Two touchdowns, six field goal attempts.
A whopping 467 yards of total offense, yet only 23 points on the scoreboard.
Why, oh, why, is the red zone Oklahoma’s kryptonite?
And yet …
And yet, for five consecutive games since rolling UTEP opening night, these were complaints not even available to be made.
Treat it how you like.
Call it an indictment for all the Sooners failed to do prior to Saturday’s 23-15 victory at Mississippi State.
Call it proof OU can go win every remaining game on its schedule — and truth be told, but for Ole Miss at home Nov. 14, it’s not an impossible slate — maybe sneak into the SEC title game and should that happen, well, even with three losses, the Sooners are back in the playoff conversation.
Whatever you call it, even if begrudging — the island I find myself upon — you must call it progress, no matter how much you wish not to.
You even kind of have to like how it happened.
In our previous entry we asked head coach Brent Venables and staff only to be competent, only to not screw it up, only to stay out of the way, and for a whole first half, that’s mostly just what they did.
True, until John Mateer and Isaiah Sategna combined to make a great play together — Mateer by keeping the play alive long enough to find Sategna on the left sideline and Sategna by instinctively knowing where to plant his left foot upon coming down with the ball, sending him sprinting into the middle of the field and the end zone — OU’s conservative-as-all-get-out offensive strategy made for horrifically boring football.
But for that play, arriving 39 seconds before intermission, the Sooners gained all of 125 first-half yards and scored just three first-half points.
Yet, somehow, asking next to nothing from their quarterback until he improvised seven points with Sategna’s help, it set Mateer up for great success afterward, even if it yielded only 13 more points.
Or, sure, 22 more points had kicker Tate Sandell not come down with vertigo in the middle of the second half and miss three field-goal attempts.
But he missed them and missing them counts, as do six drives that could have been touchdowns that weren’t, stalling at the Bulldogs’ 24-, 27-, 12-, 27-, 23- and 20-yard lines.
But who’s complaining?
On the ground, of course, OU still can’t pick a No. 1, handing the ball to Tori Blaylock 13 times and Lloyd Avant 12, but maybe — MAYBE — they’ve finally settled on a two-back rotation, given Jonathan Hatton carried only twice and Xavier Robinson, on the injured list the week before the game, was not to be found.
Good for Blaylock, who netted 71 yards, 47 of it on a single snap, and Avant, who carried for 55, the Sooners gained 184 on the ground to go with 283 in the air — 164 of it caught by Sategna — marking a blowout in all ways but the final score.
Much of that, though impossible to quantify just so, had to do with left tackle Michael Fasusi’s triumphant return from injury after 23 quarters away, anchoring an offensive line that wasn’t tremendous, but that appeared settled and you could feel it watching it.
Mateer, completing 22 of 29 passes without an interception or anything close to one, seemed to feel it. He also shed his familiar anxiety after playing two whole quarters without messing up, which surely had to do with being asked for so little out of the gate. And having not messed up, he was set up for his end-of-the-half improvisation and a second half that came with 306 yards from scrimmage.
Just how little was Mateer asked to do early?
So little, he threw one pass the Sooners’ first 11 snaps.
On his way into halftime, his squad having caused and recovered a fumble, forced by Owen Heinecke and recovered by Taylor Wein, and then gone on a 16-play, 96-yard march ending in Sategna’s score, Venables told SEC Network sideline reporter Tori Petry, “That’s as good as it gets when it comes to complementary football.”
Watching, my head dipped.
Can he please retire the term, because who wants a 16-play, 96-yard drive?
Why not do it in 10 plays, creating lesser risk?
Among his postgame comments, Venables said, “That probably should have been a four- or five-score win.”
That’s more like it.
He should know “complementary football” does not yield runaways like that, so shelve the term, the thought, the goal and maybe next time 467 yards will add up not to 23 points, but 42, what OU would have scored had each of its entries inside the Mississippi State 25 been a touchdown.
Goodness, they can still be so much better than this.
Goodness, they must still be so much better than this.
But the defense was terrific, the offense gained yards and didn’t turn it over, the offensive line wasn’t a shambles, their quarterback exited with confidence, they didn’t try any silly trick plays and, though wildly inefficient, they were not without a clue.
Competence, yes.
Also, a win.
Baby steps.
Baby steps are good.