Coming off its second bye week of the year, Oklahoma football has taken the week to continue to build off of its first conference win against Texas two weeks ago. The one thing that seems to still leave some Oklahoma football fans confused is who we will be seeing controlling the Sooner offense this upcoming weekend in Fort Worth.
On Saturday, the Oklahoma football will be heading to Fort Worth to take on TCU, the one other team that was able to take down the Texas so far this season. While the Sooners are coming off of a win, some are still worried as the team heads down south. This is specifically due to the fact that Sooner head coach Lincoln Riley has left everyone wondering who he will be starting at quarterback this weekend.
Going back to two weeks ago we saw Riley pull out starting quarterback Spencer Rattler, playing his back up Tanner Mordecai. In his press conference this week, Riley explained his reasoning behind pulling Rattler from the game.
“We’d had a couple of bad plays in a row and I thought it was the right thing to try and calm Spencer down and tanner had practiced well and has the experience and I have a lot of confidence in him. So it made a lot of sense at the time and I do believe it was the right thing to do,” Riley said.
After walking through his thought process as to why he pulled his QB1 out of the game, Riley talked about Mordecai.
“I thought Tanner did a good job. That’s not always the easiest situation to just go into. Just go straight in there. I thought he stabilized us. The ball slipped out of his hands when he went left or I think he would have had a really big play. He did throw a good ball. We didn’t have a very good route on the run that Rambo ended up catching off of a tip and other than that I thought he played pretty well. He got us driving, and had we not fumbled I think he would have gone two for two there on those drives,” Riley said.
When it came to pulling Spencer out of the game, Riley stated it was not a premeditated decision and also made it clear it was not a one-time thing. Riley said when making decisions like this, he ultimately considers what is best for his team as a whole.
“I never make those decisions as far as what I’m going to do down the line I think just kind of looking at the situation as what it was it made the most sense to put Tanner in and then halftime I had a chance to reevaluate it and it felt like the right thing to do was to get Spencer back in there. I felt like he had handled it well and was ready to go,” Riley said.
As of now, It is clear Riley still sees Rattler as his starting quarterback, and we should be expecting to see him take the first snap in Fort Worth this coming weekend. However, he has also made it abundantly clear that though Rattler is his starting quarterback, he will not hesitate to change out players in any position for the sake of his team.
