By Clay Horning, Sports Editor
So Bob Stoops walked back to the lectern on another Tuesday to face the media and darn if he didn’t repeat himself.
Signs of improvement abound.
Defensively, the Sooners played well.
Offensively, when they weren’t turning the ball over, they played well.
The secondary was beat once.
Had a great practice Monday.
Things look good with Iowa State coming to town.
Nothing wrong with any of that and pretty much all of it’s on the mark. The problem is, two losses into any season, it’s cold comfort for the Sooners and their nation. Because once, beating OU was like trying to beat a shell game.
Focus on this, the Sooners beat you with that. It didn’t matter. No choice was the right choice. But now, given a big enough atmosphere and similar or better talent on the other side of the ball, it’s OU picking the shell. Emphasize this, terrific, but something else suffers.
Internally, the way Stoops sees it, and maybe the way it is, OU is really close, the problems are correctable, a great football team might be around the corner. Externally, the way everybody else sees it, the Longhorns whipped the Sooners 28-10, and that’s not very close at all.
The lesson?
Who knows about this week, next week and the week after that, but man, could Jason White play, could Derrick Strait deliver, could Antonio Perkins come through, could Mark Bradley, Mark Clayton and Brandon Jones create a highlight, could Tommie Harris, Rocky Calmus and Teddy Lehman wreak havoc.
Because the line between excellence and adequate is so unbelievably fine, and those guys were hardly ever just all right.
Think about it.
There’s more than one reason every Sooner loss is judged so harshly and one of them is Stoops’ “No excuses” mantra and another is the coach’s unflinching assertion that every season might as well be a championship season.
And then there’s the fact that, after going 7-5 that first season, the Sooners won 60 games the next five seasons, never losing to Texas, winning one national championship and playing for two others. And programs are judged against the level of their past success.
So if you’re damning D.J. Wolfe for getting beat on the corner, pulling your hair out wondering why the defensive line struggles to bring the pressure, want to vomit when Paul Thompson fails to hit a receiver in stride, or thinking to yourself, when’s Rufus Alexander going to be a difference maker again, well, think of it all as a tribute to those who came before.
Because this Sooner team isn’t a bad football team. It can still go 10-2 or 9-3 which is a fine season. And still, it couldn’t be further away from the standards others who came before them set.
Remember Clayton after the catch, White on third down, Bradley, who seemed to only deliver game-changing moments. Heck, remember Jeff Ferguson one day at Air Force, calmly pulling the ball down before dropping it on his foot just to let a Falcon, who until that moment appeared sure to block a goal line punt, go sprinting by.
Those guys just didn’t make mistakes. It was almost like they couldn’t make mistakes.
They made it look easy.
Unflappable.
Nobody’s turned expectations on their ear like Thompson, but how many times has he completed a pass for 13, 15, or 18 yards that White would have turned into a touchdown because all the receiver needed was a step, White was so precise?
Calmus was always there. Always. And don’t even bring up Roy Williams.
But that was then.
This is now.
The Sooners are close.
They just need to be consistent, disciplined, focused. They have to take care of the ball. They can’t take penalties.
It’s always something.
Except when it wasn’t.
Boy, those guys could play.
Clay Horning366-3526cfhorning@normantranscript.com
