First down defense among Texas’ biggest keys to slowing Oklahoma

If Texas prevents Oklahoma from running tempo, it can win the game. It all starts with winning first down.

The Oklahoma Sooners have perhaps the most explosive offense in college football. Certainly, the team possesses the most explosive offense in the Big 12 as long as the UCF Golden Knights are without John Rhys Plumlee at quarterback.

The Sooners’ high scoring offense is cause for concern, but not without its flaws. While the Texas Longhorns have scored more than 30 points in every contest, Oklahoma has fallen below 30 point scoring outputs against SMU and Cincinnati. It’s not feast or famine in Norman, but it is feast or tighten-up-your-belt and conserve.

Oklahoma’s last performance that yielded offensive struggles came against Cincinnati. The Sooners won the game 20-6. The Bearcats did several things well defensively, but what they did best involved preventing the Oklahoma offense from going up-tempo. And when the Sooners could not speed up the pace offensively, they looked pedestrian.

The 2023 Oklahoma up-tempo style is not far off from the 2008 Sooners’ offensive pace. That Oklahoma team had five straight games in which they scored 60 points or more. The next game they faced a Florida team that held them to 14 points. When you can stop a tempo-dependent team from speeding up the game, it becomes a shell of itself.

It is unclear if Oklahoma can execute 12-play drives without fast tempo against the Texas defense. What is clear is the Longhorns’ best chance of stopping the Sooners is winning in the first three plays of the drive and on first downs.

If defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski can slow the Sooners early in drives with negative and neutral plays, the Longhorns should have success on defense.