The collapse the Oklahoma Sooners suffered on Saturday in Fort Worth happened on both sides of the ball. While the defense took its lumps, allowing 55 points, the offense didn’t help much. In fact, an opening drive fumble from Marvin Mims put the Sooners behind the eight-ball to start the game.
The passing game couldn’t get anything going as Dillon Gabriel threw high and out of the reach of his receivers far too often in the first half. The Sooners couldn’t string enough positive plays to make a dent in TCU’s lead. By the time they got their second touchdown midway through the second quarter, the Horned Frogs were already up, 34-17.
Oklahoma had 10 drives in the first half. It punted on five, lost a fumble and turned the ball over on downs once. Oklahoma had just three scoring drives and put up 17 points in the first half. That effort came against a team that allowed 34 points to Tanner Mordecai and the SMU Mustangs a week ago.
Once the Sooners fell behind, it looked as if they began to press.
“We got to shake back, and we got to play one play at a time,” offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby said after the game. “That was the stress and the strain of probably as much of anything that was frustrating there in the first half. Was that it was literally all we got to do is just go play one play at a time. Go get a score, we’ll get a stop. We’ll get in a situation where you got a chance to cut it to 10 or cut it to seven and offensively. We didn’t do it. And that’s on us.”
The offense had opportunities to make plays, but either the run play was blown up by TCU defenders or Dillon Gabriel sailed a pass that led to a punt. The entire offense struggled to make anything happen consistently.
“I think it was a lot of things,” Lebby said when asked if he could pinpoint the problem. “And you know, I don’t think I can put my finger on just one thing. Because we come out and again, you know, we did a couple of good things, but man, was it spotty. No rhythm, no flow. Not converting when we needed to not take an advantage of having really good field position. So it was a lot of us. And I say us because it’s again, it’s gonna start and end with me. We got to play better.”
And he believes they will.
“We’re gonna be fine,” Lebby said. “You know, I think it’s a hard pill to swallow today, but our guys are, they’re a close group. They’re a tough group, and we’re gonna bounce back and be ready to go.”
With just a few days to get ready for the Red River Showdown, the Oklahoma Sooners don’t have a ton of time to correct some of the things that went wrong against TCU. In a raucous environment on Saturday, Dillon Gabriel and the Sooners will have to be more in sync than they were on Saturday in Fort Worth to come away with the win.
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