The Sooners Defense Is Ready To Dominate Tebow and The Gators, Huh?

Lately I've been reading a lot of articles on the Florida Gators' and Oklahoma Sooners' homepages, and one of the big discussions seems to be the Sooners' defense.

My question is, what defense? I wasn't aware they had one. Is this a new development that I'm not aware of?

OU has had only one good defensive game all year long and that was against Texas Tech. Well, two if you want to count the game against 1-11 Chattanooga. Actually, they held 0-12 Washington at bay, too. Wow, maybe I'm wrong. OU has a "great" defense.

On some of the message boards, I get the impression OU fans don't even think that their defense is bad at all. What!!!!

Let's run by some points totals OU has surrendered:

45 points to a one-dimensional Texas offense

35 points to Kansas.

41 points to Oklahoma State

Now, if you mention these scores to the OU faithful, they will probably counter it with "Well, those are great offensive teams." Then they will usually add something like, "Maybe the SEC should learn what offense is, you redneck."

I would agree that those three teams are good offensive clubs, so I guess my next question is, what happened against Kansas State (35 points), Nebraska (28), and Texas A&M (28)?

Another thing I've heard is that OU has pulled all of their starters by the third quarter.

Bob Stoops sure as hell didn't pull his starters in the Texas game. The Sooners only beat Kansas by 14 in a game that was tied at halftime, so obviously he didn't pull his starters then, either. And in the season finale against Okie State, the game was within a touchdown half way through the fourth quarter. To top it off, 28 of Kansas State's points were scored in the first half.

These are just some examples of players that have had big days against OU this year:

Robert Griffen of Baylor had 102 yards rushing on 21 carries (4.85 ypc) and two TDs.

Texas' Chris Ogbonnaya had 127 yards rushing on 15 carries (8.5 ypc). Those 127 yards counted for nearly 40 percent of his season total. I guess playing OU will help any player's stat line.

In the same game, Longhorn receivers Jordan Shipley and Quan Cosby combined for 20 receptions and 234 yards receiving.

Kansas State's Josh Freeman passed for 478 yards and three TDs.

Dezmon Briscoe of Kansas had 12 catches for 269 yards receiving and two TDs. Holy Crap!!! 269 yards!!! You would think after the first 150 yards they would try to do something different. The next highest receiver had 24 yards. HEY, OU, COVER No. 80!!!

K State's Ernie Pierce had 11 catches for 176 yards. The previous four games he had just six receptions for 101 yards.

Roy Helu of Nebraska had 157 yards rushing on 16 carries (9.8 ypc) and two TDs. Surprise, surprise, that was his best game of the year.

I think you get the point.

All year long the Sooners have proved that their defense is not very good. Is something all of the sudden going to change against the Gators, who are basically playing a home game on their Jan. 8 meeting?

I'll agree that Oklahoma's defensive stats are a bit inflated because they do play some good offenses. But Florida's offense hasn't exactly been bad this year. In fact, they have as good of an offense if not better than most of the teams OU played in the Big 12 this year. 

And Florida did it against better defenses. 

Both teams have great offenses that are loaded with playmakers, and both have good, experienced coaching staffs. But only one has a bad defense—and they've proved it all year long.  

Official prediction: Florida 41, OU 24