Sooner's most indispensable player?

On Friday, ESPN's Jake Trotter wrote a piece on OU's most indispensable player (as a part of an ongoing story on all the teams in the Big XII). Totter's player was Sterling Shepard. His reasoning was based on the lack of experience within the receiving corps and the value of Shepard as a steady target for Knight.

This got me thinking about who the guys are that we really need to perform in 2014. At first I thought "nah, Knight is more important than Shepard", and that's probably true, but Trotter made some good points about why he selected Shepard. Anyway, I thought I would throw the question out here and see what everyone thought.

So, who is the one player we need to perform and can't afford to replace in 2014?

 

This guy LOL

 

Definitely going with Sanchez. Not a whole lot of experience in that secondary, so we could ill-afford to lose him.

Shepard is probably my #2. The main advantage for Sanchez is that on offense you get to choose which plays you run. If the passing attack is weak, you can use a run-heavy offense. Defensively, the opposing offense is probably going to pick apart your weakness. I'm tempted to put Knight up there, but I don't know that he'll even be our best passer next season. We might not have beat OSU if he hadn't went down, and I think we could potentially see that scenario coming into play next season. Striker might be the best player mentioned, but we'd be fine without him for a few games, because we're loaded with pass rushers.

 

I'd have to go with Knight given the backup situation. As we saw last season, if you have QB problems, you have problems. But many players must have outstanding seasons in order for OU to stay in the hunt for a playoff spot. Shepard, Sanchez, Striker are all good choices. Darlington at central will be key.

 

I suck when thinking about these kinds of situations, because I can make a case for everyone mentioned so far.

Honestly, I don't think there is a single player that would put this team in a tailspin, rather a duo (or more). Take last year as an example, if we had only lost Phillips -or- Nelson, I think we would have handled Texas and been okay. Losing both really hurt.

 

I don't think any one player on this team is so good that he's indispensable.

Shepard and Striker would be good choices if I had to choose.


5-0

 

If any Single player were to be indispensible it would be TK at this point. Having gotten Most of the Playing time last year and all the Main snaps in Spring. It would take a Bunch for one of the other guys to step up.

 

I hope by seasons end were all saying blake bell. I hope the dude goes nuts and sets all time sooners record for tds by a te. Can u imagine a call like this...bell te around wait he steps back throws endzone touchdownnnnnnnn.

 

I should clarify...most td for a te in a season.

 

Unless TK plays like he did against Alabama, I have a hard time saying he's the most indispensable. I wouldn't be surprised if he never has a game better than that one for the rest of his career. I'm guessing that our backups are pretty serviceable if Blake got pushed to TE. Therefore, I think Shepard is a pretty good choice.

 

U = Idiot!

 

Given the time of the calendar and stories I've seen of the fallen (This Week today)
I vote for the driver of this APC and just as soon as he gives the all clear Coach Bob
Stoops. He doesn't wear pads but if he checks out we (My Sooners) are in a world
of hurt.

Separate note, may our loving God hold all our troops in his blessed hands now and
going forward! This is from an ol' fart that probably gets ignored most of the time,
but, Dayum, our troops need to get OUT of harm's way!!! Jus' sayin'....

 

Is OK Bro. I been shot at, and Hit ,Shat at and hit , Stomped, stabbed, and blown up a few times . Im good tho.

 

I don't expect a Sugar Bowl-like performance every time he takes the field, but I'd bet the house that won't be his best performance as a Sooner. He's too talented, and it's too early for him to have peaked.

As I said, I fully expect him to have bad plays from now until he retires, but I think the more time that passes from the Sugar Bowl, the more folks are thinking "I'm still not sure, I don't know if he can repeat that performance". I will remind you that he was named starter as a redshirt freshman (over an semi-experienced junior) for a reason. Folks (the media) want to put so much on his "one time" big game performance, but they either ignore or forgot that he had some really good moments leading up to that, and that a lot of the reason things looked so good in the Sugar Bowl is because the entire team came together. I think we're over that hurdle, and I think we'll see a lot more of the Sugar Bowl Trevor Knight.

We do have some talented back-ups, but they're still a ways from being "the guy", and very inexperienced. I'm not worried though, because we do have Bell and even if we go with one of the young guys, Stoops has an outstanding track record for quality QBs. We're in good hands.

 

The only good outcome, is to not find out who is the most indispensable player or set of players. Sort of like OUr 2000 season.

 

I Like 79s thinkin I hope and Pray we dont Find out who it is, But I still think RIGHT now its TK he won the Sugar and H wins from now on.

 

I recall very early in the Sugar Bowl.

OU wins the toss and defers.

'Bama takes the ball and rolls right on down the field, led by a swing pass that went 55 yards, almost scoring.

The OU player who ran that guy down wasn't a DB or a linebacker.

It was # 91.


5-0

 

A lot of things went right offensively in the Sugar Bowl, and enough against a great defense to give us hope for the future. But I can't help but be cautious. TK has had more experience playing bad than good, so who knows whether he turned a corner or whether everything just suddenly clicked. The importance of a great gameplan cannot be understated. Heupel also called the game of his life, and I don't expect that he is suddenly going to become an awesome playcaller based on one game. We basically revamped our entire offensive gameplan for one game. We know TK seemed to have success with it. Now do we go with that style this season or do we go back to what our offense seemed to struggle with so mightily for most of last season? We are going to find out, and my guess is we will find out pretty early in the season.

 

Good point about the play calling during the Sugar Bowl. There was lots of stuff we had been saving.

I hope we continue to be unpredictable, game to game, even half to half. Never let the opposing defensive coordinators foretell what we're gonna throw at them.

I got so tired of us having 3rd and 3, us lining up in the 'I' with KeJuan Jones, knowing exactly what was coming. And us not converting. I hope those days are long gone.


5-0

 

The KeJuan Jones days pretty much ended when AD arrived in '04, so that seems pretty long gone to me.

I'll take the fans perception of play calling with a grain of salt. If it's predictable as all heck and it's working, the fans call it creative. If the OC is using a random number generator to pick plays, but it's not working, he gets called out for calling "that stupid play in that situation". I see a very strong correlation between effective QB play and the fans loving the game plan and/or play calling. But with our inconsistent QB play for much of last year, all of a sudden JH is a moron. I do agree JH had better games than others, but he got too much flack for what were inherent limitations in the team.

I will agree JH drew up an excellent plan in the Sugar Bowl. He went pass-first and trusted TK to be able to pass well and our WR ability to get open. I don't think Bama expected that - I know I didn't expect that. I thought we would use the QB run option read heavily and I thought it would be a big FAIL. I figured Bama's run D could control it and there would be good odds that TK wouldn't last the entire game. I was delighted to be wrong. But even with that game plan, the Bama defense did adjust well at half time and OUr offense only scored 1 TD in the second half. But they did execute a gutsy drive at the end that drained the clock and put Bama in difficult field position at the end. Credit to both JH and the players for that one.