Sooners will begin defining themselves today

Commentary

By Clay Horning

What is Oklahoma?

A couple of weeks ago, it was the best team in the nation.

TCU held the Sooners to 25 rushing yards but at the cost of Sam Bradford’s biggest day behind center. OU followed it up with 217 yards on the ground at Baylor. Who cared it took the Sooners 58 carries to get there?

There OU was, seemingly unchallenged, with only special teams still to set straight. But every moment prior to Ryan Broyles’ thank-you-very-much touchdown last week seems a very long time ago.

Now, OU’s a team that’s averaged just 2.3 yards for its last 120 carries, while nobody can remember the last time they saw a running back in the secondary without catching a pass.

Meanwhile, special teams, that facet of the game the Sooners have always seemed to be better at than their foes, has continued to give everybody a good reason OU will eventually lose a particularly close game, while certainly contributing to last week’s not-so-close final score.

While, via the departure of Ryan Reynolds, both sides of the Sooner ball must take inventory after losing the second most indispensable player on the roster. Only Bradford would have clearly been a bigger loss.

If these are the kinds of predicaments that only serve to make a great team stronger, well … we still have no idea how OU will respond today.

There is the temptation to still think of the Sooners in great terms. They certainly appeared to earn their brief run at No. 1. Until last week in Dallas, the only opponent they’d failed to put away by the opening moments of the second half was Cincinnati, but it wasn’t long before an eight-point spread became a 32-point lead.

Now, though any offense with Sam Bradford and OU’s receivers stands a chance to outscore everybody, there’s a sense this is no great team and it will be fortunate to have anybody believing it again.

This week, Bob Stoops called his special teams “terribly inconsistent and aggravating,” and while it’s one thing to be just all right in that part of the game, it’s quite another to be so questionable.

It appears Austin Box will get the majority of snaps at middle linebacker; however, situationally, others might come in to fill the role. That sounds like a team woefully short on depth at a key position. Or at least the kind of quality depth OU would prefer, because who ever heard of middle linebacker by committee?

Addressing the running game, offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson has wondered if there was too much on the offensive line’s plate and talked of reducing the size of the buffet from which he calls the plays. But this is an offensive line that’s been playing together for three seasons. What gives?

Meanwhile, if it’s not last year’s Kansas team walking into Owen Field today, the one that knocked off Virginia Tech at the Orange Bowl following a one-loss regular season, it’s something very close.

Most believe the Jayhawks’ lone loss, at South Florida, was a giveaway, and just how would today’s game be thought of in the face of an undefeated KU? You’d be talking about a pair of top-10 teams, who knows who would outrank the other?

Still, the big question, the reason such an all-of-the-above backdrop has been erected, is to present the question at the top.

What is Oklahoma?

The Sooners have a lot of issues and many strengths.

Do they shore up the former or accentuate the latter? Or find time to do both? Do they make Kansas look like just another opponent or legitimize this year’s Jayhawks by narrow victory or stunning defeat? And how does OU respond without Ryan Reynolds?

That’s what today about.

Last week didn’t define the Sooners.

Even if it let everybody know how fragile a team this can be, it was another example of explosiveness that had buried everybody else and darn near did again.

A clearer definition is on the way.

Clay Horning

366-3526

cfhorning@normantranscript.com