Funny how expectations work. I thought before the game they were better than we were, but as it we went along I was thinking, they aren’t hardly better than we are, and by the 3rd Q, I’m thinking we may just take them out after all.
I think Ehlinger would have taken more chances and maybe scored more if we hadn’t been within seven points practically the whole game. (Remember how risky he played when we were down 20-0 or whatever, and came back to tie, and hornfans criticized him for being reckless?)
OU played more risky; we took out the passing and RB running in first half, making Hurts have to do it all himself. Yes, he gashed is (he’s really good), but with your QB running down the middle of the field a lot, he’s likely to be hit hard and get hurt or fumble. Indeed, that’s just what did happen. Not just luck for us. Also, put him under pressure with him being frustrated because we were shutting down most of the passing and RB runs, and his over-aggression, and you may get a pass thrown up for grabs. Indeed, that happened, so again, making them have longer drives and increasing the number of plays gives us the chance for an INT—that’s a form of defensive coaching, not luck.
Letting Duvernay run back 7 kicks or whatever, apparently was a calculated risk that at least once he would hit a HR (or at least a double). After all, he’s maybe our best player. He never broke any, and even fumbles on the goal line.
Thanks to that, and poor punt returns, our field position was pretty bad. I think Ehlinger was told, we are going to have to hit a couple of deep passes to win, so stand in and give the deep routes a chance; just don’t fumble or do anything stupid, because we are still in the game. So, he takes a lot of sacks.
The trick play is what killed us. Even then, Lamb did not get past the safeties on the fake, but he made them look stupid in the open field (he’s very very good).
Missed a field goal; that was unexpected, and kind of demoralized the team at that point, I think, because then you are looking at onsides kicks at best.
After we lost Roach, their basic RB plays worked better.
Anyway, I thought we put forth an approach that gave us a good chance to win, but we saw that CeeDee Lamb is way, way more elite than Devin Duvernay.
Ok, done rambling....
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