Oklahoma will finds out if its defense really has turned corner against Texas

Throughout the offseason, whenever anyone talked hopefully about Oklahoma’s defense, Alex Grinch stopped the conversation.

“It’s a results business,” the new defensive coordinator would tell people. “There’s a scoreboard. It counts.”

Five games in, Grinch and the Sooners have delivered. There are results to back the claims that this defense is different. But this week brings a different challenge – and takes us back to the reason Grinch was hired.

Before No. 5 Oklahoma takes on No. 11 Texas in the annual clash in the Cotton Bowl, let’s flash back to what happened a year ago, and an epic defensive debacle.

Oklahoma’s defense swarms to tackle UCLA running back Joshua Kelley during their game on Sept. 14, 2019 at the Rose Bowl. (Photo: Kelvin Kuo, USA TODAY Sports)

Never mind Texas receivers running free, or Sam Ehlinger running whenever he wanted, or the Longhorns running up more points than ever before in a historic rivalry. On a day of defensive futility, in a season filled with more of the same, one play captured it all.

Third quarter, Texas leading by a touchdown, facing third-and-21 near midfield: Ehlinger threw to Lil’Jordan Humphrey, who caught the ball near the line of scrimmage. And then the big wide receiver rumbled downfield, dragging several Oklahoma players for a ride. It eventually took eight Sooners to bring him down, and not until he had gained 19 yards. The Longhorns would convert on fourth down and soon score a touchdown to take a 14-point lead.

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The astounding sequence illustrated an astonishingly bad performance. And as much as anything else, the failure against Texas is why Grinch is in Norman, making $1.4 million a year.

It’s about more than one game, sure. Oklahoma’s defense was routinely awful in 2018. The objective is not simply to beat Texas, but to win a national championship – and in recent years, that porous defense has stopped the Sooners short of the goal.

But a year ago, that historically ghastly performance prompted Lincoln Riley to take drastic action.

In winning 48-45, Texas piled up 501 yards, an average of 6.7 yards per play. The next day, longtime defensive coordinator Mike Stoops was out, fired at midseason. A few months later Grinch was in, hired to fix the problem.

When the Sooners and Longhorns meet in one of college football’s grandest spectacles – the old stadium divided again into horseshoes of crimson and burnt orange, with the State Fair of Texas in full swing just beyond – we’ll find out whether he has.

“It’s difficult to play defense in 2019,” Grinch told USA TODAY Sports back in August. “You’re one play away from being average.”

In 2018, the Sooners would have embraced average. They ranked 114th nationally in total defense – worst in school history – and dead last (129th) in passing yards allowed. And yet on one Saturday in October, they’d have survived something slightly better than shockingly bad.

Instead Texas held the ball for 34 minutes. Notched 27 first downs. Scored on all five possessions in the red zone. Those same ‘Horns had managed one offensive touchdown a week earlier in a 19-14 win at Kansas State.

Yeah, Oklahoma avenged the loss in the Big 12 championship game, and even made a couple of defensive plays along the way. A fantastic offense was good enough, again, to get the Sooners into the College Football Playoff. But a shootout with Alabama fizzled because while the Crimson Tide could not contain Kyler Murray after the first couple of possessions, Oklahoma had zero shot at slowing ‘Bama at virtually any point.

Enter Grinch, who promised accountability and attitude would be followed by action. The early returns are good. Statistically, Oklahoma has vaulted in the national rankings from near the bottom to very respectable. And here’s one seemingly important measurement, given that embarrassing play when Humphrey dragged defenders like a dad dominating third-graders: OU ranks No. 5 in third-down defense, allowing conversions on only 24.6 percent of attempts.

The Sooners are several plays better than average. They have displayed aggression and desire – if it sounds like a backhanded compliment, maybe it is. It’s also an evident change.

But the competition – Houston, South Dakota, UCLA, Texas Tech and Kansas – has been squeezably soft, making actual improvement difficult to measure. That changes in the Cotton Bowl.

Ehlinger is completing almost 70 percent of his passes and averaging 337 yards. The Longhorns average 42 points. Compared to its production heading into the 2018 regular-season meeting with Oklahoma, this Texas offense packs a lot more punch.

The Sooners believe their defense does, too.

“You feel a lot of progress and excitement about what we’re doing,” Riley told reporters last week, after a win at Kansas. “I love how we’re flying to the football, how we’re hitting. The fun thing is, we’re still so early in this deal.”

Big picture, he’s correct. But Saturday, the Sooners return to the scene of an astonishing failure, the most vivid illustration of just how bad their defense could be.

“They gave us a long day in the Cotton Bowl last year,” Oklahoma defensive end Ronnie Perkins told the Tulsa World. “It’s definitely one of those weeks where you come out and prove yourselves, that last year was a fluke defensive-wise. … We’re not that type of defense anymore.”

Preventing another Red River shootout would go a long way to proving the claim.

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