Each week in practice, Brent Venables revisits the plays OU didn’t execute well the previous game, draws them up and runs through them.
Among them are likely a few from the Sooners’ 31-29 win over UCF on Saturday where Gus Malzahn’s deception got the best of their defense multiple times. Hashing out mistakes against unusual plays is more crucial than ever ahead of OU’s game against Kansas, who’s also known for their use of trick plays.
“There's a lot going on from an eye candy standpoint,” Venables said of the Jayhawks’ offense. “You’ve got to fit gaps, you’ve got to get off of blocks and tackle well. You’ve got to play with great discipline, physicality, aggressiveness, all the things that you would think of every single week.”
Prior to the Sooners game against UCF, Venables noted the Knights and Jayhawks are “top two in deceptive plays.” It didn’t seem to be any problem for his defense in the first quarter, as they held UCF to 15 total yards, one first down and forced four punts.
Eventually, Malzahn’s trickery exploited OU’s defense in the form of big plays, including a 54-yard rush inside the Sooners’ one-yard line, 86-yard blown coverage touchdown pass and 6.6 yards per carry in the second quarter.
As Venables and Co. work to improve against plays like that, the lack of successfully stopping deception against the Knights bodes well for when the Sooners (7-0, 4-0 Big 12) face Kansas (5-2, 2-2) at 11 a.m. Saturday in Lawrence on Fox.
“Probably the failure and the disappointment (will help) create more focus (and) a focused intensity at practice and in meetings,” Venables said. “Humility can be a great asset for you when you have some failure. What I like is that we found a way to win and overcome some of our mistakes, but we've got great ownership of both the good and the bad, and that’s allowed the growth process to take place.”
The bad came from the Sooners’ discipline, like when redshirt senior Woodi Washington abandoned his coverage assignment in an attempt to make a play on quarterback John Rhys Plumlee, who looked as if he were going to scramble, leading to an 86-yard touchdown just prior to halftime.
They refer to plays like that as “eye crimes,” characterized by a player’s lack of focus on his own assignment and trying to make a play elsewhere.
“Just being greedy, trying to make plays that maybe we thought were there,” sophomore linebacker Dasan McCullough said. “Trying to make game changing plays, which is great when you actually can do it, but when (you can’t) it looks really bad. It's just being undisciplined.”
Even when the Sooners showed discipline by seemingly making a goal line stand against the Knights, sophomore linebacker Jaren Kanak was penalized for unsportsmanlike conduct, giving UCF a fresh set of downs.
“This game will punish you for the lack of poise and discipline,” Venables said postgame Saturday. “I challenged the team to … strive for people calling you disciplined, and we were exactly opposite of that today.”
Though a touchdown resulted from the new set of downs, OU was one mental lapse away from making a goal line stand for the second game in a row, sparking a new sense of belief in the defense.
“Coach (Venables) gave us so much credit. He was astounded. He said, 'I've never seen anything like that,'" junior defensive end Ethan Downs said. "The (defensive) line and everybody to stop him on the 1-yard line play after play after play and just stuffing it. Getting the opportunity to do that again and mimic that, until we had a penalty, it's just building confidence as a group that we're not gonna give them nothing. Even if they have 1 yard to get we're not gonna give them nothing and living up to that.
"That's a championship defense."
OU’s defense takes its confidence from goal line stands into a game where it's sure to be tested by an explosive Kansas offense, which is tied for seventh nationally with 5.6 rush yards per carry.
The Jayhawks’ run game starts with Devin Neal, who’s taken 90 carries for 659 yards on the season while averaging 7.3 yards per carry, the fifth highest mark nationally. While OU failed to establish its run game against the Knights until the fourth quarter, Neal took 12 carries for 154 yards and a touchdown in KU’s 51-22 win over UCF on Oct. 7.
“At times we've been good and at times we haven't been good against everybody,” Venables said. “Devon is an outstanding player, he can house call it at any point in time, he’s one of the guys, to me, (where) everything kind of goes through him.
“Our guys are confident in our scheme. I feel like they have a much better understanding of our scheme (and) going into game eight, we should. When we're doing all the little things right, we're hard to run on because we got good players. But when guys get nosy or guys don't do the right things from a fundamental standpoint, or they have the eye crimes, bad things usually happen and you get exposed. This game punishes you for those things.
“Instead of focusing on a guy, we really focus on us, our process and how we play well regardless of who has the ball. But (Neal) is a great, great challenge. Every once in a while you'll face (a running back) that you can get away with not doing all the little things right. This is a team and he’s a running back that if you don't, he's gonna make you pay.”
The Jayhawks’ strong rushing attack extends to their two quarterbacks Jalon Daniels and Jason Bean, who’ve combined for 165 rush yards on the season. The two have combined for 1,618 passing yards, 14 touchdowns and three interceptions while leading the No. 3 offense in the Big 12. Daniels, their typical starter, hasn’t played since Sept. 23. KU coach Lance Leipold says he’s progressing but is questionable to play against the Sooners.
Fresh off a week where lack of discipline, inconsistency and deception got the best of the Sooners’ defense, the challenge of an explosive offense posing similarities to the Knights will test Oklahoma come Saturday.
“One of the most explosive offenses, explosive run (games) and explosive pass (games) in all of college football,” Venables said of the Jayhawks. “We've got to do a great job of playing with discipline, gap integrity and staying on top of everything, leveraging routes in the back end, so that they don't have this great balance. That's the challenge of all of that, it's not like a really good option team that can't really throw the ball with a lick when you’re playing option coverage, this is a team that can throw it really, really well as well as run it really well.”
