Monday, Stoops essentially laid the blame for yet another catastrophe at the hands of his players. After senior captain Ty Darlington said the players came out flat, Stoops said that was on them.
“The bottom line, you talk about it, you show ’em why, you show ’em — we (coaches) did our part,” Stoops said. “We showed ’em a hundred times. We went through the last, two years ago, the Texas game (a 36-20 loss in which OU was a 14-point favorite), where they’re ranked, where we’re ranked, what’s happening. You show it to ’em, you show it to ’em, you show ’em. We even showed 10 minutes of the game, of them beating us. So you can only — they’ve got to choose to be ready to play. I can’t figure out why that would be, that a 20-year-old, a 21-year-old, when you’re only getting to play so many times and you have a rivalry game, they’re not.”
Stoops, however, stubbornly insisted that any in-game adjustments were not needed against Texas, despite the Longhorns having repeated success with what looked like a limited and frequently one-dimensional game plan.
For example, when Texas produced consistent pressure on quarterback Baker Mayfield with both a four-man rush and a blitz of five and sometimes six defenders, Stoops said no additional protection schemes with fullbacks or tight ends would be needed, and none would be coming.
“That changes everything you’re trying to do in the passing game and the spacing of everything. It’s not easy to do in the way we operate,” he said, adding that coordinator Lincoln Riley’s offense would remain set with five blockers up front and four receivers. “Yeah, that’s what we’re doing now. We’re not going to go in at halftime and all of a sudden have a whole new offense. We don’t operate that way.”
Stoops also dug his heels in on a new defensive scheme wherein two defensive linemen are supplemented by four linebackers and five defensive backs. OU ran the setup on 50 of Texas’ 70 offensive plays, and the Longhorns averaged 6.7 yards per carry against it. Against OU’s 3- and 4-man defensive line, Texas averaged just 3.3 yards per carry. (Even discounting an 81-yard run, the ‘Horns gained 4.5 yards per carry against the 2-man front).
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