Postgame Thoughts: Oklahoma 24, Auburn 17
A relentless effort from their defensive line enabled the Oklahoma Sooners to sidestep a series of sloppy gaffes in a 24-17 win over the Auburn Tigers.
Former OU quarterback Jackson Arnold nearly rallied the Tigers to victory in the fourth quarter by engineering a lengthy touchdown drive. Hitting paydirt on a jet sweep by receiver Malcolm Simmons gave Auburn a 17-16 advantage midway through the final frame. It proved short-lived, though, as Sooners QB John Mateer oversaw a TD drive of his own on OU’s ensuing possession to put the home team ahead for good.
A few thoughts on the action between the Tigers and Sooners, based on viewing the live broadcast and perusing some YouTube highlights…
*Football strategy often comes down to picking your poison. It’s a zero-sum game, in so far as focusing on one thing usually requires leaving your team vulnerable somewhere else.
In my weekly column, I showed how Baylor chose to defend this Auburn team with two safeties playing a high shell. If Baylor’s goal was to keep the Tigers from beating the Bears with bombs, it worked: Arnold only put the ball in the air 17 times in the entire game. However, the Tigers countered by running the ball more than 50 times to steamroll the Bears for over 300 yards on the ground in Auburn’s 38-24 win.
OU head coach Brent Venables took a different approach to defending the Tigers. He gave Arnold and Auburn coach Hugh Freeze an array of looks, and he generally called the defense with an eye on forcing the Tigers QB to make the right decisions and execute under duress. On first down, for example, OU showed this look:
On the snap, safety Robert Spears-Jenning comes on a run blitz to get eight OU defenders in the box. The other safety, Peyton Bowen, takes deep middle and leaves the cornerbacks one-on-one with the two split receivers. Arnold took advantage of the matchups in this case by connecting with receiver Cam Coleman on a vertical route down the sideline – getting beat by the occasional shot play was the tradeoff for all the sacks and tackles for loss OU forced on D throughout the game.
If you consider that a gamble on Venables’ part, it worked.
*On a related note, OU CB Courtland Guillory drew a diabolical assignment in covering Coleman man-to-man on a significant number of plays. The other CBs who covered Coleman at different points in the game didn’t fare well, either. The good news is that the Sooners won’t face another receiver in the regular season who poses the same type of physical matchup problems as Coleman.
*Despite the numbers, OU’s defense missed some opportunities to make life much harder for Auburn at different points in the game. Namely, poor tackling on the perimeter turned what could have been short gains or stops behind the line of scrimmage into longer ones when Sooner defenders whiffed on ball carriers out wide. Teams will continue to try to pick up cheap yards with screens and quick throws if the Sooners don’t tighten up.
*Mateer didn’t play his best game against Auburn. The fumbled exchange in Auburn territory on a read play in the second quarter felt like it changed the course of the game. He also struggled with the amount of velocity he put on his throws throughout the contest. To be fair, Mateer did come up big on the game-winning drive, including how he read the defense on his TD run in the fourth quarter.
Bear in mind that an opponent will force Mateer at some point this season to show he can play quarterback more conventionally from the pocket. He clearly prefers throwing on the move.
*After squeezing a paltry 32 yards out of 26 rushing attempts versus the Tigers, we can safely say OU’s traditional ground game reached a crisis point over the weekend.
Freshman Tory Blaylock played 52 of the Sooners’ 66 offensive snaps in the game at running back and netted all of 13 yards on 11 carries. Meanwhile, senior Jovantae Barnes got a total of 12 offensive snaps, rushing the ball one time for no yardage. Auburn wasn’t exactly loading the box on defense, either:
It got so bad that offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle ramped up the number of plays in which the Sooners were lining up with empty backfields. Expect to see more of that as the season goes on unless something changes dramatically.
*A key reason the running game remains so impotent is OU’s lack of a true tight end. Jaren Kanak essentially plays like a jacked slot receiver (and doing it very well, by the way). The other TEs who saw action against Auburn, Carson Kent and Will Huggins, aren’t contributing much to the cause.
*WR Isaiah Sategna might have played the weirdest game of college football of any player in history.
*On balance, the Sooners notched a solid win on Saturday. Freeze has constructed a strong roster at Auburn with plenty of NFL-caliber players from top to bottom. Gutting out a sloppy win over a talented opponent beats taking a loss any day.
OU still has some glaring flaws, though. A two-week break to heal up and work on some finer points comes at a great time. Importantly, this seems like a good opportunity to do a deep dive to find out if there are any realistic fixes to kickstart the rushing attack.