AllSooners (Postgame) Podcast, Ep. 231

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AllSooners publisher John Hoover, deputy editor Ryan Chapman and staff writer Randall Sweet present episode 231 of the AllSooners podcast: the postgame edition after the Oklahoma Sooners lost 38-24 to the Arizona Wildcats in the Alamo Bowl on Thursday, Dec. 28, 2023.
Transcript
00:00 What's up everybody? John Hoover, all Sooners, along with Ryan Chapman.
00:03 I got Randall Sweet. We're on the turf at the Alamo Dome.
00:07 Sooners just went down and down hard. 38-24
00:11 to the Arizona Wildcats. This was not an ideal game for
00:14 either team. What a weird game this was, you guys.
00:18 Ryan, we made the assessment before the game.
00:22 It felt like Arizona wanted this game more. It felt like it meant more to
00:26 Arizona,
00:26 but Oklahoma had the better players. I think that bore out tonight, don't you?
00:30 Yeah, I mean you saw it. Arizona had the hot start as Jackson Arnold, the true
00:35 freshman, worked his way into the game.
00:36 Arnold settled in. Oklahoma dominated the second and third quarter up until
00:42 Jahlil Farooq decided,
00:43 "He has a fumbling problem. We'll get to that." And in the fourth quarter, Oklahoma just
00:46 couldn't get back over the hump because
00:48 they didn't have enough offensive line play that was consistent.
00:51 Not enough happening around Jackson Arnold to overcome the freshman mistakes from
00:55 Jackson Arnold.
00:56 And what you got was Arizona pulling away and now Brent Venables has as many
01:01 losses in his Oklahoma career
01:03 as Lincoln Riley did throughout his entire tenure in Norman.
01:06 Randall, you're down on the field.
01:10 Three of those turnovers, Oklahoma was... Brent Venables said it in the postgame
01:13 press conference, "You can't win a game if you're
01:15 six to one."
01:18 He said if you're down in turnover margins six to one, you cannot win a game.
01:21 That's what Oklahoma was, six to one. Three interceptions by Jackson Arnold.
01:24 Nearly four, but it was ruled a fumble instead. Two fumbles by Jahlil Farooq,
01:29 one fumble by Jackson Arnold. That was 100 million percent the difference in the
01:33 ballgame. How hard was Arizona hitting tonight?
01:36 You're down on the field, that was impressive stuff. Well, it was physical all night.
01:39 I mean, I'm sure you guys could tell from up in the press box, but I mean, down here on the
01:42 field, the players were talking trash to each other after every play.
01:45 I mean, Drake Stoops gets his helmet ripped off, he's getting up, he's talking trash to the
01:48 Arizona players.
01:49 So, I mean, you said it, Arizona was motivated. I think, again,
01:53 that bore out not only in the way they played, and especially in
01:57 the physicality that they had at the line of scrimmage, on the defensive
02:01 end, flying around, even at the second levels, laying the hits on.
02:05 Jackson Arnold took a few pretty big hits, some of the running backs, stuff like that.
02:09 But, yeah, I think that really you could tell that Arizona, the Wildcats,
02:12 they were fired up for the game. They were letting Oklahoma, the players,
02:17 the coaches, the fans, hear it all game. I think at the end of the game, if you didn't see,
02:22 some of the Arizona guys were pointing at the Oklahoma sideline,
02:27 talking some trash there. And I think that you saw them kind of play that way
02:31 all night. They were, not in a bad way, I mean, you know, that bore out well.
02:36 You know, you look at the stats and the numbers are support what we were
02:43 saying. Oklahoma, 562 yards total offense. Arizona had 383. At one point, it was
02:49 527 to 270. But Oklahoma was sloppy with football, kept giving the ball back to
02:56 Arizona. Arizona picked up some yards and some touchdowns, obviously, late to kind
03:00 of even this thing out. The thing started sideways. Oklahoma falls behind 13 to
03:06 nothing. Then they reel off 24 unanswered points and made it look
03:10 effortless. But, again, the collapse. 25 unanswered points for Arizona to finish
03:15 this thing. How do you account for that? How do you account for that many, those
03:18 kind of wild swings in one game? Jahlil Farouk can't hold on to the football. He
03:22 torched two scoring drives. One of them that would have got Oklahoma up 14 to 13
03:28 in the first quarter, or the second quarter, excuse me, going into the end
03:31 zone opposite of us. And then Oklahoma up 24 to 13, whether you believe in it or
03:37 not, ESPN win probability. The Sooners are driving. Jahlil Farouk is about to
03:42 catch a ball and put Oklahoma in the red zone. And the win probability was like 96%.
03:45 Jahlil Farouk, who fumbled against Tulsa, opening kickoff, who fumbled a
03:50 crucial fumble against Kansas and had two awful turnovers tonight, pulls the
03:55 ball down inexplicably, just lets it get punched directly to the air. It turns to
03:58 an 86-yard pick-six initially was ruled. Turns to a scoop and score. Arizona's
04:04 sideline was dead. The Oklahoma fans had taken overseas total momentum. Jahlil
04:08 Farouk laid this game up on a platter. You got to help your true freshman out. I
04:12 know Jack Starnall turned the ball over four times himself, but Brent Middleton said
04:15 they've got to be better around Jackson Arnold. It starts with Jahlil Farouk. You
04:19 can't be the veteran guy. You can't be the guy that was supposed to be the go-to
04:22 number one volleyball receiver coming into the year and give up those two awful plays.
04:26 Arizona suddenly had some life and that was the only point Oklahoma allowed in
04:30 the third quarter was not anything the defense did. It was Jahlil Farouk unable
04:33 to hold on to the football, what should have been a routine play. Arizona takes
04:36 takes control of the game early, gave it up in the middle two quarters. Ryan said,
04:40 listen to these numbers, 361 yards by Jackson Arnold. 361 is the fourth most
04:47 ever in OU bowl history. In your first career start, good job, good on you, right?
04:51 Then you give up the three interceptions, which Randall, this is something that I
04:57 thought I saw early on. Maybe you saw it down on the ground on the field. He
05:02 underestimated, Jackson did, underestimated the speed of the closing
05:09 speed of the Arizona secondary. He was floating balls. He's got a rocket arm and
05:13 he was floating balls trying to float them perfectly over and guys were just
05:17 coming over and stepping in front, undercutting routes. How much did
05:21 that weigh into the overall three interceptions? I mean that's huge.
05:24 Yeah, I mean you mentioned that him kind of floating the balls. The one that
05:27 really sticks out to me is that I think it was the second interception, the one
05:30 that dribbled stoops, where I think a safety came over towards the
05:35 sideline and grabbed that one. But really, I mean you could talk about it.
05:39 We thought that after Jackson Arnold rebounded from those first few
05:43 interceptions that Oklahoma was about to take the, I mean really just blow Arizona
05:47 out. For a second it looked like that when they went up I think 24 to 13.
05:50 Then you mentioned the Jalil Farouk fumble, another Jackson Arnold
05:54 interception later and then that kind of killed all the momentum that OU had
05:57 and just returned it all to Arizona. You could really feel that down here on
06:00 the field with Arizona. You mentioned the Arizona sideline and on the field. I
06:03 mean that momentum, the swagger that they played with kind of shot back up
06:07 after forcing those turnovers. Ryan said it right before we started taping.
06:10 279 yards by Jackson Arnold of his 361 in the second and third quarter. First
06:16 quarter, a nightmare. Fourth quarter, also a nightmare. And the end result 38-24.
06:21 Sooners are heading home with a 10-3 record. Pretty solid season. I don't
06:26 think 10-3 is what anybody at Oklahoma is after. You talk about like
06:30 context matters and all this stuff you had told someone before the season. 10-3
06:33 it's a bowl loss, it's the third loss. I think a lot of Oklahoma fans would have
06:37 taken it. But you look at it, those two losses against Kansas and Oklahoma State.
06:40 You have terrible play calling in Lawrence, three turnovers. You have
06:44 terrible play calling in spots and Stillwater, three turnovers. You come out
06:48 and turn the ball over, six goodbye turnovers and those two losses. Six
06:51 turnovers tonight alone. That's inexplicable. Teams that are looking to
06:56 make that step forward do not absolutely implode like that. I don't care if there's
07:00 a true freshman out there. You saw Gavin Soczek, it looked like he pulled up in
07:03 the third quarter. OU had no running game outside of Gavin Socek. The
07:06 offensive line was fine at times in pass pro. Bill Beanboe's got to do a lot of
07:12 work to that group. They are not ready for the SEC. They are not ready for the
07:15 SEC, certainly without Caden Green. That's on recruiting and development. That
07:19 just didn't happen as you look at that. And even like the bright spot, the young
07:23 piece Jacob Sexton had some penalties. I think it's he kind of just wore down late.
07:26 Jack Starlin had no help in the fourth quarter. I think that's why you got the
07:30 two additional turnovers. There's a lot this team has to fix. They've got to
07:33 find some sort of consistency on the offense and that wasn't gonna happen in
07:35 a 15. That wasn't gonna happen coming from Levy's offense to Luttrell and
07:39 all that in 15-ball practices. Can I say something real quick? To me, this
07:43 game had a lot of similarities to Oklahoma State in that Oklahoma started
07:47 poorly. They were able to punch back and fight their way back into the game, but
07:50 then when it looked like they took control, they weren't able to deliver
07:52 that kill shot. And eventually the other team got the momentum back. They went on
07:56 a long, what, 95-yard drive late in the game just like Oklahoma State did to put
08:01 Oklahoma down and out. I mean, to me it felt a lot like that Oklahoma State game.
08:05 That's a good point. Gavin Sawchuck, 134 yards on the ground. He also had 40 yards
08:10 receiving, 42. So he was busy. He was dynamic. He was exciting. He was
08:14 exceptional. They spread the football out to Nick Anderson, 73 yards
08:19 receiving. Drake Stoops got hot late, 82 yards receiving. Farouk had 57. I said
08:25 Sawchuck, Brennan Thompson with the 63-yard touchdown, career-long. He was
08:29 gonna be my X-Factor almost. Brennan Thompson with the long touchdown from
08:33 Jackson Arnold. That was a great throw, very aggressive call. They tried it again
08:37 in the third quarter. I guess that was the start of the third quarter,
08:41 trying to get on the next drive. But let's talk about the defense. The pass
08:48 defense was abysmal. They held 51 yards rushing, I think, no, 29 yards rushing for
08:54 Arizona. 29 yards net rushing. That includes six sacks, five sacks, yeah, five
09:01 sacks. And Oklahoma dominated. Oklahoma switched a little defense. They ran with
09:06 the three-man front, almost exclusively up front. They blitzed a lot, and I thought
09:12 that really shook Fafita, especially in the second and third quarters. But he got
09:16 comfortable. He started moving around. Guys, he had two receivers go over 150
09:21 yards. That accounted for two touchdowns. What's wrong with the Oklahoma defense
09:26 going into the offseason? Tonight, frankly, they did everything they
09:31 needed to do win this game. Big plays aside, five sacks, 11 tackles for
09:37 loss. The only touchdown they gave up in the first half was on a short field. The
09:41 only touchdown they gave up in the third quarter was Jalil Farouk not being able
09:44 to hold on to the football. They wore down. The defense was on the field the
09:47 whole time because the offense couldn't move. I know Brett Middlebott said, "Yeah, you
09:50 got to be better on that stuff." I get it. And to take that step to be elite,
09:53 tonight they limited one of the most explosive offenses in college football
09:57 to 250 yards through three quarters. Yes, it looked bad in a couple of spots, but
10:01 they bowed up and they forced two field goals in the first half. You got to fix
10:05 the coverage. It wasn't on the defense. In the second half, they stiffened in the
10:10 red zone. That's good. They did some good things, and they got after Fafita in
10:14 the backfield. They shut down the running game. But there were receivers running
10:17 wide open through the second. Well, on the midweek pod, we talked
10:21 about if Oklahoma's defensive front was able to get home, that it would
10:24 help the secondary out a lot. Oklahoma's defensive front got home. I didn't
10:27 expect that. I didn't expect that either. But guys like Woody
10:30 Washington, even Gentry Williams on the back, those guys were getting beat
10:32 deep. Jacob Cowling and McMillan. Those two guys, I felt
10:37 like those were the only receivers Arizona had, but they torched OU. It felt
10:40 like every time Noah Fafita, especially on... I don't have the numbers in front of
10:44 me, but it felt like Washington getting on the field, that every time there's a
10:48 third down, McMillan or Cowling was getting the ball, and they were
10:51 getting the first down. Fafita finished with 354 yards, two touchdowns, again
10:55 sacked five times. He was hurried. He was rushed. They knocked the hell out of
10:59 him about four or five times. Made him really uncomfortable. I like that about
11:03 the Oklahoma defense. But in coverage, they were struggling. There was a
11:08 play coming off the goal line where he just chucked it deep, and there's a
11:11 receiver down there caught a 50-yard pass. Both DBs, he's double covered. Both
11:15 DBs are looking at each other like, "Where's the football? Where's the football?"
11:18 "Well, it's probably up in the air." And the receiver came down with it for a
11:21 50-yard reception. McMillan, he's got Peyton Bowen. He's just able to
11:25 move him out of the way with his hands. He tracks the ball perfectly.
11:29 Did you have something else? I think the secondary needs to play better.
11:34 This is all on the offense. This is 100% on the offense. The defense did
11:38 everything they needed to do. What does Seth Luttrell need to do different as he
11:41 transitions? I thought he called a decent plan. I thought he called a good game.
11:46 But the six turnovers, how do you overcome that as a play? Yeah, and
11:50 the first two interceptions especially I thought were a true freshman
11:53 quarterback getting up to speed. There is no game planning for both of the
11:58 fumbles for Farouk. I thought the last Arnold fumble was literally, you're
12:03 chasing the game at that point. That's a freshman that... I thought that
12:06 those were all... The really, really bad one was probably the one to start the
12:10 fourth quarter. And then for Luttrell and Joe John Finley, when Sanchuk, he
12:14 returned to the game but he wasn't the same guy. It's not their fault that they
12:18 don't have any offensive linemen that can come in and actually get some push
12:22 in the run game. It's not their fault that Tommy Walker doesn't have the top.
12:25 That's stuff that's been issues all year long that we talked about for the
12:28 first half of the season up until Texas. So again, 15 ball practices,
12:33 that wasn't gonna fix that, all that. But Taylor Tatum's gotta come in or
12:38 Javonte Barnes or somebody's got to be a difference maker and they got a hit on
12:42 their portal offensive linemen because I think you saw that the depth just was
12:45 strained and I think that's where a lot of those holdings came late.
12:49 They looked exhausted. The interior of that offensive line is gonna need
12:53 some work before next year because that could be scary. If you have
12:57 to deal with those guys as your interior going into the SEC next year, that could
12:59 be rough. Yeah, that's it. I think we're gonna wrap. Nothing else to say about
13:04 this one. Sooners finished the season 10-3. Again, some good, some bad.
13:09 This was the team that was, what did we say, eight points from being undefeated
13:14 the regular season. They came out tonight, had the lead in the fourth quarter,
13:18 couldn't stop giving the football away to the Arizona Wildcats. And Arizona, oh
13:23 one thing I wanted to get to real quick was Drake Stoops. Two of his
13:27 interceptions, two of
13:30 Jackson Arnold's interceptions, thank you, were forcing the football to Drake
13:37 Stoops. I got the feeling that Arizona came into this game saying, "You're gonna
13:41 throw the ball to 12, watch this." And they came out and they hit him, they beat him
13:45 up, they knocked him around, they aggravated him, they cut up under his
13:49 routes, picked the ball off. I thought that was a huge part of the game is they
13:53 kept trying to force it, he kept trying to force it to Stoops and that was not
13:57 working early on. Yeah, and finally it got back to it and you saw there was even a
14:02 moment in the second quarter where I thought Arnold saw Stoops wide open and
14:06 then decided not to throw it his way. It almost looked like a guy that was in his
14:09 head about that, but that's all stuff that I think freshmen kinks get
14:14 worked out. But this was for me the stat of the day. This came from SoonerStats
14:18 on Twitter. This is the most turnover six since OU lost Bedlam in 1997, also a
14:23 sixth turnover game. We're going back to the John Blake era yet again. That's not
14:28 what you want to do if you're Brent Venables. So much positive this year, the
14:33 team can't implode like this at the finish and you put this big stamp and
14:37 you feel excited to go to the SEC. There's a lot they got to fix. A lot they got to fix
14:40 on defense and on offense. Special teams was fine, I thought. Elzinga had the game of his life.
14:45 Yeah, that was the best play of the day for Oklahoma was a 50-yard punt that
14:50 rolled out of bounds at the one-yard line. And he downed one at the 5, too.
14:53 Yeah, he was awesome. Yeah, and went at the 11 as well. Amazing.
14:57 Amazing job by him. Not so much the offense. Defense was hit and miss, I think.
15:03 Yeah, that's it. That's all we got to talk about tonight.
15:07 We're gonna hit... I just started cracking up because of something I
15:11 thought of in the postgame. Brent Venables didn't have much to say. They talked for
15:16 about 15 minutes. The players talked with him for about 15 minutes. Coordinators
15:19 were not available tonight. So no answers from Ted Roof, no answers from Seth LeTrelle.
15:27 Maybe we'll talk to him in the spring. That's it. Season's over, guys. 38-24 Sooners lose.
15:35 We'll be on to spring football in a matter of what's gonna feel like weeks.
15:40 And it's softball season. I'll be in Orlando tomorrow. He's in Orlando tomorrow.
15:44 That's right. Getting out of here at 5 a.m. to go cover some recruiting news in
15:48 Orlando. And he's coming back here at the end of the week to cover more recruiting
15:52 here at All Sooners. Keep it here at All Sooners. We've got postgame analysis,
15:57 interviews, press conference, the whole thing. Stories, notes, everything is at
16:03 allsooners.com. For Ryan, for Randall, I'm John Hoover. See you guys.