Following last weekend’s win against TCU,the Oklahoma football team’s second conference win of the year, head coach Lincoln Riley talked about the TCU game this weekend in his press conference on Monday.
During Riley’s press conference, he touched on three units to take the field and the improvements they made this past weekend.
“Great all-around team win. All three sides were major contributors in this one which was important. I am really proud of all three sides,” Riley said following the win against TCU.
Following his props, Riley went on to speak about the defense, special teams and offense individually.
Defense
The Sooner defense for years has been the team’s weakest spot. With stellar offenses taking over the Oklahoma football team the past few years, it has been harder to notice how weak the Sooner defense really was.
However, with the Sooner offense also struggling a good amount this year, the defense was really exposed how much it was lacking. This ended up not being such a negative thing. With the defense being exposed of all of its flaws without the offense to carrier it, defensive coordinator Alex Grinch worked on the areas where the defense struggled the most.
“Our defense was very solid all day. Did a good job of limiting the run game, the explosive plays with all the speed TCU has on the field, they do a lot of different things formationally,” Riley said. “To challenge it we did a good job of getting lined up. I thought the defensive line again made a lot of outstanding plays. So certainly proud of our defense they did a great job.”
Special teams
As for the Sooners special teams, they were the one out of the three units who seemed to be struggling the least.
With Marvin Mims taking on CeeDee Lamb‘s kickoff return position with ease, the Sooners have been able to gain plenty of yardage to set themselves up with good field position.
“Special teams once again with a couple of big plays that really spurred us on again so another solid performance by the special teams unit,” Riley said.
Offense
After the dreadful first few weeks of watching the usually very strong Sooner offense struggle, it seems freshman quarterback Spencer Rattler is finally getting comfortable on the field as not only a football player but a leader as well.
One of the biggest factors that seem to be missing from the Sooner offense is leadership. However, this past weekend Rattler looks much more cool, calm and collected leading his offense. Looking stronger in both the run and pass game, the Sooner offense is getting back into their old ways (for the better of course).
“Offensively guys made some explosive plays,” Riley said. “I thought we did some really good things upfront. We had you know kind of mixed bag opportunities with the skill guys, there are several that we made a few we didn’t make and still took a few too many negative yardages plays. So we’ve gotta continue to grow but we’re getting better as a team.”
Overall, the Oklahoma football program is improving with time and practice as it prepares to take on Texas Tech this Halloween weekend in Lubbock.
