Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley was back addressing the media Tuesday evening to talk what the Sooners are doing for the bye week and trying to bounce back after the loss at Kansas State.
Take No. 1: Injury updates
Because it’s a bye week, there’s no rush by Riley to give an incredibly accurate update on some injuries, but no doubt there are lingering questions regarding tight end Grant Calcaterra and safety Delarrin Turner-Yell.
Calcaterra has missed the last three games, while Turner-Yell’s helmet was taken from him early in the third quarter Saturday.
“Both doing well,” Riley said. “We’re going to reevaluate Calcaterra here through the week, but no update on him. Delarrin’s doing well. We’re not at the point where we have to make any decisions but he’s progressing well.”
Here’s one to remember, though, in linebacker Caleb Kelly. Riley said Kelly is medically cleared after tearing his ACL in the spring. It will be curious to see how the Sooners handle the situation since Kelly has a redshirt season available to him.
“He’s doing great. He’s close. He’s fully cleared. Doing some nice things,” Riley said. “We’re progressing him up. Being fully cleared and then being ready to play are two different things. He’s been doing a lot of things with us here the last few weeks and is getting better quickly.”
Take No. 2: Bye week plans
This bye week definitely has a different feel than the one in September, and Riley and staff are treating it a little differently.
Some of the focus is on practice. Some of the focus will be on health. Some of it is clearly going to be on recruiting.
“Some guys that need to get healthy,” Riley said. “Some guys that need reps throughout the week to be ready for this closing stretch. There are certainly some advantages. We’re just going to look at it from the positive and have a great week.”
Team will practice through Thursday before shutting it down, while the coaches will take to the road and hit the recruiting trail.
“We'll get after it again tomorrow,” Riley said. “We'll practice Thursday morning and then we'll get our guys out of here. We've modified the practices a little bit.
“Some of our coaches won't be at that (Thursday) practice. They'll go ahead and get out and get in place because we've gotta hit these two days hard. This calendar on the back end is really, really different this year. Everything is a week later. The whole bowl season combined with signing day and all that is gonna be interesting, so we've gotta get a lot of work done in these next few days.”
Take No. 3: Defensive breakdown
Some might still be in shock about what went down in Manhattan, especially defensively. After looking like a much-improved group in the first seven games, the wheels came off against the Wildcats.
As Riley and defensive coordinator Alex Grinch have had time to dissect it all, they feel pretty confident they’ve identified what went wrong Saturday.
“If you don’t create turnovers and if you don’t get off the field on long yardage, there’s not very other good options for a defense,” Riley said. “We haven’t gotten turnovers the last four games. But we have done a tremendous job of getting off the field and so we, in some ways, have offset that with a ton of three-and-outs and being incredibly good on the third downs.
“Not getting turnovers puts such a strain on your defense. You have to play at such a high level when you’re not getting turnovers. You have to go out and execute multiple plays every series to stop people. The biggest difference was Kansas State was able to take advantage of our missteps, and we didn’t take advantage of theirs.”
OU has just six takeaways in eight games this season and didn’t register one during October.
Plus one: Bridges, team responding fine
How does OU respond to a so-called shocking loss? Riley had a nice answer.
“Remember this. Every loss at OU is shocking,” Riley said. “Remember. Bob (Stoops) told me that the other day, after. He’s right. Rarely do we ever play a game that we’re not favored and rarely do we play a game that everybody in the world doesn’t expect us to win.”
Riley said the team is bouncing back fine and that includes freshman Trejan Bridges. It was Bridges who was ruled as illegally touching the onside kick in the final minutes.
Riley’s not worried about him and was pretty happy with the execution of the actual play.
“Trejan did exactly what we told him to do,” Riley said. “He’s fine. He’s doing a good job for us. Playing well on special teams Doing some good things offensively. Want to keep getting him involved. He’s a talented kid. To be honest, we’ve practiced that onside for a long time and I don’t know if we’ve ever executed it as well as we did in the game. No, he’s great.”
