Happy Game Day Eve! Why OSU QB Alan Bowman has improved, and how the OU offense can help without scoring points
Getting you ready for Saturday on Friday.
Happy Game Day Eve to all who celebrate!
What a monster weekend we have coming up in our state. We'll be the epicenter of the college football world as we've got a pair of top-20 showdowns on Oklahoma soil on the same day.
No. 12 Utah at No. 14 OSU, 3 p.m. on Fox.
No. 6 Tennessee at No. 15 OU, 6:30 p.m. on ABC.
There's only been one other time we've had two top-20 matchups played here on the same day. It happened Nov. 21, 2015. Baylor, ranked 10th, was at OSU, ranked fourth, while TCU, ranked 11th, played at OU, ranked seventh.
We were treated to a couple of splendid games, the Sooners beating the Horned Frogs 30-29 and the Bears outgunning the Cowboys 45-35.
Oh, that we might be lucky enough to see a pair of classics on Saturday, too.
(You can see my predictions for the games on The Jenni Carlson Show. Click here for OSU and here for OU.)
Now, let's open my reporter's notebook and get you ready for Saturday.
Why Alan Bowman's improvement is unique, important
Everyone knows Alan Bowman is in his seventh season of college football, and when you have a player who's been around that long, you wonder if he's already reached his ceiling for growth.
The OSU quarterback clearly hasn't.
Bowman is better this season than last. That is born out in stats; his completion percentage has gone from 60.7% to 67.0% while his average yards per game is up from 247.1 to 322.3. He had arguably his best day as a Cowboy last week at Tulsa, going 24 of 31 for 396 yards, five touchdowns and one interception.
Duplicating that kind of performance Saturday against Utah, which has a defense focused first on stopping the run, could be hugely important to OSU's chances.
So, what has changed with Bowman?
Cowboy coach Mike Gundy points to his quarterback not flushing the pocket as quickly, and sometimes as unnecessarily, as Bowman has done in the past.
"Guys that come to this level have generally played in a high school system where they could just flush and go out and find somebody and throw it and make it happen," Gundy said. "And it gets more difficult at this level ... It's just something they've had success with, and when that happens, it's hard to get it out of the system."
The whole thing harkened back to something Gundy once heard longtime OSU running back coach Bill Shimek say.
"You guys cut back one time in seventh grade and scored," he'd tell his players, "and now you cut back every time and think you're going to get a long touchdown run."
It's muscle memory.
So it has been with Bowman.
Lots of times last season, he would flush the pocket when he still had protection and time. Now, there were times he needed to run because the pocket was collapsing, but that wasn't always the case.
This season, with an offensive line that has been stout in pass protection, the pocket is holding and Bowman is trusting it.
He has yet to be sacked.
While it seems a bit odd that Bowman would make such a potentially significant improvement in his seventh season — wouldn't such a thing have happened much earlier? — it bears remembering that he's had something of an odd career. He played a lot when he was healthy in his three seasons at Texas Tech, but he was hurt a decent amount. Then, he went to Michigan and almost didn't play any snaps for two seasons. And finally, he lands at OSU where he becomes the starter again.
Bowman wasn't starting over in Stillwater, but there was room to grow and improve.
And improve he has.
Gundy asserted it's not all that strange for a veteran and even an extremely successful quarterback to have to work on not flushing the pocket. Sunday night, he caught part of the Bears-Texans game, and he overheard the TV announcers recounting a talk the Chicago coaches had with Caleb Williams, their rookie quarterback.
"The conversation that they had with him after Game 1 was that the change of playing at that level compared to college, where we've all seen him run around like Superman and make unbelievable plays," Gundy said, "and they were trying to teach him in the NFL, it's going to be extremely difficult."
If the first pick in the NFL Draft has to work on not flushing the pocket, it makes sense that Alan Bowman might, too.
What the OU offense needs to do against Tennessee
When Brent Venables first took over as OU's head coach, he talked a lot about complementary football.
Haven't heard that phrase much recently.
But the truth is, the Sooners need some complementary football Saturday against Tennessee. These Vols have an offense that moves fast and scores lots, but the Sooners counter with a stout defense.
That defense, though, needs some help from the OU offense.
Now, I don't believe that help is going to come in the form of 30 or 40 points. The Sooners might not even score 20 points against the Volunteers. But the OU offense needs to do a couple of things to give the defense a chance and give the team a chance to find itself in a fourth-quarter game.
First, don't allow Tennessee any defensive points. No pick-sixes. No fumble recoveries for touchdowns. Allowing the Tennessee defense to score would sorely hamper OU's chances.
With one exception, the Sooners have avoided such calamity. Arnold had the pick-six last week against Tulane, and he simply can't make the same mistake again.
"That’s a learning opportunity for him," Venables said of Arnold's pick-six. "Fortunately, we were able to win the game, and that was to me the first, not the first mistake that he’s made ... but the first, 'Oh, golly, no, don’t do that. All right, come here because you gotta go back out there.' You get your arm around him and, 'Hey, man, don’t throw it late over the middle.'"
I'd advise against that against Tennessee, too.
The other thing the offense can do to help the defense Saturday: sustain drives.
The Sooners don't have to score every time they have the ball — back when they did, we probably didn't appreciate it enough — but they need to take some time off the clock.
Three-and-outs are bad.
Three-and-outs that take less than a minute off the clock are even worse.
That's because this Tennessee offense not only scores a lot of points, a nation's best 191 through three games, but also plays at an extremely high tempo.
"I don’t know how it ranks in regards to who’s running the fastest offense in college football, but they got to be right there if they’re not No. 1," Venables said.
That is going to stress the OU defense in lots of ways. Physically. Mentally. Tactically. Emotionally. But one of the challenges it needs to avoid is the stress of a quick turnaround, getting back to the sideline only to find itself returning to the field a few minutes later.
The Sooner offense hasn't exactly mastered the art of long drives this season. Against Tulane, for instance, OU had 12 possessions that didn't end when the half did. Seven of those possessions ran off less than 2 minutes of game clock.
That ain't good.
Every offense has a clunker of a possession or two in every game. It happens.
But aside from scoring a couple of touchdowns, the OU offense might do as much to help its chances of victory by avoiding gifting Tennessee points and stringing together some longer possessions, even if they end in punts.
Stat of the week
$360: the average purchase price of a ticket for the OU-Tennessee game as of Thursday morning, according to TickPick.
That makes a ticket for Saturday night's game the most expensive in college football this weekend. OU-Tennessee's average price was 20% more expensive than the next highest game, Southern Cal at Michigan.
Watch this space
I'm curious to see what R Mason Thomas does after his flurry of plays near the end of OU's win against Tulane last week.
After being virtually silent for the first three and a half quarters of the game, the Sooner defensive end had three sacks, one quarterback hurry, one pass break-up, one forced fumble and one fumble recovery (on the fumble he forced).
It was a crazy good six-minute stretch.
Will some of that production translate to the entirety of Saturday's game against Tennessee?
If it does, that's great news for the Sooners.
Quote of the week
"Compressor's going out." — Gundy at the start of his Monday press conference, which are regularly an adventure.
This week was no different. When a cooler in the press box began making a horribly loud noise almost as soon as Gundy began talking, it made hearing questions and answers almost impossible. Media staffers worked to unplug the massive cooler, but Gundy got to the point where he'd had enough, walked over and tried to move it away from the wall.
Eventually, he helped tip the contraption enough that the plug could be removed from the socket.