Podcast episode
The 5th Quarter
The 5th Quarter 9/8/08
Corey DeMoss and Steven Jones discuss the latest in OU football.
Photo Gallery
OU football vs. Cincinnati
Daily photographer Zach Butler took photos in Saturday, Sept. 5th's OU football game vs. the Cincinnati Bearcats.
Sophomore quarterback Sam Bradford entered this season with high expectations after a stellar freshman season, but he established a new standard for himself Saturday.
Bradford threw for 395 yards and five touchdowns, surpassing his previous career-high of 363 yards set in his career opener against North Texas last year.
“Sam was fantastic at the line of scrimmage,” said head coach Bob Stoops. “I thought Coach Wilson and the coaching staff did an excellent job. Sam is such a good decision maker that you have such confidence to do whatever you want to do.”
While Bradford had an outstanding game statistically, he also recorded the second multiple-interception game of his career. The first came near the two-minute mark of the first quarter, where he slightly overthrew his intended receiver.
The other occurred in the second quarter, when a ball ricochetted off his receiver’s hands and into the arms of a defender.
However, besides the two interceptions, he was near perfect, due in large part to redshirt freshman wide receiver Ryan Broyles’ stellar performance.
Broyles and Bradford connected for 141 yards and a touchdown, which helped the offense torch Cincinnati for a total of 592 yards.
But Broyles wasn’t the only Sooner receiver in on the action. Senior Juaquin Iglesias had three receptions for 67 yards and a touchdown in the game.
“The guys really executed well,” Stoops said. “I thought [Bradford] threw the ball incredibly well. The receivers did a great job, everyone did.”
Junior tight end Jermaine Gresham added seven receptions and 93 yards, along with two touchdowns.
All the production from the perimeter made for Bradford’s great day.
“We knew we had to go out there and score, and I think we did a great job of going out there and executing [today],” Bradford said.
The passing game wasn’t the only successful facet of the offense. The Sooners also spread the ball around in the running game.
Sophomore running back DeMarco Murray rushed 15 times for 88 yards and a touchdown. Junior Chris Brown added 15 carries for 71 yards and a touchdown, marking the second consecutive game that both running backs scored.
Sophomore Mossis Madu also contributed, adding 41 yards to OU’s rushing attack, which produced a total of 197 yards.
While the Sooners managed 18 first downs in the passing game, they also had 11 from the running game in the contest.
The Sooners’ 592 total yards is 105 more than they accumulated the week before against a much lesser opponent in Tennessee-Chattanooga.
“The key to me was that we protected the quarterback, had some push in our offense that we thought was lacking last week,” said offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson.
OU also ended the game with an advantage in time of possession, even though Cincinnati led the category at halftime. The first half saw the Sooners score quickly, with none of their first three scoring drives totaling more than three minutes. But the Sooners slowed things down in the second half and won the possession battle by nearly five minutes.
“It’s nice to control the clock, you do need to do that in the fourth quarter,” Wilson said.
With the 52 points the Sooners scored, they have now scored at least 50 in both of the first two games of the season, a feat they also accomplished last year when they scored more than 50 points in each of their first four games. Their average of 54.5 points per game ranks sixth in the nation.
The Oklahoma Daily is pleased to provide you the opportunity to share your thoughts about this article. We encourage lively debate on the issues of the day, but we ask you refrain from using profanity or other offensive speech, engaging in personal attacks or name-calling, posting advertising, or straying from the topic at hand. To comment, you must be a registered user of OUDaily.com. Thanks for taking the time to offer your thoughts.
You must be logged in to leave a comment. Log in | Register
jimjames 3 years, 8 months ago
Are you guys on the take from the AD or did you just snort an 8 ball right before recording this??
If you want to earn some credibility, you need to take a deep breath and try to remain somewhat objective. Meth kills.