Tag: Oklahoma offense

Oklahoma’s run game provides offense with a boost

The Oklahoma Sooners may be finding their ground game in the second half of the season.

The Oklahoma Sooners run game has begun to find some answers. Facing an Ole Miss team that was No. 1 in the nation in rushing yards allowed per game and yards per carry, the Sooners ground game came through in a big way.

According to Pro Football Focus, who takes sack yardage out of the rushing totals, the Sooners ran for 208 yards on 40 carries. That’s an average of 5.2 yards per carry. Barnes was quick to find the whole and churned out a lot of positive runs, even if they didn’t all go for big gains. He ran for 67 yards on 16 carries, averaging 4.2 yards per carry.

Arnold showed off his athleticism and toughness picking up 99 rush yards, 71 of which came in the scramble game.

True freshman running back Taylor Tatum had a solid performance as well. He carried the ball nine times for 42 yards. He lost a fumble, highlighting some ball security issues, but has shown he’s got the talent to be a dynamic weapon in the Sooners offense. He just has to protect the ball better.

New play caller and co-offensive coordinator Joe Jon Finley was pleased with the success Oklahoma had in the run game.

“Nobody rushes the ball on these guys like we did,” new offensive coordinator Joe Jon Finley said after the game. “Those are things you can build upon … It’s in there. We just got to be more consistent. Do it for one half, now we got to do it for a complete game.”

While the Oklahoma Sooners offensive line struggled to pass protect on the final few drives, they did a great job in the ground game, providing better lanes for Barnes, Arnold, and Tatum to run through.

Over the final four games, the Oklahoma Sooners will need their run game to continue to be efficient for them.

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Oklahoma Sooners offense falling short of expectations

Sooners offense a far cry from what’s expected at Oklahoma.

The Oklahoma Sooners 2024 season hit rock bottom in their 34-3 loss to the Texas Longhorns. With two weeks to prepare for the No. 1 team in the nation, the offense failed to capitalize on a strong first quarter performance from the defense.

Whether it’s inexperience or a poor game plan or both, Oklahoma’s struggles on the offensive side will define the 2024 season. Though there have been a number of injuries that brought the Sooners to this point, the coaching staff hasn’t had an answer to overcome them.

After the loss, the Sooners look like they’ll have a hard time getting to 6-6 this season. Even if they did, that would be the second time in three seasons under Brent Venables where the Sooners finished the regular season .500.

That’s not the expectation for this program. After their most recent loss to Texas, Oklahoma was featured in Dan Wolken’s “Misery Index” for USA TODAY Sports.

The (Lincoln) Riley divorce hasn’t necessarily been great for the Sooners, either. They’re in Year 3 under Brent Venables, and they’ve basically got the opposite problem they had under their former coach. Venables has undeniably improved the defense, which was expected given his Hall of Fame-level credentials as a coordinator, but the offense is a complete mess. The Sooners try to play fast and use a lot of misdirection, but to what end when they have no passing game to speak of and Texas could just stack the box with impunity in a 34-3 romp over Oklahoma? Michael Hawkins, the Sooners’ freshman quarterback, isn’t ready for this level of competition yet and showed it against Texas as possession after possession ended in disaster. And that’s a tough pill for fans to swallow when Dillon Gabriel walked out the door after last season and transferred to Oregon, where he is quarterbacking a likely College Football Playoff team. – Wolken, USA TODAY Sports

While Riley was featured for the first part of Wolken’s piece, Oklahoma fans have their own fish to fry.

The offense is averaging just 24.3 points per game this season, which ranks 96th in the nation and 15th out of 16 teams in the SEC. In conference play play, the Sooners are averaging just 15 points per game. Take out the Kip Lewis interception return for a touchdown against Auburn, the Sooners are averaging Oklahoma is averaging just 12.67 points per game.

In the first half of three SEC games, the Sooners have scored a total of 13 points. There was the long touchdown run by Michael Hawkins Jr. to open the Auburn game and then just a field goal apiece against Tennessee and Texas.

To say Oklahoma’s offense has been bad might be an understatement. Nothing’s working and Seth Littrell and Joe Jon Finley haven’t come up with an answer to right the ship. Again, the offense is inexperienced but the co-offensive coordinators have been coaching long enough to find answers to overcome it.

We’ll see if they can fair better against a South Carolina defense that has been really good at times in 2024.

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Report: Tre Bradford, LSU Transfer is no longer with OU football team

In a bizarre turn of events, the Oklahoma Sooners find themselves down yet another running back.

Categorize this under the  “straight out of left field” category. In the most bizarre set of circumstances it looks like Oklahoma has lost yet another scholarship running back for the 2021 season.

Tre Bradford, who transferred from LSU to OU in June is no longer with the team. According to the OU Daily, the student newspaper at Oklahoma, Bradford had missed the last two practices. The paper reached out to the athletic department for details but received no response.

This news comes absolutely at the worst time as just this week the Sooners coaching staff received news that Marcus Major was ruled academically ineligible for this coming season. In the aforementioned article, Tre Bradford was directly mentioned as someone that would benefit most from the loss of Major. In less than 96 hours Bradford himself is gone.

The Sooners are left with two scholarship running backs in Kennedy Brooks, who returned after opting out due to concerns about COVID and Tennessee transfer Eric Gray. Jaden Knowles, a walk-on running back could see some meaningful carries going forward.

Could Bradford be heading back to LSU in a bizarre happening of events? Our friends at LSUWire speculated it as a very loose possibility. Is there a chance he still ends up playing at Oklahoma this year? That remains to be seen. Whatever the case may be, it’s certain that this is a very unfortunate turn of events for an OU program snakebitten by some tough personnel issues in their RB room.

With less than two weeks until the season, Lincoln Riley and DeMarco Murray are left trying to pick up the pieces as they get ready to try and make a run for a national title.

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