1,697 Days

[PLaw]

1.697 days - the number of days that it has taken the SOONER D to regain the swagger we have so sorely lacked since SC ripped its heart out that January day. Let's hope the D let their actions speak louder than the words in the article below.

I want to see Colt McCoy looking like Chrissy once Rocky and Roy finished with him!!

BOOMER

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OU defenders get a new nasty attitude
Comments 7
Buzz up!BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 10, 2009

NORMAN, Okla. (AP) — Just because Oklahoma's defense was good enough to reach the BCS championship game doesn't mean the Sooners are happy about it.


Defensive coordinator Brent Venables says his players heard the talk leading up to the championship game that the Sooners' D was "a joke," and they took it to heart during the offseason.

Between 2000 and 2005, the Sooners were ranked among the top 13 defenses in the country every year. That slipped to 16th in 2006 and 26th in 2007 before last year's big drop-off to 68th.

Now, players are talking about coming out with a new attitude, one that's mean, nasty and stingy.

Venables says experience should help create that intensity. The Sooners return nine starters and need only to fill holes at both safety positions.

[goingoneight]

I don't care where we're ranked. A lot of the offenses we used to shut down were el stinko. As long as we can corral and shut down people, I don't care if we're ranked 100. You can have a legit D and still be poorly ranked if your 2nd and 3rd stringers are giving up garbage time TDs a lot and/or you have unfortunate depth issues exposed like we did without Reynolds last year.

Seriously... who here thinks we were literally the 68th-best defense in CFB last year? Did we have some bad moments (mostly due to depth issues)? Yeah, but we were far better than that.

[Curly Bill]

I'm gonna wait to pass judgement on whether (IMO) we've returned to the days of glory on D.

...and it's not just about the players for me. That prolly doesn't surprise anyone huh? :D

[JLEW1818]

BV Lover!!!

[Eielson]

If we're talking swagger, we had that back in January. Not sure where the days puts it, but we were definately not short on confidence.

[goingoneight]

We were just short on red zone yardage. :(

[Eielson]

We're talking Sooner defense.

[Shockwave]

In the first half of the title game we were bringing our safeties up and putting real pressure on Tebow (two picks I believe in the first half if I remember right). But after the half we kinda stopped that it seemed.

My question is: Does BV maybe outsmart himself with the adjustments? It's almost like "Well I know Florida is going to adjust so I'm going to adjust ahead of them" so to speak.

[Ardmore_Sooner]

SC didn't destroy our swagger, Darren Sproles and K-State did that on a cold December evening.

[A-M]

SC didn't destroy our swagger, Darren Sproles and K-State did that on a cold December evening.

I don't care who destroied our swagger, I just want it back and I want it back NOW!:rolleyes:

[stoopified]

I'm gonna wait to pass judgement on whether (IMO) we've returned to the days of glory on D.

...and it's not just about the players for me. That prolly doesn't surprise anyone huh? :DMe too.

[Chiliman]

As long as we can corral and shut down people, I don't care if we're ranked 100. You can have a legit D and still be poorly ranked if your 2nd and 3rd stringers are giving up garbage time TDs a lot and/or you have unfortunate depth issues exposed like we did without Reynolds last year.

Reynolds going out of the Texas game has been talked about ad nauseum. However, I still don't understand why BV didn't have Box ready to go @ MLB. Box was beating out Travis Lewis for the WLB job when he was injured! When Box came back, Lewis was playing out of his mind. Box was clearly the 4th LB or 3A. Haven't we heard for years that BV likes his LBs to be able to handle all three positions? That BV likes figure out who his best LBs are, not necessarily by position? In OU's scheme, MLB and WLB are very similar. You telling me that they couldn't have gotten Box some reps @ MLB in practice for the very scenario that doomed us in Dallas!? Box is and was clearly superior to Crow. If the games Box played in are any indication, he's very versatile. It's all water under the bridge now but if BV didn't learn a lesson about getting quality backups some game reps when possible after that fiasco, he never will.

We'll know soon enough. If the starting LBs are indeed Lewis, RR and Clayton, the second unit will be Box, Balogun and Bryant. Those guys would start for 95% of the teams in America. There is no excuse for not getting them reps in certain situations. I guess we'll see.