Blake Bell's fake handoff was pretty amazing.

[OUInformant]

If you all remember. I believe it came in the first half. Totally fooled me. Maybe a preview of things to come.

[agoo758]

This thread....lol. Kind of reminds me of Tyrone Willingham trying to point out good things about the 2008 huskies.

[RUSH LIMBAUGH is my clone!]

I don't GAS whether Blake Bell is starting QB next year. But, I DO WANT HIM IN THE STARTING LINEUP ON OFFENSE, SOMEWHERE!!!...HEAR THAT COACH BOBBY?!?!?!?

[OkieThunderLion]

I don't GAS whether Blake Bell is starting QB next year. But, I DO WANT HIM IN THE STARTING LINEUP ON OFFENSE, SOMEWHERE!!!...HEAR THAT COACH BOBBY?!?!?!?
Knight QB, Bell TE!

[RUSH LIMBAUGH is my clone!]

Knight QB, Bell TE!Bell as a running back of some kind, too. THAT KID CAN RUN. He and Millard pounding, pounding, pounding!


That is, if he can't QB...

[soonercastor]

Personally I hope we'll have someone else running the offense next year

[RUSH LIMBAUGH is my clone!]

Bell impresses me. He seems to have enormous confidence, and I would bet he is a good leader.

[StoopTroup]

Bell has a little bunny hop that can end up with -1 yards when he uses it. When he puts his shoulder down and head screening the field he can really get the defense reeling. That said...unless he can put together a game where we are 10 points down in the 4th quarter and can take the offense downfield in less than 3 minutes and score, we are in big trouble if our defense looks like this next year.

[Curly Bill]

I welcome Bell, or someone else other than LJ being our QB because I'm ready to see someone out there that at least looks like they GAS.

[thecrimsoncrusader]

People need to get over Trevor Knight. It's not going to happen. He will not be the starter next season unless Blake Bell gets injured.

[goingoneight]

People around here are still going to be astonished when we have another elite QB and still lose games. Blake could rush for 2200 yds and throw for over 4000 yards and the moment we lose a game, the second of his two INTs on the year will make him the dog again.

That said... more realistically speaking, none of OUr QBs are a known strength yet. Without LJ, we could be really bad and maybe it will paint the picture of why OU really hasn't won big. Hint: offense ain't the problem.

[StoopTroup]

When you don't make good on the offensive plays you had in the Red Zone and you suddenly switch to your 2nd String QB....when guys like Millard (for instance) get open in the EZ....they aren't used to being in that situation. They don't make good on the opportunity and we walk away with a FG.

Now...you do a great job of keeping the other teams Offense off the field in the 1st half and in the 2nd half they make a Game Plan change and instead of OU coming out and scoring first in the 2nd half and performing the same long drives that kept aTm's Offense off the field, we let them score 1st and our Offense never scores another point and our Defense spends the entire 2nd Half trying to stop a Heisman Winner that did the same thing RGIII did to us last year.

Also...we had 8 guys catch passes in the first half. We had aTM's Defense confused. The 2nd Half...we had maybe 3 or 4. They made a change on Defense and since our Run Game couldn't get going, they continued to shut us down. We couldn't even get our Multi-purpose yardage guys the ball and the TEs we had in the past were non-existent this year.

We have had a great QB the last few years but have failed to surround him with a backfield full of weapons and any Tight Ends who could catch. We were loaded at WR but once the defense cut them off or they dropped passes, we were vulnerable.

[goingoneight]

Again, Landry's not perfect... but he was so far from being OU's problem it's not even funny. I have a bad feeling the folks who were "ready to see" a LJ-free OU team are going to get the same treatment the Texas fans got who were ready to see Garrett Gilbert because they thought McCoy was too injury-prone and too risky to run their QB. Sometimes, a good QB makes you look far better than you actually are. See: Indianapolis Colts 2011. It's easy to look at what... 11 turnovers all year on 555 attempts and point out which one swung a game in the opponent's direction. What's being avoided, though-- the fact that when OU needs to get a yard, they had to take a page from the Tim Tebow school of football. When they need to hold a team back a yard, they give up nine. When they need to hurry up and score, they run the clock all the way down and have to burn a timeout or take a penalty. When they have a guy in position to make a four-yard tackle for loss, he misses and the ball carrier picks up a first down. That kind of stuff has killed OU throughout the entire Landry Jones era if not way longer.
I challenge you to remember the National Championship Game against Florida State that we're all so fond of. Josh Heupel's stats on that game? 2 INTs and 0 TDs. In fact, nothing he thre that night was remotely close to what people nowadays call "elite." But when we needed to get off the field, we did it. When we needed to take time off the clock, we could do it in a number of ways. When we needed to look out for the big play downfield, we stopped it. Great teams don't always shut out the opposition like we did that night... but they do know how to win football games in other ways besides putting the entire game on a quarterback's stat line.

Blake Bell/Trevor Knight/Kendall Thompson/Drew Allen could out-perform RG3, Cam Newton, Vince Young and Johnny Football next year and we could still lose three games if OU's problems aren't at least close to corrected. OU has more work to do this off-season than they have ever had to do under Bob Stoops.