What the heck went wrong for Oklahoma vs. Kansas State?
Oklahoma football was man-handled, unlike anything we’ve seen in the Lincoln Riley era in their loss to Kansas State. So what went wrong?
Who saw this one coming? I didn’t think Oklahoma football would go into the Little Apple and leave with a loss that would be so ugly it makes me re-think everything I once thought about this team. But that’s what happened when Kansas State absolutely dominated the Sooners from the beginning to the final whistle to pick up Chris Klieman’s first of what could be many signature wins as the head coach of the Wildcats.
So what went wrong for Oklahoma in the loss to the Wildcats?
Everything.
For starters, the revamped Oklahoma defense that was given so much praise after their win over Texas and coordinator Alex Grinch was on the shortlist for Broyles Award candidates as the best assistant in college football. The defense was without a pair of starters in the secondary, but those losses aren’t enough to be a valid excuse when you allow this many points. It’s one thing if Kansas State scored 28 points to use that as an excuse and a completely different thing when they have 48 points.
When you pull off an upset in college football, you almost always have to win the turnover battle. If you have the talent deficiency, you need to create those opportunities and Kansas State did that with a 2-0 turnover margin. The Kansas State defense didn’t need to be the 1985 Chicago Bears, but they did enough to limit the explosiveness of Jalen Hurts and the Oklahoma offense.
The Oklahoma passing game was a far cry from the product we’ve seen the last few years from the Sooners. Hurts was able to reach the end zone with his feet on two occasions, but only had one passing touchdown. Further, Oklahoma wasn’t great on third down and couldn’t run the ball.
That’s a recipe to be upset.
This was more about what Kansas State did vs. what Oklahoma didn’t do, however.
The Kansas State offensive line dominated the line of scrimmage and absolutely wore out the Sooners front seven. The game was won in the trenches on the backs of the Wildcats offensive line. The Sooners have the best offense, but the Wildcats showed they can be better at them in one area. And that one area allowed Kansas State to win the ground game with 5.4 yards per rush, nearly two more yards than Oklahoma, and dominate the time of possession.
Winning the time of possession stat doesn’t always tell the whole story. If you score touchdowns in one minute, you do that. But if you control the clock with the punishing run game and keep the ball out of Hurts and the Oklahoma offense, you’re winning two-fold.
Kansas State was able to run the ball to pick up chunk yards, reach the end zone, keep Hurts off the field and give the Wildcats defense a chance to rest and recover. It’s really the perfect game plan by Klieman when facing a team with a decided talent advantage.
Klieman came to Kansas State after winning four FCS national titles in a five-year span at North Dakota State before succeeding Bill Snyder. He’s no stranger to winning big games and there may be no bigger win by this program this century than what he pulled off vs. Oklahoma.
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