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Tue May 11, 2010 3:43 pm EDT
[h2]How inevitable is Oklahoma's '10 rebound? Let us count the ways...[/h2]
By Matt Hinton
Preseason polls are neither art nor science, but if there is aprevailing formula for making up a too-soon top 25, it seems to be to Mark Schlabach, Sports Illustrated's Andy Staples and CBS Sports' Dennis Dodd,combine to keep eight of last year's final top 10 in their top 10 tostart the season, with only three newcomers (strong finishers VirginiaTech, Nebraska and Wisconsin) between them.
Aside from the odd upstart setting up for one of the best seasons inschool history, the annual exception to that continuity is what youmight call the Mulligan Team, the perennial powerhouse grantedautomatic passage back into the pundits' good graces after adisappointing finish on the strength of the brand. Last year, that teamwas LSU, an 8-5 also-ran in 2008 that found itself hovering in and around the top 10in the spring and summer rankings, as usual. This year, that team isclearly Oklahoma – Staples, Schlabach and Dodd all rank the Sooners inthe top dozen despite last year's five-loss flop – for obvious reasonsthat go beyond "It's Oklahoma and Oklahoma is (almost) always good":
• They were unlucky last year.I don't just mean "unlucky" in the obvious, "lose twoAll-Americans/soon-to-be first-round draft picks before halftime of thefirst game" way. The Sooners were mathematically unlucky:Last month, a math-oriented Michigan fan at MGoBlog ran the numbers onfumbles, blocked kicks and other outlying harbingers of (mis)fortuneand found Oklahoma was easily the unluckiest team in the countryin 2009 – to the extent that, if it played the same schedule overagain, even without the injuries that shelved stars Sam Bradford andJermaine Gresham for the season, the Sooners could expect to improvetheir 8-5 record by three full games.
Besides losing Bradod and Gresham, the offensive line was constantlyshuffled and reshuffled among four new starters, including a convertedtight end who started the season opener at center just days after moving to the position out of desperation.http://
• They were often dominant, anyway.A TCU site, the Purple Wimple, compiled the most straightforwardpossible statistical formula (National Rank in Scoring Offense +National Rank in Scoring Defense) to develop his "Dominance Rankings,"in which Oklahoma comes in eighth (7th in scoring defense, 29th onoffense), well ahead of the likes of Cincinnati, Oregon, Ohio State,Georgia Tech and Iowa, all of which finished top-10 seasons in BCSgames. When the Sooners won, they won big: Six of seven regular seasonwins came by at least 23 points, highlighted by a 65-10 kneecapping ofTexas A&M and a 27-0 shutout over Oklahoma State at the end of theyear. (The 31-27 bowl win over Stanford was the only triumph decided bya single-digit margin.)
On the other hand, Oklahoma's first fourlosses came by a combined 14 points, all against teams that finishedthe season in the top 20 (BYU, Miami, Texas, Nebraska), all away fromNorman. Until the November flop at Texas Tech,the Sooners had been in every game deep into the fourth quarter andwere conceivably only a handful of plays from being undefeated – again,without Bradford and Gresham.
• Landry Jones took his lumps.As id the very green, inconsistent offensive line. The lanky redshirtfreshman started 10 games, some of them spectacular (he was the Big12's Offensive Player of the Week in his first start, when he set aschool record with six touchdown passes in a 45-0 rout over Tulsa) andsome of them, well, very freshman-esque (he was picked twice in theloss to Texas and a whopping five times by Nebraska). As a somewhatseasoned sophomore, he has a real chance to lead the Big 12 in yardsand touchdowns while cutting down the mistakes under (presumably) farless pressure.
That's the persuasive half of the argument, anyway. Ironically enough,it's almost easier to drum up that kind of optimism about a team that'salready gone through a growing-pain phase, when the worst seems to bebehind it – the focus tends to dwell on the assumption that thingscertainly can't get worse. (And they were still so close.)Whereas a team coming off yet another predictable 10 or 11-win campaignwouldn't bring as much positive spin to counter some harsh realitiesthat could become burdens this fall:
• It's not the same defense.The only reason the Sooners were in so many close games despite themassive regression on offense was the D, which rebounded from arelatively mediocre effort in 2008 to finish in the top 10 nationallyin total, scoring, rushing and pass efficiency defense, and justoutside in takeaways. The heart of that unit, all-everything defensivetackle Gerald McCoy, has moved on to early draft glory, along with fiveother starters (to various degrees of draft glorytheir own selves). Opposite the inevitable offensive improvement is thereality that it's almost impossible to hold Texas, Nebraska andOklahoma State to a single touchdown between them (I'm not counting the'Huskers' one-yard "drive" for their only TD following an interceptionin Lincoln) two years in a row.
• The tough games aren't going anywhere.Ou won only one last year in another team's stadium, at Kansas in themidst of the full-scale Jayhawk implosion that sparked Mark Mangino'sabrupt ouster at the end of the season, and lost two of three atneutral sites. Besides the Red River Shootout with Texas, the Soonerswill be at Cincinnati, at Missouri, at Texas A&M and at OklahomaState, all high-octane challenges that can threaten to sink any outfitstill struggling to find itself.
• Landry Jones still isn't Sam Bradford.And his line isn't Bradford's line, a cohesive, veteran group that madetheir Hesiman-winning slinger the best-protected quarterback in Americain 2007-08. That's not an entirely fair comparison, given Bradford andCompany's scorched-earth march into record books in 2008, but theshortcomings of the revamped line were readily apparent from the firstgame, when Bradford was bounced from the lineup for the first time, anddidn't obviously improve as the season wore on.
Some of that has to do with youth and injuries, and should naturallyimprove in their second full season together. But given last year'sanemic production against ranked teams – 12.4 points per game en routeto an 0-5 record against opponents in the final AP poll – the offensestill has to be considered a work in progress on a BCS-hopeful leveluntil further notice.
on Callahan
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