OU football: Sooners' defense looking to bring back physicality against TCU
Sep. 28—The Oklahoma defensive line had performed like one of the nation's best through three weeks.
The Sooners recorded 13 sacks and 32 tackles for loss, ranking in the top five nationally in both categories. The pass rush and physicality projected to be a huge problem for Adrian Martinez and the Kansas State offense last Saturday.
Instead, the Wildcats won the line of scrimmage battle, leaving running room for the KSU ball carriers and giving Martinez plenty of time to throw. The Sooners recorded zero sacks and only four tackles for loss, as the Wildcats finished with 509 yards of total offense. Oklahoma didn't surrender more than 316 total yards to an opponent through the first three weeks.
The defense recorded four quarterback hurries, but the Sooners were largely unable to put pressure in the Wildcats' backfield.
"It's something we focus on every week," OU defensive coordinator Ted Roof said, referring to the team's physicality. "We fell short last week, but our approach each and every week is to be a physical football team, tackle well, limit yards after contact. We didn't do that. We didn't do a very good job at the end of the night.
"Everything that went wrong is my fault. I've got to help everybody get it fixed. That's what we're going to do moving forward."
Kansas State was able to hold off the Sooners by focusing on defensive ends Reggie Grimes and Ethan Downs. Grimes (4 sacks, 6 tackles for loss) and Downs (2.5 sacks, 4.5 tackles for loss) had been the leaders defensively to start the season, but the two combined for just one TFL and zero sacks as the Wildcats made an effort to keep them away from the play.
"You go from a guy not getting a whole lot of reps to a guy that's been a starter, obviously you're gonna have guys gameplan for you and I don't think Ethan and I responded well to that Saturday night," Grimes said. "But obviously again, you learn from it. So as far as that's concerned, we now know what we need to do in order to get better."
Another issue that hurt the Sooners was their performance on third down. Kansas State converted 8-of-17 (47 percent) attempts and picked up a crucial third-and-16 late in the fourth quarter that helped seal the win.
Third-down defense has been a struggle so far this season. The Sooners rank 77th in third-down defense, allowing opposing offenses to convert 39 percent of attempts.
It won't get much easier Saturday against a TCU team that's converted 50 percent of its attempts (17-of-34) on the season.
"We work on it a lot every week," Roof said. "It may not have looked like it last week, but we work on it a lot every single week with an emphasis on it because that's the down that gets you off the field. When you have opportunities to get off the field and don't, it came back to bite us the other night. You look at scrambles for instance and things of that nature, missed tackles, it comes back to bite you and it did. We've got to get those fixed as well."
TCU presents a big opportunity for the Sooners' defense to get back on track. For Downs, it's about OU getting back to creating havoc with physicality.
"We have to pass rush better," Downs said. "We have to be more disciplined with our pass rush, with our depth.
"[TCU is] super talented. They've got a great quarterback. They're big and they're fast. They play similar to K-State and it's just another challenge. We know what to expect. We know that [OU coach Brent] Venables has an analogy, we're climbing a mountain. And the longer you climb this mountain, the thinner the air's gonna get. So as we're climbing higher, every game this season the air's getting thinner. It's gonna get harder. But we're gonna embrace that and keep trucking because we know what's at the top of the mountain."
Jesse Crittenden is the sports editor of The Transcript and covers OU athletics. Reach him at jesse@normantranscript.com or at 405-366-3580
