Post-Mortem P: Your hard-hitting Kansas postgame questions answered

My postgame column every week is fun. That’s why I do it. It’s fun for me and it’s fun for you. Obviously, I aim to bring legitimate insight and rationality in the column, but the manner in which I write it is intentionally lighthearted.

But none of you are in the mood to have fun right now, and that’s understandable. The Sooners just turned in a dud of a performance for the second consecutive week, and this time, the hole they collectively dug turned out just a bit too deep. Kansas hadn’t beaten Oklahoma since 1997, but that drought is over after the Jayhawks’ stunning 38-33 home upset of the sixth-ranked Sooners.

And in moments like this, I always hearken back to one particular scene in the great sports movie Moneyball. The scene involves an exchange between Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane (portrayed by Brad Pitt) and one of his players, an outfielder named Jeremy Giambi. Billy walks into the locker room after a loss to see Jeremy dancing on a tabletop to loudly blaring disco music, at which point he — Billy, that is —takes a bat and smashes the stereo. The conversation that ensues is as follows:

Billy: Is losing fun?

Jeremy: *silence*

Billy: IS… LOSING… FUN?

Jeremy: No.

Billy: Then what are you having fun for?

There will be no fun had in this week’s column, not even at the expense of Lincoln Riley’s pitiful ramshackle operation in the land of avocado toast and tech bros. I will cut to the chase, answer your questions, and remain on task and on topic.

pwhit1034: 2:15 left in the game and it’s 3rd and 6 after the D wins the turnover battle for us….. Lack of execution from the O or bad play calling?

Yeah, this is a good place to start, because the Sooners needed all of ONE first down to put the game on ice after Ethan Downs’ crucial interception. If they get ONE first down, all the other crap that happened in the 57 previous minutes of play (and the three minutes that followed) might not be completely moot, but it would certainly not have caused OU Twitter to devolve into a viciously hostile hellscape. The answer to your question is that it was unambiguously and objectively an issue of playcalling. It was timid playcalling, pure and simple. In the same breath after the game, Jeff Lebby said that “we were trying like heck to get a first down” and that “we felt like running the ball and having the ability to pin them there without any timeouts, making them go the length was the right thing to do.” Those two statements are oil and water. With ten yards standing between his team and certain victory, Lebby chose to pass the buck and put the game in the hands of the Sooners’ defense.

Jeff Lebby is generally good at his job. He is an upper-echelon offensive coordinator, is regarded across the college football landscape as such, and is compensated as such. He does not need to be run out of town, and he’s far from the only reason the Sooners lost on Saturday. But plenty of the blame for the defeat falls on his shoulders, especially because of his hyper-conservative approach to a situation in which one chunk play could have decided the football game.

Jrandol1331: Why are we blowing a timeout at midfield on 4th and 8 when we are going to punt the ball.

This was the most mind-boggling, truly inexcusable moment of the entire game. It seemed rather insignificant at the time, but it ended up having a major trickle-down effect on the Sooners’ ill-fated final possession. After taking a delay of game penalty in no-man’s-land on their opening drive of the third quarter, the OU punt unit somehow failed to get lined up before the expiration of the play clock, and Brent Venables burned a timeout to avoid taking consecutive delays. In reading the latest edition of the NCAA rulebook, it’s unclear to me whether a second consecutive delay would have resulted in the assessment of an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty (this would be the case in the NFL). So frankly, I don’t know whether Venables was legitimately compelled to call that timeout or not. But either way, it was a completely useless waste of a timeout that the Sooners ultimately needed at the end of the game. An extra opportunity to stop the clock would have made things significantly easier from a play-calling and time management standpoint on the final drive.

boomer_: Does Kanak seem to be lost and wif on tackles way too often? or is it just me? personally, gimme much more Kip Lewis.

It’s not just you.

SoonerSportsGal: Was Tawee Walker injured? He seemed to be our most productive back & then all of a sudden he’s watching from the sidelines.

Alas, Walker was indeed hobbled down the stretch, which deprived the Sooners of their most consistent source of offense. Walker rushed 23 times for a career-high 146 yards and a touchdown Saturday, and though I’d have to double-check to confirm, I don’t believe he was brought down upon first contact on any of those 23 carries. If he had been available to tote the rock three times in a row on the Sooners’ penultimate drive, maybe OU gets a favorable outcome and Lebby gets a little more grace for his predictable playcalling.

boomer3150: BV seems like a very discipline person. Yet the team is so undisciplined. Where is the disconnect? Why do we continue to see so many bust in the secondary, scheme, coaching, players can't execute?

There’s no single overarching answer to this question, Boomer. Tackling was atrocious yesterday. Coverage was atrocious yesterday, especially in key situations. Ultimately, I think it comes down to personnel more than anything else. Watching the Oklahoma defense, especially in the second half, felt like a rewind to 2022. They didn’t have tremendous athleticism, soundness or intelligence as a defense last season. And consider what — or rather, who — the Sooners lacked in the second half yesterday. Danny Stutsman, Gentry Williams and Peyton Bowen were all on the sidelines nursing injuries. Those might be your three most impactful defensive players in a pound-for-pound sense. Take that trio out of the picture completely, and is this defense that much better than the 2022 group? I’d say yes, but is the difference truly substantial? This defensive overhaul is still very much a work in progress, and if you’d forgotten or neglected that reality, hopefully yesterday brought you face to face with that realization once again.

Ok-Boomer: We had three healthy running backs to start the game, so why are we lining a receiver up in the backfield, instead of letting running backs get into a rhythm. Same thing on the offensive line. Put your best 5 out there, and let them do their flippin job. How far off am I?

You’re not far off. The gimmicky usage of Jalil Farooq in the backfield ended up burning Oklahoma, as a third-quarter fumble by Farooq turned into a go-ahead touchdown run by Jason Bean on the very next snap. And I counted at least nine offensive linemen that took meaningful snaps for Oklahoma in the football game. I don’t understand it. I can’t make it make sense. On the large scale, the Sooners lack identity as a football team right now, but they especially lack identity as an offense. There is no consistency or regularity in the deployment of personnel, and they’re continually unable to find a rhythm in both the pass game and the run game. You can’t explain that away. That falls back on coaching.

B-squad: I'm just in utter disbelief that there was no real effort from Lebby to throw the ball downfield until he was forced to on the last drive. I don't think Gabriel threw a single pass more than 5 yards downfield for the first half. Yet, every time we did throw downfield, we were able to get guys open. Across the entire game, I don't think Farooq or Anderson got more than one or two targets on a medium or deep pass. But Farooq did get multiple handoffs. It's just genuinely puzzling. I'm not a coach, I won't claim to know more about football than them, yet there seems to be literally no logic to it. Is there any explanation? Or is it really just horrible, stupid playcalling?

Look, B-squad… I’m right there with you in the very same boat. I don’t know more about football than these coaches. If I did, I’d be holding a clipboard instead of a camera on Saturdays, and I’d be making a hell of a lot more money. But I’d just like for the coaches to make it make sense. I wasn’t present for Lebby’s postgame presser yesterday, which is one of the drawbacks of Oklahoma’s frenetic scrum-style availability method. But I would love to have asked him why Dillon Gabriel only attempted 12 passes until the final drive, especially given that Jason Bean threw the ball 32 times. Clearly, the rain did not inhibit Bean’s ability to push the ball downfield through the air. Granted, Tawee Walker was humming, and I won’t gloss over that. But when you have individual mismatches on the perimeter, why not at least try to exploit them?

The fact that Nic Anderson caught one (1) pass yesterday is malpractice at best and a war crime at worst. To my recollection, Gabriel didn’t attempt a long pass (i.e., a pass that traveled more than 20 yards downfield) until the final drive, when Lebby finally said “screw it, tell Brenen Thompson to make a beeline for Olathe.” I’ll call it like I see it: the Sooners’ cast of characters at the offensive skill positions isn’t conducive to sustained downfield progress via bubble screen and jet sweep. But conversely, when Lebby has allowed the receivers to run actual routes and create separation down the field, the Sooners’ offense has thrived this season. And again, the “unfavorable weather” explanation is invalid. Jason Bean took that excuse away. I’d love to know a real reason — ANY real reason — why the offensive gameplan was that clunky.

chicagomvp: I wish I could remember the timing of the play, but there was a moment when I realized coaching on the offense was an issue. It was the last series, we are on our own 35 with 20 seconds left. DG takes the snap and does the fake handoff/play action, where even Helen Keller knows we have to throw it. It looked amateur and so out of place.

My friend, I don’t know if it’s the same play to which you’re referring, but they ran play-action on the second-to-last snap of the game. They ran play-action with EIGHT SECONDS remaining on the clock, 20-plus yards from the opposing goal line. It was at that moment that I concluded they quite objectively did not deserve to win the football game.

Boston Sooner: Will BV have the stones to move on from Roof and Lebby after bowl season?

All right. I’ve been critical of Lebby and I’ve been critical of the defense (for which the blame does not ultimately fall on Roof). Now it’s time for me to back them up. This team just started 7-0, which exceeded your expectations regardless of whether you’ll admit to it or not. Now, after one hard-fought loss in which the Sooners had a half-decent chance to win on the final play, we’re right back to the FAHRE EVERYBODY conversation. I fully understand that fans will be fans, but it’s also my job to bring fans back to Planet Reality in moments like these. I can’t count the amount of message board posts and tweets I’ve seen that contain a complaint along the lines of “LEBBY AIN’T A TAHTLE-WINNIN’ OH-SEE.”

Let me break some news to you: Oklahoma doesn’t have a championship-level anything right now. Whether the Sooners had won the game or lost the game yesterday, my takeaway would have been much the same: this is a team that’s capable of contending for a Big 12 title, and that’s probably the ceiling. They’re very obviously not ready to play with Georgia and Michigan and Ohio State and the like. So why is a “championship” standard being applied to Lebby when the rest of the Oklahoma program isn’t on that level yet? Coaches improve with time just as players do; the Brent Venables of ten years ago wasn’t the Brent Venables of today. Lebby isn’t a lost cause or a sunk cost simply because he doesn’t have everything figured out by Year 2 of the gig. So if your proposed solution to Oklahoma’s issues right now is to get rid of the offensive coordinator, then 1) you do not have adequate respect for the patience it takes to build a championship program, 2) you have lost context for how good at his job Lebby generally is, and 3) you’re willfully ignoring the fact that Oklahoma has deficiencies across the board that will keep them relegated to the second tier of college football in 2023. This isn’t a championship team right now, so miss me with the “Jeff Lebby isn’t a championship playcaller” narrative as grounds for his dismissal. That may well be true in 2023. But that doesn’t mean it’ll be just as true one year or two years or five years down the road.

Soverturff: It feels like the last two weeks we have seen a big uptick in missed tackles. Do you think this is a result of all of the movement UCF and Kansas threw at us? Guys starting to get tired? Not playing focused? Hope to see us come out much more disciplined with OSU or that could be rough.

I don’t know, Soverturff. I’m really not sure as to the root cause of a crappy-tackling epidemic. It all boils down to practice habits, and it’s typically as simple as this: some teams tackle well and some teams don’t tackle well. It’s all about the way they’ve been coached and drilled throughout the offseason in preparation for Saturdays. It’s hard to fix poor tackling once the season kicks off (as Oklahoma fans have learned the hard way over the years), because those tendencies are pretty well baked into the pie at a certain point. This team had been pretty good at tackling through the first six games, so the last two weeks constitute a truly mysterious case of the Tackle Yips. It may just be a blip on the radar, or it may be a sign of things to come. It’s hard to tell. But it’s not an encouraging trend.

WatongaMade: Recurring theme - I need your honest opinion on Lebby. He’s not elite. He’s being exposed. The guy was hiding behind Huepel and Kiffin.

Somehow I don’t disagree, but I don’t agree either? He’s not being exposed, per se. Defenses haven’t cracked the code and figured the guy out. He hasn’t hit his ceiling the way that his predecessor seems to have hit it in Los Angeles. He’s just gotten in his own way with bland playcalling and timid situational decisions. Lebby’s issues are largely self-inflicted. And sure, that’s an annoying reality to witness, especially for the fans. But it’s also extremely fixable. Is he elite? I don’t know that I would use that word. I think he undeniably has the potential to be elite. But to borrow a phrase from Venables, Lebby has to do a better job of controlling the controllables if he’s to reach his ceiling as an OC.

OUcatfish1965: LEBBY = GRINCH

No. Just no.

Sooner_JJ: Who invented the Jet Sweep, and where can I find him?

Some quick Google research indicates that the invention of the jet sweep is credited to a now-retired football coach named Bob Stitt, who came up with the concept in the early 2000’s while at the Colorado School of Mines. You can angry tweet him at @CoachBobStitt.

DallasSooner: Why can’t this offense create explosive plays? It’s it the the OL, Lebby, the scheme, RBs, WRs, DG? All of the above?

It’s all of the above to an extent, but it goes back to an observation that I made a bit earlier in the column. I don’t think Lebby is doing a particularly good job of exploiting the mismatches that he can create with his top skill-position guys. Explosive plays are highly attainable for this offense. But the OC has to display some initiative in trying to scheme those explosive plays into existence. I don’t really sense that from Lebby — or, at the very least, I didn’t sense it yesterday. It felt like the Sooners were content to plod along on offense and move the ball downfield five yards at a time, which is great in theory if you can actually get five yards on every play. But you can’t. Nobody can. There will be negative plays and there will be plays that net zero yardage. Hell, apparently your right guard will take a pointless cheap shot on an opponent and set you back 15 yards (on that note, Savion Byrd shouldn't touch the field for the remainder of the season, and I'll stand on that). At some point, you will need a chunk gain to move the chains and sustain a drive. It’s unrealistic to expect that chunk gains will just happen — at least with any semblance of regularity — if you don’t let your Heisman-caliber quarterback make throws down the field.

AFSoonerZ: As fun as watching the disjointed circus of the game. OU had ample opportunity to capitalize on momentum and it seems like OU is lacking the killer instinct to take it all.

Special teams, twice late running onto the field, should be so basic?

It should be so basic. There’s no excuse for the Sooners’ abysmal play on special teams over the last few games. We already talked about the wasted timeout, but that’s just a drop in the bucket. Marcus Stripling has never had to catch a football in his life for any reason. Thus, what happened on the fourth-quarter pooch kick was not shocking. The only shocking aspect of it was the fact that Stripling was out there in the first place. Brent Venables can defend Zach Schmit till the cows come home, but when you’re passing up a 36-yard field goal in the first quarter to try and convert a fourth and medium, you don’t actually trust your kicker (and to be clear, I don’t fault Venables for that decision at all). Luke Elzinga’s beautifully placed punt should have pinned Kansas inside the 5-yard line with two minutes to play, but nobody on the unit had a beat on the ball, and the punt ended up netting 20 yards instead of 35-plus. If you truly care about special teams more than the last coach did, that level of care has to become more apparent in the way that your units perform.

Awr90: Why is it that for decades now teams like lsu, Bama, Michigan, Ohio state, Clemson etc can run the table and win NCs but Oklahoma needs losses to stay on track and win games?

Fact check: the five teams that you mentioned have combined for all of four undefeated championship seasons in the last 20 years. Winning every game on the schedule isn’t half as simple as some of you seem to believe. Saban has only done it twice in his 17 seasons at Alabama, and his tenure in Tuscaloosa is widely considered the most dynastic run in modern college football history. So let’s not act like going undefeated is a realistic expectation for any football team, let alone Oklahoma. It isn’t. Any given Saturday, this sport can throw us a major curveball in the way of an upset. It’s part of the fabric of college football. The more talented team doesn’t always come out on top. Oklahoma is, and was, more talented than Kansas. But no team is immune from mistakes, lapses and vulnerabilities that can get them beat. Your plight as an Oklahoma football fan is not unique. Your team isn’t the only one that suffers an upset loss every freakin’ season. Don’t miss the forest for the trees.

PigPen1775: How much does this hurt them in recruiting?

Ah, yes. It was only a matter of time until this question came up. And this is where I’ll simply reiterate a sentiment that I’ve shared a hundred times over the years: if any recruit thinks less of your program based on a singular loss, that’s not a recruit you want in your locker room anyway.

BerkshireA: Why do y’all not ask the coaches what everyone is thinking?

My friend, if the diversity of questions in this column ought to show you anything, it’s that “everyone is thinking” a thousand different things.

What do I feel Doomer-y about today… I feel Doomer-y about OU special teams

We don’t trust our kicker… so we go for it on 4th down in the 1st quarter and get stuffed

In the 3rd Q we waste a timeout getting the punt team set up… Then after the defensive stop our punt return team is running a player on the field at the last minute… Then our punter boots a terrible punt

In the 4th Q we get 30 yards worth of penalties on ONE PLAY and three personal fouls on one drive… Aaaaand then our kickoff return team muffs the catch

With 2 mins left our punt team has a chance to pin them on the 2 yard line… but none of the gunners could locate the ball.

From the 3rd quarter on… it felt like Lincoln Riley and Alex Grinch… It felt like we were trying pretty hard to lose that game