Dominant! If I had to sum up Oklahoma’s defensive performance against UCLA. Notice that I didn’t say perfect. That’s because we’ve yet to see a perfect performance from the “Speed Defense” but you can be dominant with out being perfect and that’s exactly what we saw on Saturday night.
The Sooners held the Bruins to their season average of 14 points while giving up just 201 total yards of offense and two turnovers. Here’s how we grade out Oklahoma’s defensive positions.
Defensive Line
The Bruins did crack the century mark, for the first time this season, in rushing yards but they had to grind out 3.0 yards per carry over the course of 37 carries to do so.
Neville Gallamore was his normal disruptive self by blowing up plays from the middle of the defensive line and Jalen Redmond proved that he is in fact a budding star.
If you read our Defensive Keys to the Game post then you know that winning the line of scrimmage was what needed to happen and that’s exactly what Oklahoma did.
Overall Position Grade: A+
Linebackers
Linebackers accounted for two of Oklahoma’s four sacks on Saturday night and Kenneth Murray was second on the team with five tackles. Redshirt sophomore Ryan Jones also came up with one of OU’s two interceptions with a diving snag in the fourth quarter.
Overall Position Grade: A
Secondary
We’re still seeing some poor tackling techniques pop up here and there, but are we really going to complain about a unit that produced three of the team’s top four tacklers in this game? Corner Tre Brown also snagged his first interception and freshman Jaden Davis (the team’s leading tackler against UCLA) is a star in the making.
I would expect Alex Grinch to use the bye week to continue to focusing on those tackling techniques. That’s the only thing that prevented this group from an A grade this week.
Overall Position Grade: B+
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