]

I had company on gameday and couldn't watch the first half as closely as I would've liked, so I decided to sit down and watch it again. I just paused it after Bradford's fifth TD made it 35-01. Some thoughts...

1) Anyone who says we should've run the ball more has their head up their ***. In building our 28-20 lead, our longest first down run was two yards (on around five attempts).

2) We ran around five TE/WR screens and they all went for big yardage.

3) Travis Lewis is not smart for touching the QB on the sideline. I don't care how softly he pushed him or if he was even trying to hold McCoy up, there is no good that can come of putting your hands on the QB when he's out of bounds.

4) I didn't notice it Saturday, but in addition to Greshham cheerleading instead of blocking on the fake punt, number 22 falls flat on his face without blocking anyone. Texas was disciplined and we still should've made the first down. That was a great call and terrible execution by the players. Also, Knall isn't the slowest punter I've ever seen.

5) Why in the hell did we decline the first running into the punter call? It was a net 33 yard punt. Do we not think we can do better than 28 on the second try?

6) Bradford's first pick didn't hurt us at all. Since we apparently can't punt more than 33 yards, a 34 yard pick on 3rd down isn't too bad.

7) I can't believe we lost since, through three quarters, Texas really had to work for their points a lot harder than OU. If we don't allow that kick return for a touchdown and stop them instead (obviously, two big ifs), I think the 21-3 lead we take may be so demoralizing that we win big.

8) Texas had negative rushing yards in the second half and still put up around 150. Terrible.

9) DeMarco Murray would make Lendy Holmes look like a good tackler.

10) Gresham has now dropped three TDs this year, but we were lucky that Broyles caught one of them.

11) Broyles is really good.

[MI Sooner]

Hey, Texas just came back and we lost.


Some more thoughtsL

1) Crow looked worse against the run than the pass, and couldn't get off blocks

2) Bradford made a bad throw on 4th and 8 w/ 3:30 left

3) A run call on 2nd and 3 with 6 minutes left killed us

4) I won't be surprised to see Mizzou and TTU shred Texas's defense, since they never stopped us unless we ran the ball, and these teams probably won't bother trying.

5) We stopped running screens

6) The two bad roughing the QB calls on OU, the "dropped" INT, the fake that came up a foot short, McCoy's fumble that stayed right next to him meant we were really close to winning. Our only similar breaks were the roughing the punter (although running into may have given us a first down anyway) and Manny's fumble that rolled out of bounds.

[BoulderSooner79]

MI_Sooner, I think your observations are spot on. Maybe I should try watching the replay so I can be more objective than when the emotions are kicked in live.

In big games against of equally matched teams, the outcome invariably comes down to mistakes, breaks and decisions. After 5 games the traits of the team are known and generally there are few surprises. So who expected us to be able to run effectively? Cover kick-offs well? So agonizing over those things is like worrying about a rock being hard. But we could have easily won without fixing those things.

Mistakes that hurt :
1st offside against McCoy. We had a stop on 3rd down and they got their 1st 3 points on that drive.

1st "roughing" call. Combination of mistake (touching McCoy at all) and break (terrible call). We had a stop on 3rd down and they scored a TD on that drive. The second "roughing" call was even worse, but it wasn't 3rd down and they were moving so easily on us by then, I doubt it would have made a difference.

"Dropped" INT. Maybe the wrong call, but don't drop the ball and give the refs a chance to interpret the play! Another FG.

Bad Breaks:
The RR injury by far and a lack of effective plan B.
The first bad roughing call.
Good Breaks:
Broyles sticky hands on the tip ball
Ticky-tack running into the kicker call.

Decisions:
Continuing to run on 1st down in the 2nd half when it wasn't working. Just put us in bad down and distance and we stopped moving the chains.

We stopped running screens!? I'm with you on that, they were working well and in effect they were our running game. When did we run our last one?

I was perplexed by our not accepting the 1st running into the kicker call, but we were punting into the wind and they had been close to blocking it. I don't think it was a big issue.

Not going for it on 4th and 2 when UT had scored 4 times in a row. I think I would still be stunned by that one if I watch it in replay.

[itsok]

Agree.... i still think that if we had played some defense, just stop them a couple of times, like we had done in years past, we win...if someone had told me friday that we'd score 35 on them, i would take it in a heartbeat...
go sooners!

[mobilesteve]

I 've got a different take:

The Texas TD that got them to 27 wasn't Crow's fault, it was Lewis. I don't claim to be a FB expert, but Shipley had cleared the middle and was on Lewis side of the field. Also, if you watch Lewis got sucked in on the Play Action.

I know Lewis shouldn't have touched McCoy, but that lead to 10 points on bad calls. The Bradford roughing wasn't as bad a call as I thought. Melton hit him in the face.

When I was watching the game, I thought it was clear that Robinson dropped the ball, but I did have a few pops during the game. When I re-watched it, I think he caught the ball. It made me mad.

It wasn't the run on 2nd & 3 that killed us it was the pass on 3rd & 3. I know we couldn't run it, but if it's 4 & 1 we can make it. Punting the ball was obviously the end of the game. We should have gone for it.

In the end, we were very close to winning this one. All it took was one break and we probably won.

[cheezyq]

Just some of my observations:



1) Anyone who says we should've run the ball more has their head up their ***. In building our 28-20 lead, our longest first down run was two yards (on around five attempts). You make a semi-contradictory point here. The point is that we were ineffective running the football when we did run. We needed to be more creative and run it more effectively, AND rush it more. Shotgun draws only work when trying to catch the defense being too aggressive, yet we use them as a regular part of our running game. When we did run, it was often to check out of a pass, and Texas knew that and stuffed every rushing attempt that was a check-down. We rarely lined up in the I and tried to shove the ball down their throats, and Duke's comments this week are a testimony to that.

2) We ran around five TE/WR screens and they all went for big yardage.

3) Travis Lewis is not smart for touching the QB on the sideline. I don't care how softly he pushed him or if he was even trying to hold McCoy up, there is no good that can come of putting your hands on the QB when he's out of bounds. I kind of agree here, but the entire job of an official in that case is to judge the intent of the defender, and measure the impact of the "hit". Both times, the ref completely failed.

4) I didn't notice it Saturday, but in addition to Greshham cheerleading instead of blocking on the fake punt, number 22 falls flat on his face without blocking anyone. Texas was disciplined and we still should've made the first down. That was a great call and terrible execution by the players. Also, Knall isn't the slowest punter I've ever seen. I disagree to an extent. I think the call was bad. 4th and 6 is a LONG way to go on a fake. Later in the game we had a 4th and 2 that would have been perfect for that kind of call, but couldn't even try it because we already tried the previous one and UT would have been ready for it. Aside from that, we did have poor execution...and we could almost use Knall as an RB or something. He showed far more wiggle and determination on his one run than any of our current RBs are showing.

5) Why in the hell did we decline the first running into the punter call? It was a net 33 yard punt. Do we not think we can do better than 28 on the second try? Because the punt was nearly blocked, and UT didn't return it for a TD. You shouldn't coach in fear, but being in our territory, it was probably a good idea with our lack of special teams success lately.

6) Bradford's first pick didn't hurt us at all. Since we apparently can't punt more than 33 yards, a 34 yard pick on 3rd down isn't too bad. Yes and no. It still gives Texas momentum on defense after we spent most of the first half torching them. Other than that, it was probably good that we didn't rely on our special teams.

7) I can't believe we lost since, through three quarters, Texas really had to work for their points a lot harder than OU. If we don't allow that kick return for a touchdown and stop them instead (obviously, two big ifs), I think the 21-3 lead we take may be so demoralizing that we win big. Biggest play in the 1st half? The KO return. Our killer strategy this year has been to bury the opponent early and we couldn't do that after going up 14-3. The KO return keeps UTerus in it and destroyed any chance we had of taking complete control.

8) Texas had negative rushing yards in the second half and still put up around 150. Terrible. That's due to 2 big plays after RR was out. Not much we could do about that, except have our 2nd team prepared to step in and take over (which we rarely do).

9) DeMarco Murray would make Lendy Holmes look like a good tackler. Last year he was attacking defenses....this year he looks like he's waiting for something. Probably just tentativeness b/c of the knee...which sucks for us this year.

10) Gresham has now dropped three TDs this year, but we were lucky that Broyles caught one of them.

11) Broyles is really good.

The bottom line is we sucked when it mattered, though.

[JLEW1818]

THE GAMES OVER.

WE PLAY KANSAS TODAY