Many words adequately describe the start of the Oklahoma Sooners 2021 football season. You could call it surprising; a Lincoln Riley team struggling in three of its first four games is something few anticipated — especially when you consider how easy the nonconference schedule was supposed to be.
You could also label it an offensive disappointment. Fans anxiously awaiting another year of high-flying offense and blowout wins haven’t received what they anticipated. That much is undeniable.
The one thing you can’t call Oklahoma at this point of the year is a loser. However, that’s precisely how CBS Sports categorized the Sooners after their 16-13 win over the West Virginia Mountaineers.
The Sooners survived one-score quarterback battles against Tulane’s Michael Pratt and Nebraska’s Adrian Martinez early in the season. Needing a field goal as time expired to beat a mediocre West Virginia team is disgusting.
The game against WVU was the third straight Big 12 game in which Oklahoma scored 27 points or fewer. The Sooners didn’t have a single game under 28 points in Lincoln Riley’s head coaching tenure before this streak. The last time Oklahoma scored fewer than 24 points in consecutive home games at all was 1998, according to ESPN’s Chris Fallica.
Oklahoma is the only team CBS Sports places in the “loser” category after winning its game.
Mentioned alongside the Sooners is Clemson, who fell to NC State 27-21, and North Carolina, who took a 45-22 drubbing at the hands of Georgia Tech. Both the Tigers and the Tar Heels sit at 2-2 after week four.
The Sooners? A perfect 4-0.
Say what you want about the offense’s inability to live up to expectations, but a team that has yet to lose a game absolutely cannot, under any circumstance, be deemed a loser.
I will concede that this is the year Oklahoma is supposed to be the unstoppable force and the immovable object. To see the defense consistently rise to the occasion while the offense vanishes for drives at a time is certainly frustrating.
Yes, the fact that this has happened against every FBS opponent Oklahoma has faced is concerning. However, is this pattern instead revealing an identify shift within the team?
Oklahoma’s defense — particularly its defensive front — has forced Tulane, Nebraska, and West Virginia into the mud with them. Opponents convert just 29 percent of their third downs against the Sooners, a mark that leads the Big-12 and is top 25 in the entire FBS. If that’s not enough, OU ranks ninth in the country in rush defense, conceding just over four yards per carry.
Against West Virginia, the defense held quarterback Jarret Doege to 160 passing yards and he rushed for just 1.6 yards per carry. And finally, when the Sooners needed it most, the offense reignited on a 14-play, 80-yard drive that set up Gabe Brkic for the game-winning field goal.
Is the strength of this Oklahoma team shifting from offense over to defense? I don’t know, maybe. It’s still too soon to tell.
What I do know is the Sooners are undefeated through four games and anything but losers.