Beat Alabama, and Murray can pass even Mayfield in OU lore
Kyler Murray has done the impossible. He’s matched Baker Mayfield. If not in devotion by Oklahoma fans, in deed. Heisman Trophy. College Football Playoff. An offense that terrorizes at a higher level than even the greatest of the wishbone days. But now Murray can achieve the preposterous. Murray can trump Mayfield. The Sooners play Alabama on Saturday night in Hard Rock Stadium, the site of OU’s most recent playoff victory, 18 Orange Bowls ago. Mayfield twice quarterbacked the Sooners to the College Football Playoff, but OU lost
both, despite halftime leads against Clemson (Orange Bowl) and Georgia (Rose Bowl). Thus the only knock against Mayfield’s storybook career: OU’s drought continues.
Murray, a one-year starter who is headed for either baseball or football professionalism, had neither the personality nor the time to match Mayfield as the foremost folk hero in OU history. But beat Alabama and either Notre Dame or Clemson nine days hence in the Big Bowl, and Murray creates his own exclusive club.
Five quarterbacks have led OU to seven national titles. Seven Sooners have won the Heisman. Murray would be the first to do both.
“Winning the national championship is the biggest thing to me,” Murray said. “If we win the national championship, that’s at the top for sure.”
Especially since such a crest would go through Alabama and, almost surely, an Orange Bowl shootout. The Sooners aren’t winning this game 24-17. Murray does not have Rocky Calmus and Roy Williams, as Heupel did in 2000; or Tony Casillas and Brian Bosworth, as Jamelle Holieway did in 1985; or the Selmon brothers, as Steve Davis did in 1974-75; or Jerry Tubbs and Clendon Thomas, as Jimmy Harris did in 1955-56.
National-championship OU teams won Orange Bowls by allowing 2 points (Florida State 2000), 10 points (Penn State 1985), 6 points (Michigan 1975) and 6 points (1955 Maryland). That script is gone with the wind. For these Sooners to beat Alabama, Murray and Co. will have to score in the 40s and maybe the 50s. The OU defense is that bad.
But that makes Murray’s eventual prize that much more glorious.
“Kyler loves football,” said OU assistant coach Cale Gundy. “Kyler likes winning games. His dad raised him to be a quarterback and to be a champion, and they take great pride in that. That’s the ultimate goal, in my opinion, for Kyler.”
The pressure on Murray has been greater than any OU quarterback since Jack Mildren, who was commissioned with directing an offensive overhaul in midseason 1970. Murray has trotted onto the field, Saturday after Saturday, needing to birdie the hole, just to keep the Sooners abreast of inferior foes.
Just down the stretch, OU won games 51-46 at Texas Tech, 48-47 over Oklahoma State, 55-40 over Kansas and 59-56 at West Virginia. Murray has answered every call. Even in OU’s only defeat, 48-45 vs. Texas, Murray directed touchdown drives on the final three possessions, just to keep the Sooners breathing.
Win a national championship, or heck, just beat Alabama in the Orange Bowl, and this would be the greatest individual single-season in Sooner history.
“That puts you on a pretty short list,” Lincoln Riley said. “There’s been lot of great players that came through OU that won either one or multiple national championships. There’s also been a lot that didn’t win one. So they’re that hard to do. But to do what he’s done in one year, to top it off with that ... it’s already pretty cemented. The guy’s going to have a statue. I guess it would maybe add a little bit more.”
It would do the preposterous. Kyler Murray would best Baker Mayfied.