MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. – For three quarters, the expected shootout was going down between Oklahoma and Alabama.

But the missing quarter was the initial one. And by the time the first 15 minutes were in the books, the Sooners were in a huge hole that nobody could realistically have asked them to get out of in a 45-34 loss to the No. 1-ranked Crimson Tide on Saturday evening in the Orange Bowl.

OU finished with 471 yards of total offense with 447 of those yards coming in the final three quarters. OU was limited to 24 yards in the first quarter. Alabama countered with 200 and a 21-0 lead en route to a 28-0 advantage before OU found its footing.

“Yea, we just kind of picked a bad time,” head coach Lincoln Riley said. “We kind of just played our worst ball at the beginning. We very simply didn't get stops, gave up some big plays to them. They made some really nice, competitive plays down the field, and then we just had trouble kind of gaining our traction offensively early.

“We were just a little off early. We obviously didn't do a good enough job coaching them early. And I thought it took us a little bit longer to settle into this one than it normally does, and it's like we were just kind of waiting for that spark, and it just took longer.”

Quarterback Kyler Murray and offensive tackle Cody Ford were at a loss for words as to why the Tide were so dominant early. Alabama sacked Murray on two of the first three plays as the Tide sent an early message.

Things got worse when, despite a gutty effort by wide receiver Marquise Brown to play, he was rendered ineffective with zero catches and two drops.

Following the end of the first quarter, Riley met with the entire time on the field. The message was simple – keep fighting.

“I just wanted us to know that we were still in it, just reminded them of all the adversity that we've faced this year, all the tough games, all the times that we were down and people counted us out, and I just wanted to make sure that the entire team heard that message,” Riley said.

OU actually outscored Alabama 34-24 in the final three quarters, and Murray and the offense eventually found their groove.

Murray, winner of the Heisman Trophy earlier this month, completed 19 of 37 passes for 308 yards with two touchdowns. He also rushed 17 times for 109 yards and a touchdown.

Murray ends the season with 4,361 passing yards, the fifth-most in a single season in team history. He also finished with 1,001 yards rushing, becoming just the second OU quarterback ever to accomplish that feat.

With Brown out, the offense had to find other weapons. The Sooners have them in CeeDee Lamb, and now OU knows what it has in Charleston Rambo.

Lamb finished with a game-high eight catches for 109 yards and a touchdown. Rambo, who had five catches for 51 yards in his career before this game, had three catches for 74 yards, including a 49-yard touchdown in the third quarter.

“CeeDee was phenomenal the whole night,” Riley said. “If we could have done anything more, he caught eight, we probably should have thrown him about 20. I mean, they had a hard time covering him. They tried some different things and Kyler and him made some great plays together. We started to protect better and gave him some time, so he was phenomenal.”

Everybody knew that if OU was going to win, it was going to need to score at least 40 or even 50 points. The Sooners might have been on their way if not for the first quarter.

As is, it becomes another what might have been. A legendary offense that ends in OU’s third playoff defeat. Still on the cusp, and Riley, like his team personified Saturday evening, is not done fighting.

“We're going to – we've still got a bunch of Big 12 trophies,” Riley said. “We're going to hold that tall skinny one here in a couple years and we're going to hold it in a large part because of the fight from these seniors in this program, all the players, the staff.

“We've had some really good teams here the last four years, but I don't know that we've ever had a team, and I just told them that in the locker room, that has had the fight in them that this team has, and that's going to do wonders for our program.”