The Sooners won, perhaps not by the hair of their chinny chin chin, but it was hardly easy, Saturday night’s 24-17 victory over Alabama-Birmingham.

For too much of the game, defense was a rumor and a team can hardly expect to lose the turnover battle and win with any great deal of comfort. And still, one of the great assumptions heading into this football season may already be thrown by the wayside.

That’s the one that says all Paul Thompson has to do to have a fine and dandy season is not screw things up. The same one that says he can be a caretaker quarterback, handing off to Adrian Peterson and telling the nation’s best running back “good luck” as he goes dashing by.

The assumption might work in extremely different circumstances, like, say, if this were Columbia, Mo., and not Norman, where an 8-4 season might be looked upon as some sort of huge step in the right direction; or if this was 2001, when the Sooners boasted their best defense of a generation. Of course, even then, Nate Hybl was better than a caretaker and that was still the Sooners at the Cotton Bowl rather than Miami, Tempe, New Orleans or Pasadena.

No, the quarterback must make plays, must lead, be a difference maker, at least some of the time. Last season is a fantastic case in point. Early, Thompson and Rhett Bomar cost the Sooners. Late, Bomar was one of the biggest reasons OU played so well.

And here’s the thing about Thompson.

He can make plays.

Maybe the biggest ovation of the first half came following second-and-2 at the Sooner 44, after Thompson, all but tackled by UAB’s Joe Henderson 12 yards behind the line of scrimmage, flicked the ball sidearm to Joe Jon Finley for a first down and gain of 10.

And the only time the Sooners were really rolling came in the first quarter, when Thompson was completng 8 of 10 passes for 98 yards. Heck, after a quarter, Paul Thompson was closer to the Heisman Trophy than Adrian Peterson.

What he can’t do is what he did in the latter part of the second quarter when, after runs of 41 yards over three carries from Peterson, Thompson missed an open Malcolm Kelly in the end zone. Or what he did on the next play, throwing too high and hard to Juaquin Iglesias, allowing Kevin Sanders to play the carom and make the first of two Blazer interceptions.

For his part, Thompson didn’t seem too concerned.

“I think, for the first game I was definitely where I wanted to be, as far as me being back here with the offense, as far as me being the quarterback again,” he said after completing 14 of 24 passes for 227 yards, two for touchdowns and two others to the wrong team. “I thought I did fairly well. There are definitely things I can improve upon.”

And for his part, Bob Stoops, far from feeling despondent, the way he appeared to look after the second game of last season when Bomar did not even attempt a second-half pass against Tulsa, was comparitively giddy over Thompson, who attempted just five passes in the second half, 14 fewer than the first.

“I am very pleased,” Stoops said. “I anticipated he would play well.”

But Thompson still has to be better.

It’s not enough to not get in the way.

He has to hit Kelly, so that first interception never happens. The next time down the field, he has to throw the ball where only Iglesias can catch it, not where UAB’s Chris Felder can take it away.

Though nobody in the stadium likely understood, Thompson was a huge part of the game’s biggest play. For even while it was Peterson who turned Thompson’s little third quarter dump off into a 69-yard score, it was Thompson who patiently arrived at his last possible read to find Peterson in the flat with room to maneuver. Lesser quarterbacks might have acquired happy feet and given up on the play, tucking and running at best.

But that only proves the point.

If this is going to be a great team, even a very good team, Thompson will have to do some of the steering himself.

Saturday night he was all right. There will be times he must be better.

Clay Horning366-3526cfhorning@normantranscript.com