Oklahoma Sooners HC Brent Venables calls out an issue with the offense that showed up even in the win over Mississippi State
The Oklahoma Sooners need to fix their wide receiver depth, and they need to do it soon.
The Oklahoma Sooners finally put together a good offensive game, and it paid off. Oklahoma beat the Mississippi State Bulldogs 23-15 while playing without Kamario Taylor for nearly the entire game. That score should have been much bigger. The Sooners missed a few field goals and left other scoring chances on the field, but a win is a win.
The win also has people talking about the College Football Playoff again. An SEC team with three losses could still get in, and Oklahoma sits at three losses. The Sooners need a lot to go their way. Other teams have to lose, and Oklahoma still has several tough games it has to win before this becomes something to seriously consider. But it’s possible, especially now that the offense looks pretty decent. It doesn’t look great. However, this is easily the best offensive showing the Sooners have had this year.
One stat from the Oklahoma Sooners’ win isn’t as bad as it looks
Sooners wide receiver not named Satenga vs. Mississippi State: 2 catches for 9 yards.
That’s not great. It’s not great at all. The Sooners improved their offense without leaning on the rest of the receiver room, which is a positive. Here’s what Isaiah Satenga and Rocky Beers did in the win.
8 catches for 164 yards; 3 carries for 24 yards. One was a 54-yard reception, plus a few other big plays. Rocky Beers, the starting tight end, had 4 catches for 66 yards. He also had a 32-yard reception, and a drop that should have been a touchdown.
You’re going to have games where a guy like Satenga just goes berserk, and he did. That’s what you want. You want to get the ball to your best player as much as possible because he’s a playmaker. Oklahoma’s two best playmakers outside the running back room got the ball the most, and this offense should look for that every single game. But that won’t always work.
Brent Venables agrees.
“Need to develop the depth there.”
The Sooners still need more from the rest of the receivers
Would you like to see more variety? Yes. You want the ball spread out across the offense, and the rest of the group barely showed up on the stat sheet. By my count, Jer’Michael Carter had one 6-yard catch, while Jacob Jordan and Manny Choice each had one 3-yard catch. That’s three catches for 12 yards from that trio, which is still not good enough. Only three or four receivers caught a ball in this game, and you would like more than that.
But given what this offense has been through, and what it has looked like for most of the season, you have to be happy Oklahoma found a way to get the best out of the unit. And this probably isn’t even the best version of it. Given the weapons on this roster, I’m sure the offense can play much better than it did against the Bulldogs.
It also helps that Mississippi State’s defense wasn’t very good. It really wasn’t. Still, the Sooners played the way their offense should play. They fed their top options and let them make plays.
Either way, this is a game Sooners fans can hang their hats on if the season goes the way they want. If Oklahoma finishes in the College Football Playoff after a disastrous start, people will look back on this win as the moment the offense started to get it together. There were flashes in the Kentucky game, but this is when the Sooners put it together for four full quarters, and that’s what matters.
