A RARE OCCURRENCE

In a break from the norm, defense rears its head to make a difference in Sooners’ victory

ARLINGTON — Sam Ehlinger never saw it coming, but who in the world did? In the moment, he was just like the rest of us.

He forgot to check his blind spot because he forgot, understandably, what football used to be like, way back before quarterbacks made touchdown drives look as easy as flicking a joystick. He forgot, just for a second, there was a time defenses occasionally had a chance.

So when Ehlinger took a snap for Texas on Saturday, backed two steps into his own end zone and never so much as glanced over to see Oklahoma cornerback Tre Brown sprinting unchecked, right at him, the AT&T Stadium crowd gasped.

Was this really happening? Was the most offense-happy conference in the most offense-happy era of college football history about to decide its championship with, of all things, a safety?

“It was my fault for not seeing him,” Ehlinger said of the Brown sack that proved to be the deciding play in No. 5 OU’s 39-27 victory over No. 14 UT in the Big 12 title game.

But if Ehlinger allowed himself to become just a bit disoriented by the scene Saturday, can you blame the guy? Later, while admiring the Sooners’ fourth consecutive Big 12 championship trophy, OU coach Lincoln Riley said it felt “surreal,” and the same description could be applied to a lot of things Saturday.

On a day in which 83,114 brains struggled to come to terms with the concept of a Longhorns-Sooners game with no carnival rides or State Fair corny dogs in sight, a couple of truths that summarize an entire season became apparent.

The best player in college football is about to become a full-time center fielder. And the worst defense in the Big 12 was just good enough to win the whole darn league.

Remember that adage about defense winning championships? That’s now as dated as the phrase, “Be kind, rewind.”

Throughout an entire autumn in which the Sooners somehow went 12-1, the half of their team charged with rushing the passer and covering receivers and tackling ball-carriers was nothing short of atrocious.

In the regular season, OU ranked dead last in the Big 12 in stop rate, which measures how often a defense holds opponents without scoring. It ranked dead last in points allowed, and dead last in yardage yielded.

And Saturday afternoon, when Riley was asked if his team is good enough to play in the College Football Playoff, he looked out at the assembled media and, with all earnestness, nodded.

“Yes, yes, I do,” Riley said. “I feel like we can score points on people, and I feel like we can stop people.”

And the thing is, he might be right. The game has changed so much in recent years — not only in the Big 12, but in the Southeastern Conference, and in the Big Ten, and even in the NFL — that to “stop people,” a defense really needs to do it only a couple of key times per game.

That is what the Sooners did Saturday, when they were clinging to a 30-27 lead early in the fourth quarter.

At the time, UT’s defense had just employed one of the most brilliant strategies in 2018 Big 12 defense — let an opposing player break so many tackles over the course of a long run that he eventually gets tired and fumbles the ball away. So the Longhorns took possession deep in their own territory with less than nine minutes left. A touchdown would have given them the lead.

But veteran defensive coordinator Ruffin McNeill, who replaced the embattled Mike Stoops after OU’s October loss to the Longhorns and proceeded to watch his unit play just as badly as Stoops’ did, began the drive by calling for a corner blitz.

Amazingly, it worked. As Ehlinger took the snap and kept his eyes focused on the middle of the field, Brown let receiver Collin Johnson run free and charged right at Ehlinger, pummeling him in the end zone for the safety.

Not even Brown knew quite how to process what had happened.

“Everything just went like, I don’t know, I just saw lights,” Brown said.

That one play was more than enough for sensational OU quarterback Kyler Murray, who has the chance to pick up a Heisman Trophy next week on his way to beginning his professional baseball career next spring.

Murray, who has grown accustomed to the idea the Sooners need to score almost every time they touch the ball, was asked after Saturday’s game about his defense coming up clutch in a game in which it gave up 437 yards. He agreed that, yes, the defense was sensational.

“That’s how football is supposed to be played,” Murray said.

These days, he might just be right.

It’s no wonder Ehlinger never saw that hit coming.