Baylor's first drive of the 2nd half

[GDC]

Was the defensive alignment/play calling on that first stroll down the field of the second half basically a concession by Stoops that he had no idea how to stop the Baylor offense? I'm over the shock of the game, and I'm just wondering what the hell was going on in that series.

I know what happened on their next possession (a long completion), but the pass defense is just sad. It seems like the defense is just plain confused most of the time.

[FaninAma]

It had to be coaching scheme. They yanked #7 and put Wilson back in but then Wilson played exactly the same way. Stoops was going berserk on the sideline but they never changed anything. The crowd started booing which was directed at the coaching staff IMO. After the next TD by Baylor you could tell this team was done. I don't think I've ever seen a Stoops coached team quit like that.

[oupride]

When opponents show that respect to the Sooner receivers, then Oklahoma is truly back.

[soonerfan69]

Giving them a 10 yd cushion kinda conceded the game from the start

[aurorasooner]

I kept thinking we were just baiting them and going to sneak up and pick one for a quick 6.
Don't know why I thought that because if we did sneak up on the ball and Petty would've have thrown it into coverage like our QB does, our DBs. other than Sanchez, would've just dropped it or tipped it right into the receivers hands.
Kudos to Briles /orthe Bayor OC for settling for the 5, 7, or sometimes 10 yard gains with the short pass. If I was the OC and had a QB like Petty, I would've done the same thing to a DC that was playing such pu&&y football instead of busting heads into a brick wall for short gains.

[NorthernIowaSooner]

To me it looked like they were giving up. Allow 7-10 yards at a time. What was the purpose of it? Harrington kept saying it was so Baylor didn't go deep but I'd rather force Petty into making a difficult deep throw then give him an easy 7 yards. They literally walked it down the field.

It was like Stoops forgot you only need 10 yards for a first down and they have four downs to do it. That was by for the most angry I've been in years watching OU play. That drive was an embarrassment and if that is the best scheme they could think of then changes need to be made. Every time the lined up the exact same way on that drive I lost more respect for Mike's game calling.

I'm not sure how he though bringing pressure but 10 yard cushions were going to work. Then they backed off the pressure and still allowed a ten yard cushion. If you're not going to pressure or play coverage then why put a defense out there? Awful

[GDC]

I kept thinking we were just baiting them and going to sneak up and pick one for a quick 6.
Don't know why I thought that because if we did sneak up on the ball and Petty would've have thrown it into coverage like our QB does, our DBs. other than Sanchez, would've just dropped it or tipped it right into the receivers hands.
Kudos to Briles /orthe Bayor OC for settling for the 5, 7, or sometimes 10 yard gains with the short pass. If I was the OC and had a QB like Petty, I would've done the same thing to a DC that was playing such pu&&y football instead of busting heads into a brick wall for short gains.

I get the feeling the coaches have no faith in the players' capabilities to execute a game plan. I also don't think the players had much faith in the game plan today, especially in the second half. I don't believe I've ever witnessed such bad body language from a Stoops OU team, even in the NC game of which we do not speak.

There was absolutely no way ou could stop them with that scheme to start the second half. NFL All Pro cornerbacks would not have stood a chance.

[8timechamps]

Was the defensive alignment/play calling on that first stroll down the field of the second half basically a concession by Stoops that he had no idea how to stop the Baylor offense? I'm over the shock of the game, and I'm just wondering what the hell was going on in that series.

I know what happened on their next possession (a long completion), but the pass defense is just sad. It seems like the defense is just plain confused most of the time.

Yes.

He was too afraid to play tight coverage in the secondary because of Baylor's ability to get behind coverage, and too afraid to limit pressure because Petty would complete passes. Turns out both things happened.

I don't pretend to be as good/knowledgeable as Mike Stoops, but at some point I would have tightened coverage and forced Petty to make perfect throws.

Mike admitted in his post game press conference that he should have played tighter coverage, and he also said when you play Baylor you have to "pick your poison...do you want to die quick or slow...".

[8timechamps]

In addition, I think Julian Wilson was getting pissed at the scheme we were playing. We'll never know what was really said, but it looked like he was pissed that they were playing so soft.

[NorthernIowaSooner]

In addition, I think Julian Wilson was getting pissed at the scheme we were playing. We'll never know what was really said, but it looked like he was pissed that they were playing so soft.

Rightfully so, that was the most fire they showed on that drive. The scheme was what the fans were booing in my opinion. The same scheme all the way down the field with no adjustments even though Baylor was walking it right down to the endzone. I was glad someone was yelling at them.

[BermudaSooner]

That was 9 straight plays of the exact same thing. It was horrible coaching. Julian Wilson was just abused, but Mike Stoops put him in that position. A little press coverage and sending Striker could have given us a chance. Instead we allowed them to waltz down the field at will with our defensive scheme.

Hard to believe West Virginia has better athletes on defense than we do. They pressed the WRs and held Baylor pretty well, and won. I guess we don't have WVU athletes.

[BermudaSooner]

In addition, I think Julian Wilson was getting pissed at the scheme we were playing. We'll never know what was really said, but it looked like he was pissed that they were playing so soft.

It looked like Mike Stoops and Julian were yelling at each other at one point in that Baylor possession. In the end it earned Julian a seat on the bench.

[Soonerjeepman]

was it Joe Klatt (sp?)? said after the game that a high school qb could have completed 50% of the passes against that D....just couldn't understand what stoops was doing....got to agree.

[Rogue]

Super frustrating. Set the tone for the rest of the beatdown. It reminded me of the Sugar Bowl vs LSU/Saban when we were so stubborn with playcalling that we refused to do what worked. This time, we just refused to change what wasn't working. Stubbornness is one of our hallmarks.

[GDC]

Super frustrating. Set the tone for the rest of the beatdown. It reminded me of the Sugar Bowl vs LSU/Saban when we were so stubborn with playcalling that we refused to do what worked. This time, we just refused to change what wasn't working. Stubbornness is one of our hallmarks.
What's truly frustrating was watching some other teams today play a really strange defensive scheme that involved dbs being within 10 yards of wide receivers even before they caught the ball. It was most unusual to behold. Quite revolutionary!
I hope OU tries it someday.

[Bonehead]

Plain and simple, this drive is proof positive Mike Stoops did not believe his DBs could cover Baylor's WRs. He might as well go ahead and say it.

[soonercody]

In fairness, I can't find any evidence that our DBs CAN cover their wideouts. Hell, Tennessee's big WR made play after play, WVU's stud ate us up, and we made both Texas and TCU look all world. Turns out TCU might be.

So, if we couldn't handle them, why not get more pressure, more often, on the QB today?

I guess if your pass coverage game plan is a 7 yard cushion, and their answer is quick outs, and we don't adjust so we they don't need to do anything different either, there's my answer. We didn't have enough time to pressure him.

Well, at least we found a new way to get walloped...this time the QB wasn't very mobile or speedy, except the couple of times when he needed to be.

In-game adjustments are poor on both sides of the ball this year.


Too bad we won't see an O-line as bad as Tennessee's again this year. And we don't have any more Iowa States on the schedule.

[Temujin]

Yes.

He was too afraid to play tight coverage in the secondary because of Baylor's ability to get behind coverage, and too afraid to limit pressure because Petty would complete passes. Turns out both things happened.

I don't pretend to be as good/knowledgeable as Mike Stoops, but at some point I would have tightened coverage and forced Petty to make perfect throws.

Mike admitted in his post game press conference that he should have played tighter coverage, and he also said when you play Baylor you have to "pick your poison...do you want to die quick or slow...".

This bothered me a lot, because it highlighted the mindset that this coaching staff has on defense - fear. Stoops is somewhat right about Baylor regarding die quick/die slow. But knowing that SHOULD push you to accept it as a reality and not be afraid of it.

What frustrates me is the apparent overall defensive philosophy that we have. It's entirely backwards from what it should be. We're acting like this is 15 years ago, when playing off of speedy big-play receivers worked. But that was because back then you're not dealing with spread concepts and open space as much. This OU defense appears to be assuming we're still back in 1999. Back then you could cheat a safety in the run game and leave your CB off a few yards and on an island on the early downs. And on passing downs you'd just drop your safeties in coverage and voila, you're in good shape - especially when you're dealing with top-shelf talent like OU usually gets.

These days, everyone on the field is fast and there are no "passing" or "running" downs. Offenses are more timing-based than ever. And they intentionally create open space by spreading defenses out, knowing that you can't cover the entire field. So what do we do? We play directly into that by giving them even more space to operate, and giving them even more time to get into their timing-based routes. This "send 3, drop 8" crap is exponentially perpetuating the problem.

The most obvious thing to me is that you need to limit the space you need to cover. You do that by forcing the WRs into running routes that you dictate through press coverage. Force receivers to the outside and use the boundary as an extra defender. Doing that you don't have to worry about the damn double-move, which gets Sanchez nearly every time. And press coverage is what big corners like Julian Wilson were born to do. Julian isn't built to backpedal and drive on short routes. Sure, you might get beat in press coverage deep. But thinking you'll never get beat facing today's offenses is blatant arrogance. Which brings me to my second point - all these offenses are predicated on timing and space. The most basic and most effective counter is pressure. Pressure creates chaos. If you're rushing 3 down-linemen, you're screwing yourself because you're allowing plays to develop and giving receivers time to generate space through their routes. That's especially true with all these borderline illegal pick plays that Baylor and others run. On top of that you're forcing your backside defenders into being preoccupied with receivers and that opens up running lanes. Creating chaos through pressure creates confusion and indecision by the offense. That indecision creates hesitation, and hesitation in timing offenses creates mistakes, which leads to turnovers.

And I'm not saying I know the exact solution to the problem. But if Stoops was trying to create pressure and limit space, it would at least make sense to me. What we're observing on the field these days makes zero sense.

[GDC]

This bothered me a lot, because it highlighted the mindset that this coaching staff has on defense - fear. Stoops is somewhat right about Baylor regarding die quick/die slow. But knowing that SHOULD push you to accept it as a reality and not be afraid of it.

What frustrates me is the apparent overall defensive philosophy that we have. It's entirely backwards from what it should be. We're acting like this is 15 years ago, when playing off of speedy big-play receivers worked. But that was because back then you're not dealing with spread concepts and open space as much. This OU defense appears to be assuming we're still back in 1999. Back then you could cheat a safety in the run game and leave your CB off a few yards and on an island on the early downs. And on passing downs you'd just drop your safeties in coverage and voila, you're in good shape - especially when you're dealing with top-shelf talent like OU usually gets.

These days, everyone on the field is fast and there are no "passing" or "running" downs. Offenses are more timing-based than ever. And they intentionally create open space by spreading defenses out, knowing that you can't cover the entire field. So what do we do? We play directly into that by giving them even more space to operate, and giving them even more time to get into their timing-based routes. This "send 3, drop 8" crap is exponentially perpetuating the problem.

The most obvious thing to me is that you need to limit the space you need to cover. You do that by forcing the WRs into running routes that you dictate through press coverage. Force receivers to the outside and use the boundary as an extra defender. Doing that you don't have to worry about the damn double-move, which gets Sanchez nearly every time. And press coverage is what big corners like Julian Wilson were born to do. Julian isn't built to backpedal and drive on short routes. Sure, you might get beat in press coverage deep. But thinking you'll never get beat facing today's offenses is blatant arrogance. Which brings me to my second point - all these offenses are predicated on timing and space. The most basic and most effective counter is pressure. Pressure creates chaos. If you're rushing 3 down-linemen, you're screwing yourself because you're allowing plays to develop and giving receivers time to generate space through their routes. That's especially true with all these borderline illegal pick plays that Baylor and others run. On top of that you're forcing your backside defenders into being preoccupied with receivers and that opens up running lanes. Creating chaos through pressure creates confusion and indecision by the offense. That indecision creates hesitation, and hesitation in timing offenses creates mistakes, which leads to turnovers.

And I'm not saying I know the exact solution to the problem. But if Stoops was trying to create pressure and limit space, it would at least make sense to me. What we're observing on the field these days makes zero sense.

Spot on^^^^^
About the only time this scheme is even moderately successful is when they are getting a lot of pressure on the QB. Klatt was right, any QB would have looked Heisman worthy yesterday.

[PhiDeltBeers]

This bothered me a lot, because it highlighted the mindset that this coaching staff has on defense - fear. Stoops is somewhat right about Baylor regarding die quick/die slow. But knowing that SHOULD push you to accept it as a reality and not be afraid of it.

What frustrates me is the apparent overall defensive philosophy that we have. It's entirely backwards from what it should be. We're acting like this is 15 years ago, when playing off of speedy big-play receivers worked. But that was because back then you're not dealing with spread concepts and open space as much. This OU defense appears to be assuming we're still back in 1999. Back then you could cheat a safety in the run game and leave your CB off a few yards and on an island on the early downs. And on passing downs you'd just drop your safeties in coverage and voila, you're in good shape - especially when you're dealing with top-shelf talent like OU usually gets.

These days, everyone on the field is fast and there are no "passing" or "running" downs. Offenses are more timing-based than ever. And they intentionally create open space by spreading defenses out, knowing that you can't cover the entire field. So what do we do? We play directly into that by giving them even more space to operate, and giving them even more time to get into their timing-based routes. This "send 3, drop 8" crap is exponentially perpetuating the problem.

The most obvious thing to me is that you need to limit the space you need to cover. You do that by forcing the WRs into running routes that you dictate through press coverage. Force receivers to the outside and use the boundary as an extra defender. Doing that you don't have to worry about the damn double-move, which gets Sanchez nearly every time. And press coverage is what big corners like Julian Wilson were born to do. Julian isn't built to backpedal and drive on short routes. Sure, you might get beat in press coverage deep. But thinking you'll never get beat facing today's offenses is blatant arrogance. Which brings me to my second point - all these offenses are predicated on timing and space. The most basic and most effective counter is pressure. Pressure creates chaos. If you're rushing 3 down-linemen, you're screwing yourself because you're allowing plays to develop and giving receivers time to generate space through their routes. That's especially true with all these borderline illegal pick plays that Baylor and others run. On top of that you're forcing your backside defenders into being preoccupied with receivers and that opens up running lanes. Creating chaos through pressure creates confusion and indecision by the offense. That indecision creates hesitation, and hesitation in timing offenses creates mistakes, which leads to turnovers.

And I'm not saying I know the exact solution to the problem. But if Stoops was trying to create pressure and limit space, it would at least make sense to me. What we're observing on the field these days makes zero sense.

I brought this up weeks ago as well. Don't understand the 3 man front and the incorrect use of Striker. Run pressure! Yeah we gave up some plays to Bama, but we sacked AJ 7 times! We continued that into this season and then, for whatever reason, pulled back on it. I agree....it makes no sense.

[Temujin]

I brought this up weeks ago as well. Don't understand the 3 man front and the incorrect use of Striker. Run pressure! Yeah we gave up some plays to Bama, but we sacked AJ 7 times! We continued that into this season and then, for whatever reason, pulled back on it. I agree....it makes no sense.

Exactly, and that was against a team that eventually moved to max protect, which plays perfectly into the Stoops brothers' strengths. Here's the other thing about the defensive schemes - whatever you do has a domino effect on the rest of the game. Trevor Knight rightly gets a lot of credit for that game, but the reality is that he had 2 TDs practically gifted to him by the defense, not including the TD that the defense actually scored. When you're putting the OPPONENTS defense in tough situations because of the pressure you're creating with YOUR defense, you're helping your offense and your defense at the same time. Because if we don't create pressure and create those turnovers, Alabama gets an opportunity to get its running game going. And that screws the offense because your defense is on the field longer and your offense has further to go in order to get points.

What's so odd to me is that the coaches DO appear to "get" that sometimes. Like against WV when they were lighting us up in the first half, they DID switch to pressure/man after the half. And all of a sudden Holgerson has to go to max protect and it changes the entire flow of the game. We did this against Tennessee, and yeah we gave up a couple of bigger plays. But they scored 10 whole points and NEVER got comfortable enough to do consistent damage.

And look at Alabama/Tennessee, specifically. Both games we did give up some big plays. And yes, Alabama and Tennessee got in scoring position a few times. But in both games we created turnovers as the offense approached the redzone. Why? Because now you're not dealing with as much space, and it's easier to defend. And on top of that, players get nervous as they get closer to the endzone, and are more prone to mistakes.

It's just confusing and frustrating to watch.

[CatfishSooner]

Embarrassing...