For the Sooners it was the same song, different verse. The Oklahoma defense was abysmal for the second time in as many games.\u00a0 On the other hand, Iowa State was resilient and showed a lot of heart in mounting a comeback.\u00a0 The Sooners defense could take a lesson in heart and effort from the Cyclones. \u00a0With this in mind, we present Oklahoma vs Iowa State in review.<\/p>\n
It appears the Oklahoma defense isn\u2019t much better than it was the two or three previous years. \u00a0It\u2019s time to lay the responsibility for the horrendous defense where it belongs.\u00a0 The players need to take responsibility for poor performance.<\/p>\n
For seven weeks it appeared the defense had turned the corner and was catching up to the offense.\u00a0 That no longer appears to be the case.\u00a0 The defense has reverted to poor tackling, or simply not making much of an effort at all.\u00a0 The defense looks confused most of the time.\u00a0 The secondary can not make plays on the ball and definitely can not force turn overs.\u00a0 Oklahoma\u2019s defense is dead last in the FBS in forcing turn overs.\u00a0 The Alex Grinch <\/strong>defense which is based on speed and creating turn overs hasn\u2019t forced a turn over in five consecutive games.<\/p>\n Iowa State had big lumbering tight ends wide open all over the field Saturday night.<\/p>\n Midway through the season, Oklahoma fans were concerned defensive coordinator Grinch would soon be leaving for a head coaching job.\u00a0 There\u2019s definitely not much conversation about that now.<\/p>\n The Oklahoma offense wasn\u2019t a lot better than the defense most of the night.\u00a0 Arguably, Jalen Hurts<\/a> had his poorest performance of the season Saturday evening.\u00a0 Although Hurts only had one interception, albeit at the most crucial point of the game he was not sharp.\u00a0 Iowa State dropped two pick six opportunities in the first half that would have changed the tone of the game in the first half dramatically.\u00a0 Oklahoma can thank CeeDee Lamb<\/a> for carrying the offense in this game.<\/p>\n Oklahoma built a 42-21 lead early in the fourth quarter and just put everything on cruise control.\u00a0 That conservative attitude almost cost Oklahoma back to back losses for the first time since 1999, Bob Stoops <\/strong>first year as the Sooners head coach.<\/p>\n The playoff chances look rather bleak at best for Oklahoma this year. Maybe that is not entirely a bad thing.\u00a0 The way the defense is performing it would be another embarrassing performance in another playoff loss, despite one of the best offenses in the country again.\u00a0 At this point Oklahoma can not compete with playoff contenders such as LSU, Ohio State, Alabama, Georgia, Clemson, or even Florida.<\/p>\n There just wasn\u2019t much positive that came out of this game for the Sooners.\u00a0 With that being said, Oklahoma still controls its own destiny as far as winning a fifth straight Big XII championship.\u00a0 Small consolation after sky high hopes following a dominant performance in a win over Texas just a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n Oklahoma should still win a very mediocre Big XII conference championship.\u00a0 The Sooners should have an opportunity to participate in a quality bowl game.\u00a0 Will they care about that bowl, remains to be seen?<\/p>\n The bottom line is this, Oklahoma needs to recruit better players and develop that talent on the defensive side.\u00a0 Oklahoma will continue to waste NFL offensive talent until they develop a defense.\u00a0 With the current level of talent on defense Oklahoma can not compete with Big 10, and SEC powers for a national championship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For the Sooners it was the same song, different verse. The Oklahoma defense was abysmal for the second time in as many games.\u00a0 On the other hand, Iowa State was resilient and showed a lot of heart in mounting a comeback.\u00a0 The Sooners defense could take a lesson in heart and effort from the Cyclones. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3198,"featured_media":25789,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[4471,5052,5334,597,2193,184,140,211,613,903,37],"class_list":["post-25768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-big12","tag-alex-grinch","tag-big-xii-championship","tag-big-xii-conference","tag-bob-stoops","tag-ceedee-lamb","tag-cfb","tag-fbs","tag-iowa-state-cyclones","tag-jalen-hurts","tag-national-championship","tag-oklahoma-sooners"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3198"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25768"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78985,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25768\/revisions\/78985"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Oklahoma Offense<\/h3>\n
The Future<\/h3>\n
The Final Word<\/h3>\n