The Oklahoma Sooners offense had an up-and-down performance vs. the [autotag]SMU Mustangs[/autotag] two weeks ago. This week was much different and better as an overall unit.
The Sooners scored on 9 of 12 possessions. One of those they didn’t score on was when they were kneeling out the clock. The Sooners are No. 1 in the nation in third-down offense, a major emphasis this offseason.
Jeff Lebby told reporters after the game, he was really impressed with the performance on Saturday.
“I liked the fact that we threw it around pretty well, we took care of the QB,” Lebby said. “I thought our protection was really dang good all day. I don’t like the one interception. I don’t like not scoring a touchdown right before half but I thought our guys had a great attack mindset to be up here and do what we needed to do.”
The only negative from the Sooners offense was another performance from the run game that that fell below their standards. McKade Mettauer said last week the goal is to average five yards per carry. They have yet to hit that mark and fell below it again averaging 4.3 vs. the [autotag]Tulsa Golden Hurricane[/autotag]. That played a role in them not scoring before half.
That’s something Lebby acknowledged they need to get corrected.
“We want to have great balance,” Lebby said. “I know we didn’t have great balance today, obviously. We want to be incredibly balanced. With the way it happened today, again we threw it around a little bit more than probably normal but felt we wanted to be aggressive, be able to go make plays down the field.”
It’s never a bad thing to be a team that can win in multiple ways but one thing is for sure, the Sooners will need to get the running game going if they want to achieve their goals long term.
That challenge gets increasingly harder starting this week as they play the Cincinnati Bearcats who bring one of the best defensive lines in the conference to the game.
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