Bolton: defense, group must improve
NORMAN — Oklahoma senior linebacker Curtis Bolton wasn’t about to try to put much shine on the Sooners’ defensive performance Saturday night in a 48-47 Bedlam win.
“I’m not satisfied,” Bolton said. “I’m not happy with how we
played. We’ve gotta play better. We can’t give up 50 points and expect to be a playoff defense — a playoff team. We’ve gotta be better on defense.”
The Sooners surrendered 640 yards — 501 through the air to Oklahoma State.
There’s plenty of blame to go around. Oklahoma stopped the Cowboys on just six of 16 third downs and on one of those — Oklahoma State’s final touchdown — the Sooners then allowed a fourth-down conversion. The defensive line didn’t get much disruption, with only 1 ½ tackles for loss attributable to that group. The secondary couldn’t keep OSU quarterback Taylor Cornelius from picking them apart much of the night, or doing much of anything to stop Tylan Wallace or Tyron Johnson from catching the ball.
But despite the big tackle numbers that the two interior linebackers — Bolton and Kenneth Murray — are putting up, the Sooners also need better production in the middle.
The two have combined for 214 tackles but, like the rest of the defense, haven't come up with a ton of game-changing plays.
“We’ve gotta give better underneath coverage,” Bolton said, diagnosing the Sooners’ problems at linebacker. “As good as we play in the run game, we’ve gotta get more pressure on the quarterback. We can’t let him sit back there for six, seven seconds and expect our DBs to sit in coverage for that long."
“Our linebackers need to (be in) sync more.”
The biggest evidence of the Sooners’ struggles at that position might be the low fumble numbers. Saturday night’s fourthquarter fumble recovery was the Oklahoma defense’s first fumble recovery of the season.
Interim defensive coordinator Ruffin McNeill tried to inject a bit of a different vibe there this week, moving Caleb Kelly from serving as Bolton’s backup on the weakside to starting at one of the outside spots.
Kelly was excited for the move, making his first start of the season after starting 13 last year. With the Sooners searching for some combination of players to use to make things start to click again defensively, McNeill said it was for the good of the team to shift Kelly back.
Bolton took a lot of the blame for the struggles on himself. But like the rest of his defensive teammates, he said he had faith that things could shift.
“I’ve got faith in us,” Bolton said. “We have a lot of talent on this defense, and we don’t ever play up to our talent. It’s really frustrating.”
The time to show that is narrowing, though.
This week, the Sooners face Big 12 bottomdweller Kansas, with one of the worst offenses in the league. But the week after, West Virginia and Will Grier loom.