Three Games In--What Have I Learned?? -- Or Not Learned???

[TropicalSooner]

A quarter of the way into the season and the Sooners stand at 3-0 with impressive wins over Arky St and Tulsa, and a win-though less impressive-over SMU. The Arky and Tulsa wins came pretty easily--they were supposed to. Lesser opposition gave our O-Line a chance to come together with great pass protection and Gabriel had virtually all day to throw to whoever he wanted to. The blocking in the run game left me wanting more though. Perhaps the opposition those in game were bent on loading the box and stopping the run which opened up the passing lanes? It just felt like our backs were in heavy traffic whenever we did try to run.
SMU was a little different. Better team and better pass defense, and our run game did seem a lot more open that game while our passing game was limited to short and medium passes. But the passing game was there--we scored four times with it.

I think I've learned these things:
We have great receivers that will go up and fight for the ball and win. If Dillon gets it within arm's reach, we'll connect.
The offensive line in pass protection seems to be pretty good. It seems the QB has a lot of time to throw. Only a couple of busts really on the season so far. That's certainly improved from last year.
We seem to be a little more disciplined at the LOS.....much fewer illegal motion or offsides, or holding, penalties than last year--so far anyway.
The Defense seems more disciplined as well. Still have an occasional personal foul penalty but not like last year--again so far anyway. We'll be starting conference play this week, so we'll see if that continues to be true.
We have more takeaways now. That's an improvement! DB's pass coverage seems better and cleaner.
The D Line and LB's have been pretty good at stopping the opponents run game. That's better!
And we seem better at getting pressure on the opposing QB's. At least making them hurry their throws before they really get set. Most of the time.

But what have I not learned yet?
Can we really establish the run game at will? Against better teams with better secondary's we'll be faced with solid deep coverage daring us to run against their D Line. I'm not sure we've shown we can do that yet. But maybe that's just me.
Composure? This is of course hooked up with discipline. All we've had so far is OOC games. But when conference play starts, how do we react with the "holding" penalties and the "PI" penalties that we seem to always be saddled with in conference. Do we keep our composure and move on? Or lose it and get an additional Personal Foul like last year? Fingers crossed here.
Clock Management? So far so good. But we haven't really had to worry about it yet either. Yet to be determined to me....
Can our interior D-Linemen get through opposing O Lines to get some QB sacks? Or at least collapse the pockets for some TFL's? We're seeing lots of pressure on the QB's but seems like its coming from the edge and against a mobile QB, that can have unpredictable results.
Third and Long. Generally this has been better so far this year. But we did have a 3rd and 12 that got away from us against Tulsa's mobile QB.
Mobile QBs? We'll find out about this when we play Cincy. Tulsa's mobile QB Williams had a fair amount of success against us. I hope we can figure something out in practice this week.

Maybe I should've waited until after the Cincy game to write this. Does the next game tell us more about our team? If we barely win, it was Cincy. If we win big, it was Cincy. Was it a good win? or a meh win?

I guess I'd like to see more QB sacks--more three and outs by the defense--no more third and long conversions--large chunks of yardage in the running game--continued discipline--and continued QB protection. If all of those things show up this weekend, I think we're at least on the right track.

[OUGENO]

Great post TP all very good points. I think SMU is better than Cincy but we shall see how we do. I can't wait till Sat to watch and
hope I am easy and not walking the floor.

[Oklahombre]

Great post TP all very good points. I think SMU is better than Cincy but we shall see how we do. I can't wait till Sat to watch and
hope I am easy and not walking the floor.

[walt]

I like a lot of what was the original post. A lot of offense and defense needs to continue to get better game after game if Brent and his defensive coaches can fix some of the secondary breakdowns, as in last week's game with Tulsa and some of SMU. On the DL and LBer slots, we look pretty good. I'm not down on the OU secondary as we have a couple of the best back end that have injuries that will hurt unless we don't get them back pretty quickly.

On offense, we have come a long way from last year. The most important player on any offense is the starting QB and backup. Dillion and Jackson have upgraded what we had last year, not putting Dillion down last year as we had a whole new offense and coaches. The biggest upgrade over last year was the receivers. I don't remember when we had such a large number of RS Freshmen and Sophomores who were playing well. I think our OL will get better from game to game.

What I like about what Brent has done is his recruiting. Currently, the 2024 class is looking really good and is listed as 5th or 7th. If Brent can get a couple of 2024 great recruits, we will be heading to the SEC in pretty good shape.

From my perspective, the way Riley screwed up last year, we are in good shape, and that is because we got a new head coach that knows what he is doing and how he is creating his roster and building his players. Knowing the mess of 2022 we are in about as good condition as we fans could expect.

Right now, it looks to me that this is about where Stoops was at going into his 2nd year so I can't see why any OU fans have much to be unhappy about.

[SoonerTony]

I’m still unsure how much we’ve learned. The team looks better. There is more depth at several positions.

But, at this same time last year we were feeling pretty good about a 3-0 start after a blowout win over Nebraska.

As others have mentioned on the board, that little game in Dallas will tell us a lot.

[OUGENO]

I love that song oklahombre!

[cushcreekmont]

THIS game will tell us quite a bit.

The SMU vs TCU game will also tell us something.

Given last year's finish, I'm not sure we know this team until after we play TCU.