It’s not a secret that Oklahoma’s offensive line is the lifeblood of the Sooners year-in and year-out.
The Sooners took home the Joe Moore Award for the best offensive line in college football in 2018. To them, in 2019, the offensive line took a step back while working in four new offensive lineman in Adrian Ealy, Marquis Hayes, Tyrese Robinson and Erik Swenson.
While Swenson isn’t listed as a starter in 2020, the other four return. As well as a true freshman at left tackle, another backing up Hayes at left guard and experience everywhere else.
It’s something that had Oklahoma excited.
“We have a lot of depth,” Bedenbaugh said. “There are some really good players that are going to have to be on our scout teams. Guys know that the person behind them is pushing them. It’s a fortunate thing for me that guys have to compete every day. I really feel good about our depth inside, as good as I’ve felt since I’ve been here.”
Then, the first game happened. The Sooners were missing Anton Harrison as a starter at left tackle, his backup at left tackle in Stacey Wilkins and Andrew Raym as backup at left guard.
The running game sputtered against an inferior opponent. Lincoln Riley noticed.
“I thought there was a couple things in the run game that we missed,” he said after the Missouri State game. “It wasn’t all them. I mean, it was kind of the run game was just OK tonight. Honestly, probably, I wouldn’t even give it that. Was probably a little bit worse than OK, so we’ve got to run the ball better but it’s a group effort. There’s some mistakes I made in calling it. Some mistakes at the quarterback, the running back, the h-back positions. I mean, we all had our hands in it. We did some good things. Thought the first group did some good things. Second group finally kind of settled in there at the end. It was a little bit of a mixed bag. We had, I think, three guys playing new positions there at the end to be able to get in there and play, but that’s part of it. We’ve got to learn from it and continue to improve.”
Riley had an answer for why that happened in his next media setting.
“Just a bunch of 9- and 10-man football,” he said on the Big 12 teleconference the following Monday. “I don’t know that there was one, you know, just one constant problem — other than we didn’t get all 11 doing their job at a high level consistently. And in offensive football, when you don’t do that, it’s gonna show up. No matter if it’s run game, throw game, whatever. And it did. It showed up.
“So yeah, just trying to take steps, trying to improve. I mean, it’s not one position group. It’s not necessarily just one type of mistake. But anything at this level of ball can bite you, and we’ve got to be sharper at all levels of it.”
There isn’t much time to get things going for this offensive line in 2020. Oklahoma only had one non-conference game and has two games in conference play before traveling to Dallas to play Texas.
The Longhorns’ defensive front is going to be better than just good this season. The Sooners will need to be up to shape.
But, there are two games to get ready. Oklahoma knows that, but the expectation is to get up to par now.
“Obviously we don’t want to start slow and build up,” said Humphrey last week. “We want to be able to get out there and get going right now. So that’s our expectation is to play how we’re supposed to play every single game. That’s just what I tell those guys is to go out there and play how we’re supposed to play every game. With this shortened season we don’t really have time to slowly get into things. We’ve got to get into it right now. There’s a sense of urgency moreso than usual. We definitely need to improve and improve quickly.”
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