In a game that BYU fans feel slipped through their hands and Oklahoma fans feel like they escaped an upset bid despite losing their star quarterback, there are some rather big picture stories coming out of the BYU and Oklahoma matchup that took place at LaVell Edwards Stadium on Saturday.
After BYU fans recover from the heartbreak, they’ll be able to look back and see that they went toe-to-toe with the giant of the Big 12 conference. Kalani Sitake has that program headed in the right direction. After three challenging weeks, the Cougars bounced back when the odds would have said that this would have been the worst loss of that stretch. Admittedly, even I was caught off guard by how close the game was. I knew that Kalani has a history of leading his team to bounceback victories and playing well when there is no expectation. But, I predicted a 49-20 loss. (I will give myself some credit for saying that the game would be worth watching, and boy was it a good one).
For the Oklahoma Sooners who went to the game and discovered the magic of the CougarTail, and for those watching from Norman, the Sooners should feel confident that Brent Venables is their guy for the long-term. Sooner fans had to watch last year in pain as they struggled through an uncharacteristically hard 6-7 season while their former coach and king, Lincoln Riley, led USC to a recapturing of the national spotlight and was a few quarters away from a CFP birth. This year, the tables have seemingly turned. Oklahoma regained its swagger while USC slumped their way from a 6-0 start to a 7-5 finish.
Here are some of the bigger picture stories for BYU and Oklahoma from that slippery and cold November game in Provo.
For Oklahoma
- If you want to avoid injury to your star quarterback, don’t schedule BYU
- Brent Venables has this team going in the right direction
For BYU
- This team is improving
- The difference between BYU and the top of the league is limiting mistakes and taking advantage of opponent mistakes.
- The line of scrimmage is still king
Big Picture Stories for Oklahoma
Is Oklahoma ready for the SEC? That is going to be a good offseason story to follow, and the answer won’t come until 12 months from now. But, for now, Sooner fans can feel better now than they did 4 months ago when there were still questions about whether this team was another 6-6 team or a 11-1 team.
Don’t schedule BYU
This is admittedly a joke. But, this is the second game in as many games that these two teams have played when BYU knocked out the Oklahoma quarterback. In 2009, BYU injured the reigning Heisman Trophy winner’s shoulder. In my opinion, Sam Bradford was never the same after that because he continued to struggle with shoulder injuries throughout his NFL career.
When the second half rolled around on Saturday and Jackson Arnold came out, Sooner fans must have started to think, “Here we go again!” So, the simple solution is that Oklahoma should never scheduled be with you again. In reality, I doubt that the athletic directors are even thinking about that. It would be great to see these teams play a 1 for 1 down the road. Cougar fans would love to go to Norman.
Brent Venables has this team moving in the right direction
Is 9 better than 6? That answer may depend on what sport you are playing. But, in football, 9 wins is always better than 6 wins. And, Oklahoma still has 2, maybe 3, more games to play and could get as high as 12 wins. Wouldn’t that be a welcome turnaround for one of the most storied programs in history?
Sooner fans know their history better than any others. According to history, which I’m told is generally a reliable source of information, the Sooners haven’t won less than 10 games (minus the Covid season) since 2014. And, they’ve only had 5 seasons since 1999 when they’ve won less than 10 games. Oh, and in the past 25 seasons, they have had one season in which they were below .500. That was in 2022. Taking over is never easy. When Bob Stoops did it, he was 7-5 in his first season. John Blake was 3-8 and Gary Gibbs was 7-4.
Venables has Oklahoma on the likely path to a double digit win season. The recruiting classes continue to range in the top 10 to 15. And they beat their rival in Texas this year. Furthermore, they still have an outside shot to play for the Big 12 championship. He put the skid on a bad trend last year. You start to worry if 2023 had been a repeat of 2022. If 2024 turns out to be a successful campaign, then you know you have a really good one in Venables.
Big Picture Stories for BYU
The biggest story coming out of this game that has bigger picture implications is that BYU is improving. The self-inflicted wounds, which have come to define this season in most of the public’s eyes, will be the main talking point from the game against Oklahoma. However, when you begin to look deeper, you see that there are positive takeaways from the game.
BYU is improving
There has been a narrative about BYU not giving enough effort during their recent 4 game skid. During this painful stretch that started with one blue blood (Texas) and has continued through another blue blood (Oklahoma), I have seen comments and discussion about the lack of effort, and that the close game against Oklahoma was finally a sign that the team put in a solid effort. I disagree with this narrative.
While it is true that the TCU, Texas, West Virginia, and Iowa State games were surprising in how much of a blowout the result was, I never expected BYU to win any of those games. At the beginning of the season, I thought BYU had a good chance against Iowa State, but I never liked their chances on the road in Fort Worth, Austin, or Morgantown. Then, the season began and I saw that these teams were better than expected, with the exception of TCU. So, did BYU not give good efforts during those games?
Well, let me put it this way. Have you ever put a good amount of effort into a project or task at work only to find out that your work was for nought because a leader shifted project directions on you? Or, have you ever put 20, 30, or 50 hours into trying to make one sale only to lose the sale? And, you find out that you were actually way off?
Or, perhaps you are a student and you put hours and hours into studying for tests for a class and you come out with a C instead of an A?
If a team loses by 30, the answer is not always “lack of effort”. True, there may be individuals who had moments or plays where they could have made more effort, but, don’t we all have days at work or in the classroom where we know we could have given better effort but we fail to do so? (If you have never experienced that, then you are either a cyborg or an wizard, both of which do not truly exist…)
Judging effort on the field is challenging. The blatant displays of a lack of effort are easy to spot. But, those plays, by and large, have been missing from the BYU side during this skid where they lost 4 in a row (and 5 of 6 and 6 of 8). Saying there is not enough effort is an oversimplification and does not fully or even minimally begin to address the issues.
Consider what BYU is experiencing this season:
- 10 consistent P5 games in a row (never experienced before by BYU)
- The biggest challenge to its depth this program has seen by virtue of playing 10 P5 games
- Adjustments to life in a new conference, playing teams that the program has not played in years
- A defensive staff overhaul with all but 1 coach on the defensive and special teams side being new
- Launch of a new defensive scheme
- A bye week in the middle of the season rather than in November
- Note, that the bye week usually came when the schedule was softening extremely. Often came before or after an FCS opponent.
- An overhaul of the offensive line through transfer portal acquisitions
- A new set of quarterbacks, both obtained through the transfer portal
- Other key skill positions new to the program via HS recruiting or the transfer portal
- Note, that these players in these positions were asked to step in rather abruptly due to injuries to known commodities.
To me, one of the biggest challenges for the program (coaches, players, support staff) has been adapting to so many new variables.
A real-life situation some people face this week is the question of “I’ve never cooked Thanksgiving Dinner before but now I am facing this daunting task. Do I cook the whole bird AND all the extra fixings (none of which I have ever made before)? Or, do we go to Golden Corral?”
For those who have cooked Thanksgiving Dinner over and over, you have that down. You know the routine. You might even be able to cook the bird while watching the Lions as they inevitably lose and you try out a fancy new dish your wife saw on Instagram.
But, for those who are facing the task of cooking it all for the first time, they have to determine if they go big or if they simplify. Regardless of their decision, they face a steep uphill learning curve.
This has been the plight of the BYU Cougars football team this year. In my view, the Cougars have given good effort each week, but they are learning so many new roles, jobs, tasks, etc…It’s their first time cooking the bird you could say. And, as a result, there have been weeks where their preparation simply missed the mark. They thought the guy was turning left when he actually turned right.
The fact that the Oklahoma game was close was a sign to me that they were starting to put more and more of these pieces together. The announcers on the game cited interviews with A-Rod in which he said that they simplified the offensive line schemes, and 200+ yards rushing was the result. That is an indication that the coaching staff and players were adapting and learning. Yes, it took long, and yes the process has been painful. But I promise you that the process is exceedingly more painful for the players and the coaches than for us fans.
Remember, fans put in about 0-5 hours per week in reading and listening to materials that might give them a preview of the game. Then, they watch the game. The players and coaches on the other hand are putting in 4x – 15x that amount of time. Some of these coaches are not sleeping and are not seeing much of their families. That is not lack of effort.
BYU is improving. That doesn’t mean they’ll beat Oklahoma State. But, they are improving. Here is one sign of the improvement: the rushing attack over the course of the season has improved. It certainly hasn’t been consistent, but the general trend in the back half of the season is that the team got better and better results than compared to the front half of the season. And, that is against better and better opponents.
Consider that BYU rushed for barely over 40 yards against Southern Utah (who was completely loading the box) while rushing for ~200 yards against Iowa State and Oklahoma.
Limiting and capitalizing on mistakes separates the top from the rest of the league
Ok, I will talk briefly about the turnovers between BYU and Oklahoma. Yes, it was a big story. But I didn’t want to lead with that because there are deeper stories there. And, I will not even focus much on the specific turnovers in this game. The story that emerges here is that the better teams in the league learn to limit mistakes while punishing the other team for theirs.
Oklahoma clearly did this against BYU. 0 turnovers for the Sooners. 3 turnovers for BYU. And the Sooner Schooner capitalized on each of those turnovers.
The bigger story is that Oklahoma did not hurt itself, and generally, the top of the league does not hurt itself. Consider the turnover margin throughout the conference:
The turnover margin difficulty for BYU can actually turn into a bright spot for fans going into the off-season. The damage has obviously been done this season, but these mistakes are correctable for next year. If BYU cleans up these mistakes, then they are suddenly competitive in all of their games.
Jake Retzlaff is still green having played only three games. He plays loose, so the coaches may need to work with him to be careful and thoughtful about when and how he plays loose. The benefit of playing with someone like Jake Ratzlaff is that you’ll get creativity that you can’t get out of nine out of 10 quarterbacks. But the big obstacle in working a quarterback in like Jake Retzlaff is that you’re also gonna end up with the risk of turnovers. To some degree, he is a high reward, high risk quarterback.
The line of scrimmage is still king.
BYU and Oklahoma experienced this first hand on Saturday. If you look at the rushing stats for this game, then you can find two stories. The first stat is that BYU rushed for 200+ years this game, which was their best rushing game of the season. And, it came against one of the better teams in the conference. Simultaneously, Oklahoma rushed for 121 yards in the second half, which accounted for nearly 70% of their yards (if you remove lost yards from sacks or TFLs). Oklahoma sealed this game on the ground, and when BYU needed to get a stop, they couldn’t win the line of scrimmage battle.
It’s clear that BYU needs to improve their line of scrimmage play on both sides of the ball in order to be successful in the Big 12. When BYU goes to restock their team this next year, and in the coming years, they need to balance the transfer portal acquisition with high school recruiting acquisition. BYU is a place where they’ve proven that they can recruit on the offensive line. They can recruit and they can develop, so clearly the high school pipeline needs to continue to deliver. And then you supplement with transfer portal.
However, BYU needs more talent now. So, in the next two to three years, BYU needs to hit the defensive line heavier in the transfer portal while continuing to plan the seeds at the high school level. Those seeds will then be reaped in a few years. If you think about the high school juniors and seniors on the defensive line, and perhaps even some of the sophomores, BYU is going to be behind the game in most of these situations because BYU is now just coming into power five and hasn’t had a great reputation for being a great place for defense of lineman to go.
Give Kalani Sitake and Jay Hill a few years to build up a pipeline for defense of lineman. That’s why they need to start by re-fortifying through the transfer portal over the next couple years. If BYU can start to win the line of scrimmage battle over the next few years, then they have a really good chance of being one of the better teams in the league.
Data come from utilizing @cfbFastR’s connection to ESPN.
