Oklahoma Football: Grading the Sooners' Game Against Missouri

Oklahoma earned a sloppy but hard-fought 38-28 victory over the University of Missouri in Norman on Saturday night.

OU fought back from a rare double-digit deficit at home and achieved a measure of revenge for the loss last season in Columbia a week after they had debuted at No. 1 in the first BCS rankings of the season.

Oklahoma came out flat and found itself trailing 14-3 before some fans had even found their seats in another Memorial Stadium sellout.

After the Sooners finally woke up, they went on a 28-0 run that made the score 31-14 halfway through the fourth quarter. Missouri scored on a long option run to tighten the game before Oklahoma went on a cross-country drive to ice the game by taking a commanding 17-point lead with under four minutes to go.

Despite the victory over the 19-point underdog Missouri team, Oklahoma lost their top spot to LSU in the AP Poll. Both LSU and Alabama gained ground in the Coaches Poll on Oklahoma after looking impressive in their own wins over ranked opponents.

While Coach Stoops and the team will be happy to chalk up the game in the win column, the game itself may have exposed some serious flaws in a Sooner squad many expected to be amongst the best in the country as far back as January.

Let's look at the Sooners performance and see how it grades out.

Quarterback Landry Jones

Sooner signal-caller Landry Jones completed 35 of his 48 passes for 448 yards and three touchdowns.

While he did throw two more picks, giving him four on the season, he also made some big throws and completed almost 73 percent of his attempts.

Landry did many good things during the course of the game but he still has a tendency to lock onto receivers and force balls into coverage when other routes are open. A case in point is the deep throw he had intercepted on the Sooners second drive of the game. Ryan Broyles was open underneath but he chose to go with the deep post to Dejuan Miller while a safety rolled into the passing lane.

This was not Jones best game, but it wasn't a bad one either.

Grade: B

Receivers

The Sooners were short two of their top receivers but Ryan Broyles stepped up big time while Jazz Reynolds and Dejuan Miller each made some big catches in the game.

Ryan had 13 catches for 154 yards and all three of Landry Jones touchdowns. He made good adjustments on the ball and ran well after the catch.

Reynolds had his biggest game as a Sooner with five catches for over 90 yards while Miller contributed four snags for 40 yards.

One ball was dropped on a deep fade, but the Sooner receivers did a good job of taking what the Tiger secondary was giving them.

Blocking on the perimeter could be improved, but it was an overall good day for this unit.

Grade: A

Running Backs

Oklahoma running backs Dominique Whaley, Brennan Clay, Trey Millard and Roy Finch all got carries during the game and did a good job running the ball even though the holes were few and not very big for the most part.

Whaley once again proved that he needs to be given a scholarship after racking up over 150 yards combined rushing and receiving.

The backs blocked well, never put the ball on the turf and caught some crucial passes to help move the chains and sustain drives.

The Sooners finished with 144 yards on 39 carries. Not a great average but the line play was hit and miss on many run plays.

Grade: B

Offensive Line

The offensive line play was spotty at best.

Too many times, Sooner running backs were getting hit in the backfield, and this resulted in numerous negative yardage plays. The 3.7 yard rushing average is not something to inspire confidence in the group, and Jones was forced to hurry throws more often than acceptable.

They kept Landry off the turf by not allowing a sack on his 48 pass attempts, but once again, got beat in a goal-line situation, forcing the Sooners to settle for a field goal for their first points of the game.

Center Ben Habern was injured during the game and may be out of the lineup with a broken arm for a month or more.

Grade: C

Defensive Line

The Sooners went with a three-man rotation on the defensive line, alternating a single tackle with two defensive ends for most of the game.

This allowed the them to run a nickle defensive back package against the Tigers but left them vulnerable to the run and forced them to frequently blitz Tom Wort from his linebacker position to generate pressure on quarterback James Franklin.

This philosophy did not entirely work out as planned as Missouri ran for 241 yards while picking up 291 through the air.

Frank Alexander continued his excellent play and Ronnel Lewis, David King and R.J. Washington all contributed their share.

The D-line did an admirable job of forcing the quarterback from the pocket and collected two sacks on the elusive Franklin but were twice pushed back in the end zone on short touchdown runs inside the 2-yard line.

Grade: D  *This low grade is mostly a reflection of the scheme used by the coaches.

Linebackers

Linebacker Travis Lewis and Tom Wort were flying around the field but had a hard time catching up to the Tiger offense.

Running back Henry Josey and quarterback James Franklin both ran for over 100 yards as the Missouri spread offense once again gave the Sooners fits with formations and motion.

It appeared that there was confusion on assignments on too many occasions, and the linebackers allowed the rushing games to run wild frequently.

Wort and Alexander collected 15 tackles between them, but they were often downfield after a good pickup.

Grade: C

Secondary

Oklahoma ran both nickle-and-dime package defensive schemes against the Tigers and did keep Franklin from completing 50 percent of his passes.

However, too many times, Missouri receivers got open both underneath and behind the coverage.

T.J. Moe had seven catches for 133 yards, and the Sooners failed to collect a single interception despite dropping so many into coverage.

It appeared that they were also often confused by motion before the snap and failed to get bumps on receivers firing off the line when in man coverage.

They also failed to shed blocks on the Tigers' late option run that turned into a long touchdown and forced the Sooner offense to score again late to ice the win.

Javon Harris, wearing the late Austin Boxs' No. 12 jersey, led the Sooner defense with 10 tackles.

Grade: C-

Special Teams

Special teams may have played better than any other Sooner unit on the night.

Kickoff coverage was good with even a few touchbacks thrown in after Sooner scores.

Punt coverage was also very good while freshman Mike Hunnicutt made his lone field goal attempt and all five of his extra point attempts.

The only mark against this phase of the game was the shanked punt by the usually reliable Tress Way, bringing his average to only 36.4 yards on five attempts. He did nail three of them inside the 20 though so not too bad overall.

Grade: A-

Coaching

Coaching calls were as spotty as the rest of the game on the night.

The decision to go with a three-man defensive front allowed the Tiger to gain almost 540 yards of offense on the night.

Running the ball off right tackle with fullback Trey Millard as a lead blocker was highly successful but only attempted a few times.

The Sooner staff did do a good job of getting the team to re-focus after Missouri jumped to the quick 14-3 lead.

Grade: C-

Intangibles

Oklahoma won the game despite allowing well over 500 yards of offense and failing to generate a single turnover, while surrendering two themselves.

If not for two missed field goal attempts by Missouri, the Sooners may have possibly seen their nation-leading 38-game home win streak come to an end.

The crowd was taken out of the game early when the Tigers came out roaring but then got back into it as their home team went on a 28-0 run.

Allowing Missouri to score two touchdowns in the final seven minutes of the game was disheartening to see and probably gathered the ire of the coaching staff.

The intangibles were about even, between missed Tiger field goals and drive-killing Sooner turnovers.

This was definitely not the performance most fans were expecting to see, and similar play later in the season could cost the Sooners dearly as they continue their quest to reach BCS Championship Game No. 5 for Coach Stoops and his program.

Grade: C