The Sooners silenced their doubters Friday night with a dominating performance over Ohio State. In a role reversal from last year, Oklahoma has the stronger, more athletic, and more physical team in Saturday night’s prime time battle.
After shooting themselves in the foot in the first half, with two turnovers and a missed field goal, Oklahoma’s offense exploded for 28 second half points behind a Baker Mayfield charged offense. OU’s senior quarterback solidified himself as the frontrunner in the Heisman.
More recaps are coming but here are some quick thoughts.
Oklahoma 31, Ohio State 16.
The Sooners felt right at home at the Horseshoe. pic.twitter.com/ClGUB08rzL
— ESPN (@espn) September 10, 2017
- The nation’s longest winning streak lives on. The Sooners are now at 12 consecutive wins and counting. Tulane comes to Norman next week.
- Baker Mayfield is the best quarterback in the country. I’m going to go ahead and saw that after being reserved for a while on the matter. There are some really good quarterbacks out there, and better NFL draft prospects, but no quarterback in the country does more for their team than Mayfield. Can we just go ahead and hand him the Heisman?
- Lincoln Riley is a genus. There’s not a tougher place to make your road debut when you consider then venue and opponent. Riley called the best offensive game since Mike Leach unveiled the Ninja formation.
- Oklahoma has found their feature back. Abdul Adams started the game but Trey Sermon finished it, and did so quite strongly. I would expect a running back by committee approach again next week against Tulane but when conference play begins the week after it’ll be Trey Sermon as the feature guy.
- The lines didn’t just hold up…they dominated!!! The talk going in was that Ohio State’s defensive front was too deep for Oklahoma’s offensive line to hold up against. Not only did the Sooners hold up, they dominated the Buckeyes. The story is the same for Oklahoma’s defensive line against Ohio State’s offensive front.
- First half turnovers were costly. Two fumbles and a missed field goal only gave the Buckeyes three points but the more damaging aspect is that they prevented Oklahoma from scoring. Just imaging if they just converted those three wasted opportunities into field goal, we’ve got a 12-3 halftime score and a very different situation.
- Injuries mounted quickly. We were never made fully aware of what was ailing Baker Mayfield but the fact that he was visibly struggling only makes his performance all the more impressive. Mark Andrews, Will Johnson, and Obo Okoronkwo all left the field due to injury with Andrews and Johnson not returning after playing vital roles in the first quarter.