Tag: Jeff Lebby

Takeaways from the Oklahoma Sooners impressive win over West Virginia

The Oklahoma Sooners played one of their better games of the season in their win over West Virginia and here are our takeaways from the game.

In Saturday’s 59-20 win over West Virginia, the Sooners were able to exorcise their demons from the last two weeks.

The offense was explosive through the air and on the ground. They attacked down the field as opposed to working at or behind the line of scrimmage.

Defensively, they looked like a better tackling team this week than either of the previous two weeks.

There are always going to be things to clean up from a game, but when you win 59-20, a lot of things went really right for the Oklahoma Sooners.

Here are this week’s takeaways from the game.

Social media reacts to Oklahoma Sooners big win over West Virginia

Dillon Gabriel, Drake Stoops, and the Oklahoma Sooners had huge days in their win over West Virginia, and here’s how social media reacted.

That’s what they call a palate cleanser.

After two weeks of poor execution, unforced errors, untimely penalties, poor play calling, and poor officiating, that’s just what the Oklahoma Sooners needed.

The Sooners thoroughly dominated West Virginia. Sure, the Mountaineers scored 20 points, but this is a team that was averaging 37.75 points per game over their last four games. WVU had the No. 7 rushing attack. And even though they gave up some runs, the Sooners’ defense put them in 2nd and 3rd and long situations enough to be able to force Garrett Greene to beat them with his arm.

And we saw how poorly that worked out for West Virginia.

As well as the defense played, it was the Oklahoma Sooners offense that was the story. Dillon Gabriel passed Colt Brennan for 10th all-time in career passing yards and then set a new Oklahoma record for touchdowns in a game with eight.

Drake Stoops followed up his career day in Bedlam with another career day in Oklahoma’s win.

The offense was back on track, didn’t turn the ball over, and the defense played sound football and the Sooners still have Big 12 title aspirations, even if they do need a lot of help to get there.

It was a dominating win for the Sooners and here’s how social media reacted.

After two years of conflict, USC and Oklahoma football fans are in the same boat

#USC and #Oklahoma football fans are basically in the same spot regarding their football programs. Life is strange.

Life has a way of throwing a boomerang at all of us at some point. If fans dish out some smack talk to a rival fan base, the things they say eventually come back around and hit them in the face. If other fans deliver an unceasing amount of heckling or hounding, something will happen to turn the tables in the other direction.

Such is the case in the relationship between USC and Oklahoma football fans.

As soon as Lincoln Riley went to USC, Oklahoma fans have been telling USC fans how bad they will have it. Lincoln Riley is overrated, Riley won’t insist on a good defense, Riley won’t hire a better defensive coordinator.

To be sure, Oklahoma fans have been proved right this year on many fronts. However, Riley has fired Alex Grinch, something a lot of people never thought he would do. Riley now has a chance to prove a lot of Oklahoma fans wrong.

Meanwhile, Oklahoma’s season has taken a drastically bad turn over the past few weeks. The Sooners were looking great under head coach Brent Venables, but coordinator Jeff Lebby’s offense has gotten stuck. Dillon Gabriel’s Heisman Trophy candidacy has been derailed. The Sooners are in trouble in terms of making the Big 12 Championship Game, which would rate as a considerable disappointment.

Everything Oklahoma fans have said about Riley not firing Grinch can now be turned in the direction of Brent Venables for not yet firing Jeff Lebby.

Oklahoma fans thought they had the high ground for a bit, but now, they’re basically in the same position USC fans inhabited for the past two years: They want their head coach to fire their coordinator so that the program can figure out how to have a good offense and a good defense at the same time.

Oklahoma has the D without the O. USC is the opposite. In the end, both schools have half of a solution but not a whole one.

Life is strange.

Let’s see how Oklahoma fans are handling Jeff Lebby’s disastrous turn as offensive coordinator, the offense-based version of what Alex Grinch was for USC’s defense:

Bedlam Stock Report: Sooners 2022 signees making an impact

Taking a look at what’s trending up or down right now in Oklahoma’s program following their lost to Oklahoma State.

Oklahoma is in a tailspin. If things don’t improve quickly, they could begin to resemble the 2022 team that started fast but fell apart against some of the better teams in the Big 12.

There are still three games for the Sooners. They can go out and finish on a high note. While slim, Oklahoma still has a chance to make the Big 12 title game. They would need some help, but they’re not completely eliminated from the conference championship game.

In the interim, it’s all about improving as a team and letting the rest fall into place.

It’s time for this week’s stock report as we look at how things are trending up and down for the Oklahoma football team.[anyclip-media thumbnail=”undefined” playlistId=”undefined” content=”dW5kZWZpbmVk”][/anyclip-media]

Report Card: Offense’s dysfunction dooms Sooners chance to end Bedlam on top

Grading the Oklahoma Sooners by position group in their loss to Oklahoma State.

If Saturday was the last time Bedlam is played, the Oklahoma Sooners will always regret how things went in their final game against their in-state rivals. The Sooners will walk away from this game knowing they have dominated this series. There’s no debating that the Sooners have owned the Cowboys. But on Saturday, Oklahoma had the chance to put one final bow on this lopsided series, and they didn’t get it done.

Oklahoma State came out swinging, and the Sooners responded. But the most common theme was Oklahoma’s offense stalling on four different possessions once they got to the Oklahoma State side of the field. Most notably on the Sooners’ final drive of the game.

Defensively, Oklahoma played well enough to win. After getting bullied early, the defense found its footing and locked in the remainder of the contest.

In the end, the dysfunction and mistakes on offense put Oklahoma in a near-impossible spot. When it mattered most, they couldn’t rectify their own mistakes.

Oklahoma will move on and turn their attention to West Virginia. Before that, it’s time to pass out grades for Oklahoma’s performance against Mike Gundy’s Oklahoma State Cowboys.

Jeff Lebby explains fourth-down call in Sooners’ loss to Oklahoma State

Jeff Lebby explains why the call on 4th Down to keep the game going was the right call.

With 1:46 left in the fourth quarter, Oklahoma Sooners’ quarterback [autotag]Dillon Gabriel[/autotag] trotted onto the field with one timeout, trailing by three and needing to go 80 yards. On the first play of the drive, Gabriel hit [autotag]Drake Stoops[/autotag] for a 21-yard gain.

The Sooners were in business. But after an incomplete pass to [autotag]Nic Anderson[/autotag], a drop by Anderson, and a five-yard gain on a quick slant to [autotag]Jalil Farooq[/autotag] on third-and-10, the Sooners faced a fourth-and-5 with the game on the line.

Gabriel sprinted to his left and threw it to Stoops, who juggled it but eventually came down with it. The only issue: The route was two yards too short. The Sooners turned it over on downs, and the Cowboys took over and ran out the clock.

Offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby was asked about that call.

“We liked it,” Lebby said. “We thought it was going to be man to man. It needed to be about a yard deeper. That’s the reality of it. I can put us in a better situation there.”

This is the third week in a row the Sooners’ offense and its play-calling have been drawn into question. The offense went up against a very poor Oklahoma State defense and moved the ball pretty well, racking up 492 yards. But they only had 24 points to show for it.

Too many times, the offense stalled around midfield. This is also the second week in a row the offense turned it over three times. Turnovers hadn’t been an issue for this offense in the two years under Lebby. Two of those turnovers were due to snap issues from a guy who has been a three-starter and is a senior on this team. That can’t happen.

No, Lebby didn’t have the bad snaps. He didn’t drop wide-open touchdowns, and he didn’t throw the ball into double coverage resulting in an interception. But he has to be better.

The defense was once again pretty good. It allowed one touchdown after the 9:42 mark in the second quarter. The only other Cowboys score came after Oklahoma State recovered a botched snap at the OU 20-yard line. The defense forced a three-and-out to hold the Cowboys to three and keep the game within reach for the Sooners offense.

Unfortunately, Lebby and the offense couldn’t take advantage of a porous Cowboys defense.

The team can still salvage a good season, but it starts with the offense, and that’s not something we thought would be an issue before the season.

Contact/Follow us @SoonersWire on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Oklahoma news, notes, and opinions. You can also follow Jaron on Twitter @JaronSpor.

USC, Oklahoma and Notre Dame are likely to fire their failing coordinators

The inconvenient truth: USC, Oklahoma, and Notre Dame are basically in the same place.

Alex Grinch is toast at USC after the Trojans allowed 52 points to Washington and fell out of the Pac-12 title chase. Yet, he’s not the only coordinator likely to be fired in the coming weeks.

Jeff Lebby is under fire at Oklahoma after a very poor performance against Oklahoma State in the Bedlam game, which means everything to the people in the state of Oklahoma.

Notre Dame offensive coordinator Gerad Parker is as good as gone after the Fighting Irish’s offense flopped again in a loss to Dabo Swinney and Clemson.

Fans at USC, Oklahoma and Notre Dame would all love to be able to laugh at the other, but the plain truth is they’re all in the same boat, and no one has real leverage over and against the other.

Let’s look at the reactions at all three schools, among all three fan bases, to the failures of their coordinators:

While USC fans want to fire Alex Grinch, Oklahoma fans want to fire Jeff Lebby

USC and Oklahoma fans are in the same boat, really.

On the same Saturday that USC fans watched the final nail get driven into Alex Grinch’s coffin as Trojan defensive coordinator, the Oklahoma Sooners had their own moment of supreme failure.

Oklahoma offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby delivered terrible play calls late in OU’s Bedlam loss to Oklahoma State. The final failed play was the worst call of them all, a one-yard pass — short of the sticks — on fourth-and-3 near midfield with Oklahoma trailing by three points in the final two minutes.

If USC’s 52-42 loss to Washington was a fireable offense by Alex Grinch, Oklahoma’s Bedlam loss — and the way it went down — was just as fireable for Jeff Lebby.

Here’s how Oklahoma fans, who are really in the same boat as USC fans right now — reacted to Lebby’s spectacular failure, an offense-based equivalent of Alex Grinch:

5 takeaways from the Sooners’ 27-24 loss to Oklahoma State

Oklahoma lost 27-24 in the last Bedlam game. Here are our five takeaways from the loss.

Oklahoma, for the first time since last year, finds itself on a two-game losing streak. OU lost the final matchup of Bedlam on Saturday, 27-24, in controversial fashion.

The Sooners entered the game looking to bounce back quickly after losing a close game on the road against the Kansas Jayhawks.

Oklahoma played much better collectively this week. Ultimately, the result was the same. Now, Mike Gundy and his Oklahoma State Cowboys will have the distinction of owning the last win in the Bedlam series before it takes an indefinite pause.

The Sooners had every chance to put themselves in a position to win the game but failed multiple times to either extend their lead early in the fourth quarter or avoid big mistakes. As the dust settles, it’s time for our five takeaways from the game.

Oklahoma Sooners land another in-state product in a surprise commitment

Oklahoma got some good news in a surprise commitment from in-state 2025 product.

The [autotag]Oklahoma Sooners 2025 recruiting[/autotag] is absolutely on fire right now. The Sooners didn’t land just one but two players on Thursday night.

Marcus James from Carl Albert in Oklahoma City, Okla. was the one everyone knew was coming as he scheduled his announcement for 6:30 p.m. CT that day. But shortly after, his teammate, 2025 3-star athlete [autotag]Trynae Washington[/autotag], also committed to the Sooners.

Washington is a 6-foot-3, 195-pound do-it-all player for Carl Albert. He plays both wide receiver and safety. Washington told OUInsider (subscription required) in an exclusive interview the plan was for him to play tight end and wide receiver at Oklahoma.

Washington is the fourth Carl Albert player to commit to Oklahoma this calendar year, joining [autotag]Marcus James[/autotag], three-star 2024 running back [autotag]Xavier Robinson[/autotag] and four-star 2025 quarterback [autotag]Kevin Sperry[/autotag]. But they aren’t done, as Washington admits he has his eyes set on teammate, 2025 defensive back [autotag]Trystan Haynes[/autotag] to join the crew.

As for what sold Washington on Oklahoma, he told OUInsider, “They are a big family, and make sure that you feel welcome there. The atmosphere there is great as well, the coaches getting involved just as much as the players. They were reaching out to me and trying to get me more involved, more than other colleges were.”

The Sooners didn’t land their first 2024 commit until March of this year when Jeremiah Newcombe broke the ice. As of right now the Sooners already have seven 2025 commits, with some more potentially on their way soon.

Contact/Follow us @SoonersWire on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Oklahoma news, notes, and opinions. You can also follow Jaron on Twitter @JaronSpor.