That’s a hot topic of conversation these days, especially in light of Bill Connelly recently identifying the run defense and small size of the Oklahoma defensive line as a primary concern for 2020. From Connelly: If … the run defense finds some oomph. After crumbling to 84th in defensive SP+ in 2018, OU’s defense rebounded to … [Read more…]
In my last post, I was breaking down the challenges confronting Big 12 defenses for the upcoming 2020 season. The return of several quarterbacks combined with the growth or addition of big time weapons outside at receiver makes for a pretty frightening scenario for defenses trying to cover it all up. Within that post, I … [Read more…]
The two best defenses in the Big 12 in 2019 shared a common trait. For years Big 12 defenses have been tortured by the conflicts and challenges that spread offenses can create for their linebackers that have to align in space across from a slot. Iowa State and Baylor both played 3-down, broken stack defenses … [Read more…]
Every now and again I see Oklahoma write-ups for 2020 that have caveats for their offense like, “hey, we haven’t see Spencer Rattler yet…” or, “there’s not many scholarship wide receivers left on OU’s campus…” Smart prognostication for the 2020 Sooners should largely ignore all that. Last year we saw Lincoln Riley evolve the OU … [Read more…]
It’s easy to forget now that Baylor vs Oklahoma has really been the defining series of the 2010s in the Big 12. The 2011 Heisman bid by RG3 was propelled by a home win against the Sooners. Then the 2013 and 2014 Big 12 titles for Baylor came alongside a pair of shellackings administered to … [Read more…]
Over at Crimson and Cream machine, SB Nation’s Oklahoma blog, Allen Kenney did a nice piece on Iowa State tight end Charlie Kolar. Kenney does a great job of detailing all the ways that Iowa State uses Kolar, who’s ironically a Norman, OK native that got away, before circling back to the specific matchup problems … [Read more…]
Oklahoma was abjectly terrible on defense in 2017. I recently had a fun debate with Allen Kenney and Rufus Alexander over what went wrong and why but there wasn’t any debate over whether the defense played at an acceptable level. The 2015 Oklahoma defense was one of the better units they’ve had of late, which … [Read more…]
Over at Inside Texas I was describing the great riches of experience and talent in the Longhorn secondary returning next season ($) and included some research I did on B12 secondaries over the last five years. What I found was that the defenses that have ranked in the top 40 per S&P+ in the Big … [Read more…]