before the game, people were already worried that Harsin would leave after this year. jeez. enjoy the moment, enjoy the excitement of this rebuilding year, this young time. my thoughts? we're trending up, not down, even though today's game suggests otherwise. have a little faith my burnt orange brethren and sistren.
My thoughts: We would totally kick *** in Conference USA but I don't think we're a top-tier Big Twelve team (yet). Too many ******* drive-killing trick plays. I think the offense may actually have fared better had we played OU straight up. Run at them, play-action pass, etc. All the slow-developing **** in the backfield took too long to get going against what was clearly a very aggressive OU defense. Very disappointed in the defense and in the lack of adjustments there. Diaz got raped in this game. Okie State will hang 40+ on us. I am hopeful that we can reach 7-5 this year and get some kind of decent bowl bid. We looked physically outclassed. Worst athleticism gap I have seen for us in a long time--it looked like OU was playing an above-average FCS team at times. That is worrisome because it can take a few recruiting classes and offseasons of conditioning to overcome.
Too many folks expected too much from this group after the previous 4 weeks of success. We jumped from playing nobodies to a team that can be considered the #1 in the country with experienced players that have been working together 3-4 years. Lots of our guys are Sophmore, RS-Frosh and True Frosh with a very few upper classmen scattered in. I got flak for saying before the season thisis a 7-5 or 8-4 team tops. I still believe that. Its not for lack of talent and determination, but lack of experience to learn the little things that separate average from good players. This is a chance to see a complete overhaul of a program from new players to new coaches build and implementing a new system. It's not going to happen overnight and today we saw freshman mistakes, poor reads, coverages and hesitations that a veteran tem exploited with the precision of a surgeon. This will take time, and they will learn from these mistakes today. These young kids will be around playing together for 3-4 years and will get back to the top. Be patient, we'll get there.
Our inexperience was totally exposed. This reason for our inexperience has been well documented here. 1. We got lazy in recruiting. Those guys lost there jobs. 2. Some of the guys we recruited were busts for one reason or another. 3. Our really good players left for the pros. ie Earl Thomas would be a senior this year. We got totally owned today by a very good team. We will learn and get better and we still have a chance for a very good season. I'm not giving up on them.
This is 1 "L". That is all. We learn and develop and take our best shot next Saturday. We may or may not win. okie Lite is handing some big stats today. But, we are better than last year and we will get our wi s down the stretch and reach a quality bowl game. That, for this year, is success. See y'all next Saturday at DKR.
Big vegashorn, I to was trying to page DJ Monroe in the first quarter. He obviously didn't receive my page!
My thoughts: We have very very inexperienced players at the most fundamental skill positions and we have new coordinators on both sides of the ball. We have 56 underclassmen (Fr. and Soph) on this team. We will get better with each game. The future is bright. Turnovers and inexperience against maybe the best team in the country. ou is loaded this year. forget this game on get on to the next. Our guys will be ok. And win lots of games and beat ou next year. Those are my thoughts.
Throughout the week, and as the game drew closer, I felt OU was 17-20 points superior. The talent, schemes, coaching, and the overall missions of the two teams ("just get better" v. "win a nat'l championship") were good indicators about how the RRS would turn out. Quick thoughts. 1. Landry Jones is unflappable, and he's making the critics admit what they don't want. He can't be rattled anymore. He's not the RS-FR who stepped on the field at the '09 RRS, or the QB who threw 5 picks at Nebraska. He has similar, if not, the same cool and quiet demeanor as Sam Bradford. According to Mack, Texas gave Landry different looks on defense, blitzed him, hit him, and tried to confuse him. None of it worked. Landry passed well in the face of pressure, commanded the offense with poise and confidence, made correct pre-snap protection checks and audibles, and made strong and accurate throws on a rope. He didn't even have an effective run game to help him out. 2. OU and UT have similar players on the offensive line. Yet, we coach ours to play with aggression and good technique. We're not stockpiled with 5-star talent or depth, we were missing a starting C, our RT had knee surgery in the spring, and our backup RT was a defensive end a few months ago. Yet for the past year and a half, we have blocked good enough for the offense to get its yards. 3. Relying on freshmen isn't an excuse to get your *** kicked. OU relied on freshmen last season, and won the conference and a BCS Bowl. We got them learned, coached them up in a competent system, and prepared them to play. Aaron Colvin made his first career start in last year's RRS game, and he was excellent. He was even better today, and certainly better than his upperclassmen counterparts - Gideon, Vacarro, and Scott. In the RRS, you did not rely on as many freshmen as you lead on. You had an adequate number of upperclassmen who should've rallied the team, but failed to do their duty to control the younger players' emotions (Whittaker, Randall, Gideon, Cody Johnson, Allen, Robinson, Vacarro, Snow, Scott, Goodwin, and Okafor -- a lot of these guys played during a season where UT reached the MNC game). Stop with the excuses. It's ********. Freshmen UT relied on, on offense: Ash Brown Shipley On defense: Diggs OU relied on almost THREE TIMES as many freshmen in last season's RRS. This was a failure on your sidelines to get players ready to meet a challenge. How many rebuilding years do you need?
While OU has a definite experience edge on us, the talent edge definitely isn't what the game reflectd. OU played their best game of the year. (Before today, their signature win was over a Fla. St. team that lost to Wake Forest today!) Today, everything just clicked for them and it clearly didn't for us. Hopefully, we learn a lot from today. If we manage to get past OSU, we should do well the remaining games. Aggy certainly looked beatable. OSU, Baylor, and K State will be tough games, but I expect us to win the rest.
My thoughts are that OU is a better team, and brought their A game. I don't think our young guns were prepared for the speed and physicality of OU, and were shocked early and never recovered. At around halftime the body language of our players (with some notable exceptions) on the field were of a team ready to get the game over with. I don't think they quit, but I do think they were humbled and discouraged and that showed in how hard/well they played when the game started getting out of hand. I think we could have had game plans crafted by Buddy Ryan and Mike Martz and still have gotten rolled yesterday. I'll make a really, really bad analogy: Its like taking a 16 year old from Bracketville that has his learning permit and make him drive a cab in NYC. He knows what to do, but he's not prepared for the conditions in which he has to do it. If anything should be criticized, it should be that 13 years in, Mack hasn't figured out how to consistently get his players mentally prepared for what they will experience in this game. Hey, we got rolled, and our young guns are not ready to compete nationally. I'm not surprised by that. The real test will be this week. Will the team grow from this experience and be competitive? Or will they fold up and take a beating like they did yesterday? I don't think its going to be the latter.
