Sooners used Ohio State as fuel
NORMAN — The same flow of conversation played out in different huddles scattered around the Oklahoma football team’s Red Room after the Sooners’ 56-7 seasonopening blowout.
Once the usual questions were asked and answered — yes, it was good to hit someone else, and yes, there’s a wide array of offensive weapons — the postgame interviews turned toward the inevitable: Ohio State.
When No. 7 OU arrives at the Horseshoe for Saturday’s game (6:30 p.m., ABC), it will have been 358 days since the Buckeyes trounced Oklahoma at Owen Field, but the 21-point loss that effectively kept Oklahoma from a College Football Playoff berth still stings like it happened a week ago.
“It’s definitely probably one that’s been circled on each person’s and each team’s schedule,” offensive tackle Orlando Brown said. “I think Ohio State
knows what they have to prove and we know what we have to prove.”
With revenge at the forefront of the team’s mind, the preparation for this rematch began long
before game week dawned Sunday morning.
It changed the way Oklahoma (1-0) finished 2016 and the way it readied for the 2017 season.
“I don’t think we were urgent at that point in time last year,” Brown said. “I think the talent was there, we just didn’t have the execution or mentality.”
The loss caused the Sooners to change their mindset, and the way they prepared for the season.
After giving up 443 yards, the critiques poured in, and the voices that once projected Oklahoma as a national championship contender went silent.
Oklahoma’s tackling
was non-existent. The defense was porous. Baker Mayfield forced too many throws. Those words festered in the minds of the Sooners, fueling them through the 51 weeks since the demoralizing loss.
“What we take out of that game is the mentality,” linebacker Ogbonnia Okoronkwo said. “People say that we can’t be physical, Big 12 football isn’t physical. We’re gonna play our brand of football.”
So the Sooners began the quest to prove that stereotype wrong by hitting each other harder and more often in this year’s preseason.
“In the team session now you’ll see a lot of guys really get hit,” Okoronkwo said before the UTEP win. “It’s pretty physical.
There’s no pulling up. There’s a lot of smack talk. We’re really going at each other like we would another team.”
In addition to the tough practices, the Sooners allocated “two or three days” to the Buckeyes in fall camp, defensive coordinator Mike Stoops said.
“Going through what we did a year ago, it was, obviously, a poorly played game on our part and poorly coached in a lot of different ways,” Stoops said.
“We’re gonna have to drastically improve against a physical, fast, explosive football team. Every facet of your team is gonna get put on display. We’re gonna have to play a helluva lot better than we played a year ago.”
OU also devoted at least one night to Ohio State last week. There wasn’t a team-wide watch party, but many players watched No. 2 Ohio State (1-0) overcome a slow start in Bloomington to thump Indiana, 49-21.
Even with the return of quarterback J.T. Barrett and a strong defense, the Buckeyes hardly looked like the same team that demolished the Sooners a year ago — at least in the first half.
But tight end Mark Andrews isn’t taking them lightly.
“They’re a physical team, they’re a wellcoached team,” Andrews said. “We haven’t studied them on film much yet, but it’s gonna be an incredibly hard task that we’re going to have to work hard on this week.”