With the #4 Seed potentially up for grabs in the college football playoff, after the S.E.C. championship game next weekend, the debate about the credentials between Oklahoma and Ohio State is raging this week.
By way of a 62-39 thrashing of Michigan on Saturday the Buckeyes have jumped back into the playoff picture. Oklahoma fans are the first to step up and tell Ohio State to get their spot in line though. The Sooners have been trying to climb their way back into the Top Four since an early October loss to Texas. They’ve done so by unleashing the nation’s best offense to the tune of 53 points per game across their last six.
Still, the Buckeyes are going to point to that win over then #4 Michigan and say they are deserving. Many members of the media are going to overlook Ohio State getting steamrolled by Purdue, and barely escaping Maryland, and make their case based on overreaction from last Saturday. There’s one thing they’re not going to mention though. Oklahoma and Ohio State have a common opponent in TCU.
The Buckeyes played the Horned Frogs, at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, on September 16th and came out with an impressive 40-28 win. Oklahoma visited TCU on October 20th and came out with an even more impressive 52-27 win.
Ohio State racked up 526 yards of offense in their win over the Frogs, Oklahoma beat that total by ten yards. It seems like everyone wants to make a big deal about OU’s defensive struggles but the Sooners held TCU to just 275 yards of offense in their game while the Buckeyes gave up 511 yards on defense.
Of course these are not things that ESPN is going to want to bring up because it may not fit into their agenda. Perhaps that’s the reason why they deleted a Tweet on Monday that outlined Oklahoma’s statistical advantages over the Buckeyes.
https://twitter.com/CTXXX/status/1066850563168571392
Gary Patterson had to coach against both teams jockeying for position and he threw his hat in the ring for the Sooners.
“If anybody wants to say that Oklahoma,’well they say they aren’t playing very good defense,’ it really doesn’t make any difference,” Patterson said after his team wrapped up a 6-6 season Saturday night. “If you can’t slow them down — this thing that I hear about that you’ve gotta be a ‘complete team,’ no you don’t. You just have to have one side of the ball that is better than anything else that anybody can do.”
“Having been a defensive guy in this league, I’m looking forward to watching everybody else defend them instead of me,” Patterson continued. “I’m just going to tell you right now, holy smokes. That’s a lot of work.”
After going on a tangent about how good the offenses are in the Big 12, Patterson closed out his comments on the playoffs with this about OU.
“That Georgia team was a good defensive ball team and Oklahoma was up 31-14,” Patterson said. “All I’m saying to you is that I’m a coach and I just watch. I played Ohio State. I saw what they did to Michigan today. I played both. I know who I’d rather play again and who I wouldn’t, and they’re both good football teams.”