Offense outlasts defense late in unique 2021 Oklahoma football spring game

“I think overall, you’d say a successful spring game.”

Offense managed to outlast defense on Saturday’s return of the annual Oklahoma football spring game after it was canceled a year ago.

For the first time since December, it was football time in Oklahoma on Saturday. Well, at least somewhat.

The annual Sooners spring game went down early Saturday evening at Gaylord Family – Oklahoma Memorial Stadium with a bit of switch-up to the format of recent years. In this game, the two teams (red and white) were simply just offense against defense. Defense in red, offense in white.

Red began the game with a 21-0 lead, and it was up to them to hold off White over the course of two 15-minute halves of football. The defense could also build on their lead with any fourth down stops or turnovers. And thus, a very unique spring game was born which saw the defense dominate early…but the offense steal the game late.

“I think overall, you’d say a successful spring game,” Lincoln Riley said postgame. “You know, the format, we knew we kind of took a shot in the dark a little bit with the format and it actually worked out to make it pretty competitive and interesting there at the end. But more than that, I thought players handled the majority of the day well.”

It didn’t take long for the story of the day to develop, as many eyes coming into the day were always going to be locked into the debut of highly-touted freshman five-star quarterback Caleb Williams – and he was quite good on Saturday on a day where incumbent starter Spencer Rattler wasn’t his sharpest.

“I thought Caleb was solid,” Riley said. “I thought he was pretty decisive on the day which is, you guys hear me use that word all the time when referencing quarterbacks. But that’s so important I think at that position. And I thought he had one of the most decisive days he’s probably had all spring.”

Williams finished his day completing 10 of his 11 passes for 99 yards and one touchdown. Rattler wasn’t quite as successful, completing just 6 of his 14 passes for 116 yards and no scores. He did, although, have the throw of the day on one of the bigger highlights on a 50-yard deep pass down the middle to freshman wide receiver Mario Williams who made a tough contested catch over corner back D.J. Graham.

After weeks of hearing about how good Williams has looked in camp, he showed flashes on Saturday to give many a reason to think he could have an immediate impact in the wide receiver room. It was a very good debut for the four-star freshman wide receiver leading the team with five catches for 84 yards.

“He did some good things,” Riley said of Mario Williams. “He made a great play, a very competitive play down the field which honestly D.J. Graham made a great play on too. Pretty impressive honestly by both those guys. So yeah, I thought he did some nice things. He’s had a pretty good spring, the majority of days have been productive days and he’s certainly got some burst and some ability, I think everybody can see that.”

On the defensive side of the ball, the Oklahoma defense had a largely dominant beginning to the game with the offense struggling to finish off drives once they crossed midfield. With numerous key players unavailable to play, the Sooners showcased the depth on that side of the football we had been hearing about over the last month.

While they did eventually technically lose the game late, when the bulk of the key guys who were available played – it was pretty lock down stuff. They also forced a turnover and picked up a late safety on the day, making it a pretty solid evening for Alex Grinch’s group.

Grinch discussed after the game how, in the past, there were certain things they just simply couldn’t do without a certain number of starters on the field. Now, he feels like that isn’t nearly as much of a factor and the concern of who the “one’s” and “two’s” are on the team don’t affect the play-calling nearly like they like they used to.

“Not being, I guess, alarmed as much maybe in the past about who those individuals were on the field,” Grinch said postgame of what was the biggest positive taken from the day. “A number of guys playing in a number of different spots and you don’t feel like, man we’ve used the comment in the past – really protect the ‘one’ group, because you know the two’s aren’t going to be what they need to be.

So, pleased with that. More quality across all positions and all depth.”

After the defense led the game the majority of the day, the offense would slowly chip away and score 17 points in the second half to take the lead on a sparkling 19-yard touchdown run by Tennessee transfer running back Eric Gray and a short two-yard touchdown run by Jaden Knowles with just over four minutes to go to put them in the lead for good.

Penn State transfer quarterback Micah Bowens led the game-winning drive late, completing four of his five passes and running for 25 yards of his own. Linebacker Bryan Mead would be the first among a group of defenders to force a late safety to make it a one-point game in the final minutes. But with Caleb Williams back at the helm, the offense was able to bleed out the rest of the clock for the 30-29 win.

All in all, it was a good spring game if you are an Oklahoma fan because essentially all the boxes were checked in terms of what you want to see out of a game like this. Some new faces made an impact, some young guys offered some excitement after their hype-ups this spring and the defense looked the part despite many big names being out. There isn’t much of anything negative to take away from this and be worried about if you are the Sooners, with the good far outweighing the bad.

Now, with spring ball over, comes the long summer months ahead where the team will go their separate ways before reconvening in the weeks leading up to fall camp and the beginning of the 2021 season. After not having much of spring practices a year ago due to the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, it seemed throughout the process the players and coaches were largely just grateful just to get to go through this process again, and are a better team now for it.

“We don’t ever take it for granted, certainly after this game was taken from us last year,” Riley said. “It was a lot of fun to be ready to play and our guys were ready to play.”

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