Greg McElroy thinks a loss this week would doom Oklahoma 2024 season

Greg McElroy believes the Sooners have to win on Saturday to have a good shot at bowl eligibility.

The Oklahoma Sooners take the field once again this week, as they’re back at home against the South Carolina Gamecocks on Saturday. OU is 4-2 overall this season, but just 1-2 in [autotag]SEC[/autotag] play.

After a 3-0 start with wins over Temple, Houston, and Tulane, Oklahoma lost to Tennessee, defeated Auburn, and got beat by Texas.

With a brutal schedule in the SEC still awaiting them, the Sooners have very little margin for error, a fact compounded by a lackluster offense that OU has trotted out for much of 2024.

[autotag]Brent Venables[/autotag]’ team has already had one of their two bye weeks for the regular season, so there won’t be much extra time to fix things from week to week.

The Gamecocks are fully capable of coming into Norman and defeating the Sooners on Saturday, especially with as bad as the offense has been for Oklahoma. Shane Beamer’s team nearly defeated LSU earlier this season and almost beat Alabama last week. One ESPN college football analyst thinks that a loss against South Carolina would be dangerous for OU.

Greg McElroy, the host of “Always College Football” for ESPN, and one of the network’s top college football color commentators, thinks the Sooners would be trending to miss bowl season with a loss this week at home.

“Had I told you that when this game was approaching in the middle of October this game would determine bowl eligibility, potentially, would you have believed me,” McElroy said. “Just being honest. You look at Oklahoma: ten wins a year ago, a ready-made defense, a potential star at quarterback, all this hype coming into the season, and now they lose this one? Let’s be real, I mean Oklahoma with what they have remaining, it’s not looking likely that they’re going to be playing in the postseason if they lose this one at home.”
After South Carolina, the Sooners still have games on the road against Ole Miss, on the road against Missouri, at home against Alabama, and on the road against LSU. The only saving grace left on the schedule is a home game against Maine, who is an FCS team. With just four wins and four remarkably tough contests coming up after this week, McElroy might be right about this being a must-win game for OU.
The former national championship-winning quarterback at Alabama went on to praise what South Carolina has already done this season, and believes the Gamecocks will get the road victory.
“South Carolina’s like kind of a pretty dangerous football team with what they have on the edges,” McElroy said. “I like the Gamecocks in this game to go up there and a take care of business against an offensive line that is shaky at best and a quarterback that likes to escape horizontally.”

Before the season began, this game was one that Sooner Nation expected to win fairly easily, one of few inferior talent opponents on this inaugural SEC schedule. With the way South Carolina has looked this year, combined with the way Oklahoma has played, especially offensively, it now looks like the Sooners have to play some of their best football in order to get win No. 5 and head into the back half of the season with any kind of chance to make some noise.