Clay Horning
DALLAS — You know what you’re getting with Bob Stoops.
Great coach.
Great recruiter.
Stand up guy.
Terrific helmsman.
As difficult as he can be to interview, he poses nothing but certainty. The good kind. The kind that inspires confidence. Comfortable in his own skin, he knows where he’s going.
Maybe he never thought he’d win a first national championship only two years into his head coaching career. Maybe he thought it would take three or four. So natural in his role, he’s made five conference championships look far more par-for-the-course than any kind of fantastic achievement, which it is.
So how could he lose his touch?
How could he lose it so dramatically and emphatically?
Though Stoops’ Big-Game-Bobness has been in question for some time, ever since OU made a habit of losing its last game of the season, his exposure until recently has been limited. Even if his teams have occasionally appeared less than ready, it wasn’t a matter of the coach taking an unwise course in the moment.
Until now.
It’s true, Oklahoma’s 45-35 loss to No. 5 Texas had several culprits …
Ryan Reynolds knocked out for the season with a torn ACL; Colt McCoy making more plays than Vince Young ever did against OU; the officials hitting Travis Lewis with at least one personal foul for trying to hold McCoy up and taking an interception away from Lamont Robinson; OU’s special teams ceasing to be; a Sooner running game that’s run off a cliff.
… yet for the second straight time, Stoops’ role in a loss couldn’t have been more direct.
It came down to two plays.
Facing fourth-and-6 at its own 48, Stoops had OU fake a punt and darn if Mike Knall didn’t look like an old high school running back, but he came up a yard short and OU handed the ball over leading 28-27 3 minutes short of the fourth quarter.
Then, trailing 38-35, less than 7 minutes from the end and down to their last down at their own 46, the Sooners needed 2 yards to earn another four.
Knall entered the game. He punted.
Bad call.
Once, everything Stoops touched turned to gold.
Now, going back to an attempted onside kick against West Virginia at last season’s Fiesta Bowl, a decision every bit as ill-conceived in real time as in retrospect, in those moments a coach can roll the dice or play it safe, take the path more worn or the one less traveled, Stoops’ moment of truth has not only proven false, but wrong, too.
Trying to explain the fake punt, Stoops said he felt a chance to arrest momentum by maintaining possession and “you’re already without Ryan Reynolds.”
All true, but the Sooners still led and were in position to stick the Longhorns deep. Had they, Texas might have punted more than once the first 29 minutes of the second half. Instead, six plays later, Hunter Lawrence kicked a field goal and Texas led 30-28.
It only got worse.
If Stoops is excused for allowing Knall to relive his tailback days at Scottsdale’s Chaparral High, he can’t be 9 minutes later when all reason in the universe dictated OU’s chances of getting 2 yards on its next play and 52 more before running out of downs had to be better than keeping Texas from driving the field from any distance.
But Stoops’ choice was to put everything on an overworked and shorthanded defense he’d already given a vote of no-confidence to in the third quarter.
Did he think about going for it?
“Probably should have,” he said.
Had he, he would have given what was working for OU — Sam Bradford and the offense — a chance to write the story. Instead, this is the story.
It’s about a coach and a team that might still return to the Big 12 title game, maybe even a BCS title game, because stranger things have happened, even if a Mack Brown-coached underdog Texas team beating OU is plenty strange enough.
But it didn’t have to be this way.
Reynolds didn’t have to get hurt and McCoy didn’t have to make every play and the officials didn’t have to get so much wrong.
So much of it was out of Stoops’ hands.
But not all.
Clay Horning
366-3526
cfhorning@normantranscript.com
