Oklahoma vs. Baylor: Sooners Secondary Drops the Ball in Bears Upset

Well, Sooner faithful, here we are again. Another "almost" season filled with high expectations (remember when OU was preseason No. 1?) and epic meltdowns. Saturday night in Waco, on the heels of an equally historic letdown by Oklahoma State, the Sooners dropped a game to the Baylor Bears for the first time in 20 matchups.

This was a rather peculiar upset, one like I have never quite seen before. It was difficult to tell if Baylor QB Robert Griffin III and head coach Art Briles were that good, or whether Brent Venerables and his defense were that bad. It was likely a little of both.

Either way, the results were staggering. The Bears averaged 4.2 plays and 79 yards in 1:04 on their six touchdown drives. The game started slow, with both teams notching only a field goal each during the first quarter, but 619 yards and 45 points later, a sea of green and gold poured onto the field as the home fans celebrated the victory.

Who is to blame, you ask? It wasn't the front seven, that is for sure. DE Frank Alexander played perhaps the game of his career and led a dominant defensive front that accounted for numerous negative plays and gave RG3 the beating of a lifetime. DT Casey Walker, taking his turn at wearing No. 12 in honor of fallen teammate Austin Box, plugged the middle while Alexander and fellow DE Ronnell Lewis were seemingly in the backfield on every play.

Linebackers Travis Lewis and Tom Wort did well stopping the run while having to keep one eye on the Olympics-fast Robert Griffin, who only had two runs of more than 20 yards. Wort especially showed tremendous speed, tracking Griffin down on several occasions.

That leaves the OU secondary, who played as if they had never seen a play-action pass in their entire lives. I hate to pile on the guy even more (did you see Stoops giving it to him on the sideline?!), but safety Javon Harris had a night to forget. He got burnt time after time, biting on the play-action fake and allowing a receiver to streak right by him into open field. 

The only reason I can imagine that he stayed in the game as long as he did was because the coaches were saying to themselves "OK, he has learned his lesson now. He won't bite on the fake again."

You know what they say about assumptions. If not, watch Pulp fiction.

It wasn't all Harris, though. Aaron Colvin, Demontre Hurst and NFL-bound Jamell Flemming all have egg on their faces as well. I remember seeing each of them chasing a Baylor receiver down the field once or twice.

Harris' replacement, Sam Proctor, didn't fair any better, either. Sam got caught QB-watching when RG3 scrambled out of the pocket and allowed Baylor's Terrance Williams to sink into the corner of the end zone, where he caught the game-winning touchdown.

The mayhem prompted this Tweet from myself after Kendall Wright took his turn blowing by Javon Harris for an 87-yard touchdown that tied the game in the third quarter:

"

eric_peee: Dear OU secondary: It's gonna be play action. Every time. Please stop biting on the fake. Signed, Cpt. Obvious.

"

Just like the Texas Tech debacle, a larger proportion of the blame goes onto the players and their lack of execution rather than coaching. On paper, OU's nickle defense is set up perfectly to handle the spread-'em-out, Swiss-Army-Knife offenses in the Big 12. Tony Jefferson's hybrid LB/DB roll combined with talented, physical cornerbacks and fast linebackers is normally the perfect recipe to contain high-octane offenses.

Saturday night was not the night, however. Keep in mind that on three of the countless miscues, an 80-yard touchdown was called back for holding, one was bobbled and dropped as the receiver walked into the end zone and another was badly overthrown by RG3. Things could have (and should have) been much, much worse.

Somehow, this season is still salvageable. If the Sooners win out, beating Iowa State and Oklahoma State, it will leave a three-way tie atop the Big 12 standings. The conference crown would then go to the team with the highest BCS ranking, which at that point would likely be the Sooners. This would mean a Fiesta Bowl birth against one of the at-large teams like Stanford or Houston.

(Long, sad sigh.)

Boomer Sooner.