Game Recap: Tulsa

Nearly six days late, Winning Tradition brings you the weekly game recap. OU opened its season against Tulsa on Saturday night, finally ending the long wait for the start of college football.

Here’s the stat line:

• Final Score: TU – 14  OU – 47
• Passing Yards: TU – 271  OU – 417
• Rushing Yards: TU – 129  OU – 246
• Total Yards: TU – 400  OU – 663

Winning Tradition’s Player of the Game: Dominique Whaley

The Run Down

Any kind of critiquing would be splitting hairs after such an impressive win, but here goes…

There’s nothing new that can be said about the running game. It’s been covered in every way. No one on the outside looking in could’ve seen Dominique Whaley’s performance coming. However, it goes without saying how much praise the offensive line deserves for their efforts.

Tulsa didn’t impress anyone last year with their run defense, but you have to be pleased with the way the line blocked and the running backs played. You can’t argue with 246 yards on the ground.

The passing game seemed to be sufficient, but very vanilla. It remains an open question whether or not the game-planning was strategically generic in hopes of not showing next week's opponent, Florida State, too much offensively. That said, Landry Jones had an extremely efficient day, and if not for Whaley getting so many touchdowns, he would have likely gotten more than 1 touchdown pass.

Going into the season, one of the big question marks was the defensive line. It seemed like they played a solid game with few mistakes. It helps to be bigger and faster than your opponent, which likely won’t be the case against Florida State.

The sole black eye for OU’s performance Saturday was the secondary, more specifically the safety play of Javon Harris. There were three coverage breakdowns in the game, costing the Sooners' defense 14 points. Two of the three mistakes were exclusively Harris’ fault.

OU’s defense gave up 400 yards in total offense, albeit to an offense that ranked No. 5 nationally last year in yards-per-game. You would like to see a better performance, but again, 47-14 doesn’t garner a lot of legitimate complaints.

In closing, aside from the surprising performance by Dominique Whaley, we didn’t learn much on Saturday about OU’s question marks. Unfortunately we won’t learn anything new between now and next week's top 5 matchup with Florida State. Let’s hope we get the answers we were looking for.

Scott