Brent Venables couldn’t help but shout out the starter who made a huge sacrifice you don’t often see made at his position
Brent Venables and the Sooners needed RB Xavier Robinson.
The Oklahoma Sooners didn’t play their best on offense against the Missouri Tigers on Saturday. However, they played a bit better than they’ve in the last few games. This time, they didn’t have any defensive touchdowns like they did in those other games against the Tennessee Volunteers and Alabama Crimson Tide. They actually scored on offense.
And this time, they didn’t score on offense through the ground game like they’ve been doing since their game against South Carolina. Against Missouri, quarterback John Mateer had two passing touchdowns. He threw an 87-yard touchdown to Isaiah Sategna and an RPO TD pass to Javonnie Gibson on the goal line. The run game wasn’t as big a factor as it has been; at least it wasn’t from the running back position. Starting RB Xavier Robinson didn’t have his best game, but it wasn’t his fault – he made a huge sacrifice.
“Brag on him (Robinson),” head coach Brent Venables told reporters on Saturday immediately following the 17-6 win over Missouri. “He showed up on Monday. He said, ‘Put me in a brace and let me play.’ That’s what guys from Carl Albert do.”
Robinson played okay, but Mateer was the run game
Robinson has had a handful of games now in his young career as the Oklahoma Sooners running back, where he’s finished with over 100 rushing yards. On Saturday, he did not finish with over 100, and he didn’t do it vs. Bama either. Against the Ole Miss Rebels, Robinson had 109 rushing yards, and against Tennessee, he had 115.
Bama held him to 34 yards on 10 carries, as he ended up getting hurt and banged up, but still managed 3.4 yards per carry. Coming into this game, he was still extremely banged up. But, he was willing to sacrifice that because he’s a huge competitor, and because the Sooners are having a tough go injury-wise in their RB room.
So on Saturday, quarterback John Mateer took matters into his own hands. Now, Mateer still made some pretty confusing plays throwing the ball, but he played pretty good overall. the most importamt thing is that he did not turn it over, and he had some huge runs that helped Oklahoma in crucial situations.
Mateer did still have some weird runs where he doesn’t really look like he did in his first few games running the ball, and maybe some of that is the mental game with the hand injury. He tries to hard to run laterally and run around defenders, when he’s just not built to run that way. He needs to get back to putting his head down and running straight, because he would gain much more yards doing that than running side to side.
But, regardless, Mateer was pretty good. He finished with 60 rushing yards on 18 carries, and is just 50-ish rushing yards behind Tory Blaylock for the team leader in rush yards. Mateer was what the Sooners needed him to be, and because of that, they got the win.
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