The Return of Bob Stoops and Oklahoma's Swagger

Bob Stoops ran off the field at a rainy McLane Stadium last Saturday night three times.

He did it once for warm-ups, shooting out of a handshake with Baylor coach Art Briles like a cannonball, his shirt sleeves giving the outward appearance of being quite confident in his team, despite the inclement weather. Again he ran off at halftime, and a third and final time at the end of Oklahoma’s 44-34 road victory over the previously undefeated Bears.

Each time, save for temporary pauses for radio and TV interviews, the spry 55-year-old looked to have a little more spring with each step. Despite his relative youth for his profession, Stoops is the third-longest-tenured head coach active in FBS at the moment and could occupy the top spot, depending on what his mentor Bill Snyder decides to do this offseason.

While he has remade himself several times over the past few years in Norman, altering his team’s structure, staff and his own coaching style, no version of Stoops may be as intriguing as the version who turned a small skip into a full sprint off the sideline at Baylor.

“This team gives us flexibility to do a lot of different things,” brother Mike Stoops, the Sooners defensive coordinator, said last week. “We feel like we’re a great football team right now. That’s not in one particular area; we’re playing well on offense, defense and special teams. To win at the highest level, you have to complement each other. That’s probably our greatest strength: We’re complementing in all areas, and that bodes well down the stretch.”

Wade Payne/Associated Press

It certainly does, which is why there is suddenly College Football Playoff talk for the Sooners far beyond the banks of the Red River this year. That early loss to Texas has quickly turned from pockmark to aberration thanks to an impressive five-game win streak in which Oklahoma is outscoring opponents 276-84, topping 44 points each time.

Because of that, it’s no stretch to call the Sooners a top-four team at the moment, because they are certainly playing like one. While that loss to their bitter rivals in Austin earlier this year prompted many to question (again) if “Big Game Bob” had lost his fastball, the veteran straight-shooter may instead be in the midst of his most impressive coaching job.

“We learned [that] we got exposed. We learned we were not where we needed to be,” center Ty Darlington said of the team’s only loss at the Cotton Bowl, citing issues along the offensive line in particular. “That Texas loss really changed who we are. Without that loss, I’m not sure we would have taken our play to the level it’s been in these past couple of games. Losing to Texas is never a good thing…but we learned from it and made the most of it.”

It’s all part of the process that Bob Stoops has been engineering over the past year-and-a-half. After talking big following the team’s victory over Alabama in the Sugar Bowl, he was forced to examine what he wanted OU to be after an 8-5 season last year that was punctuated by a humiliating 40-6 loss to Clemson, one in which former defensive coordinator Brent Venables ran circles around Stoops’ staff.

That prompted nearly wholesale staff changes, including the dismissal of former Sooners star and offensive coordinator Josh Heupel. In doing so, Bob Stoops decided to return to the roots of what was successful early in his tenure with a move to the Air Raid by bringing in Mike Leach disciple Lincoln Riley and reshuffling the offense.

Away from the field, helped by Stoops’ and his upperclassmen’s steadfast leadership, the team also grew close to each other by navigating a particularly thorny situation involving a racial chant uttered by a campus fraternity.

While things may have been slow starting early in the year, the fruits of all that labor have started to pay off for a team that has both a top-25 offense and defense.

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“What you’ve seen over the past few weeks is the overall improvement, maturity and guys coming together,” Bob Stoops said. “Really, the offense is working together. It was a new offense; we hadn’t been in game situations with it. Coach (Lincoln) Riley and some of the other coaches had just gotten here, so it takes a little bit of time.”

That time is now, though—in large part due to the team’s new quarterback, Baker Mayfield.

While Oklahoma may have found its swagger once again, Mayfield has kicked into an extra gear on and off the field. The end result may be a trip to New York City for the Heisman ceremony next month.

“There’s something special about him. He has that tenacity, toughness, competitiveness and talent. A bunch of coaches missed the talent,” Bob Stoops said. “He just finds a way, and that gets back to his competitiveness. Call him a gym rat, a baller or whatever—he’s out there making plays.”

Mayfield is the active leader in FBS in passing efficiency and has completed 75 percent of his passes during the Sooners' current win streak. Not bad for a former walk-on who fell into Stoops’ lap mostly because he grew up a fan of the crimson and cream—despite living in the shadows of the Longhorns at Austin’s Lake Travis High.

The slippery signal-caller burst onto the scene two years ago for Texas Tech and wound up earning Big 12 Offensive Freshman of the Year honors. But drama in Lubbock prompted a quick exit out of town, a few hard feelings and a quick decision to drive up from Austin to Oklahoma in 2014, even if a scholarship was no sure thing.

That was all part of the plan for Mayfield however, whose parents didn’t mind paying the out-of-state tuition for a semester as the transfer, and it’s scholarship implications, were sorted out last year. In many ways, sitting out that 8-5 season only reinforced the quarterback’s work ethic and made a year like this possible.

“I was having fun on scout team, but at the same time I was going to work. It’s paid off. I went to work last season, and it’s paying off now,” Mayfield said of his time between snaps in Lubbock and starring for Oklahoma. “It’s been two years now. Obviously it’s in the back of my mind, of where I came from and how hard I’ve worked to get here, but it’s in the past.”

Bob Stoops and the Sooners have worked hard at burying last year’s disaster of a season, while at the same time using their one stumble in 2015 to fuel the rest of their season.

The end result may just be a semifinal date with the same Clemson team that prompted major changes in Norman or maybe a matchup with old SEC foe Alabama.

No matter what, though, it’s hard to doubt that Oklahoma has found its swagger once again, and ol’ Big Game Bob is running like the wind with it.

Bryan Fischer is a national college football columnist for Bleacher Report. All quotes obtained firsthand unless noted otherwise. You can find him on Twitter at @BryanDFischer.