For the second consecutive game, OU’s chances of remaining undefeated were jeopardized by special teams.
Redshirt junior kicker Zach Schmit failed to put OU on the board after missing a 38-yard field goal on its second drive of the game. Late in the first quarter, Schmit missed once more on a 43-yard attempt.
Despite the six points Schmit left on the board, Venables made it clear he’ll remain OU’s starting kicker going forward.
“I got great confidence in Zach,” Venables said following the Sooners’ 31-29 win over UCF. “He’s having a little rough patch but man, I believe in him. I've seen him at practice over and over and over deliver.”
It’s not a one-time occurrence for Schmit, either. Last season, he delivered on just 12 of his 18 field goal attempts with a season-long of 44 yards. During OU’s 34-30 win over Texas in the Red River Rivalry, Schmit came up short on a 45-yard attempt, which would’ve given the Sooners a two-score lead with under eight minutes to go.
Though the Sooners have escaped disaster on special teams in each of their past two contests, Venables knows the woes aren’t sustainable for a team with College Football Playoff aspirations.
It begins with Schmit, whose 69.2% field goal percentage ranks second-worst out of the top-10 teams in the AP Poll.
“We’ve got to be more consistent there,” Venables said. “There's gonna be more tight games, and I got confidence he'll make them in the right time. We're not the only ones, there's lots of guys that got to get better, and certainly that's an area.”
The miscues against Texas were enough for Venables and senior special teams analyst Jay Nuñez to replace starter Josh Plaster with Central Michigan transfer Luke Elzinga, a move that paid off as Elzinga booted five punts for an average of 51.6 yards.
Entering the game, OU was one of two top-10 teams averaging less than 40 yards per punt this season with a mark of 37.5. Venables not only saw improvement with the punting change on Saturday, but most other aspects of special teams which nearly cost them a historical victory against the Longhorns.
“I thought we were better at punting,” Venables said. “We did a great job on some of the coverage units, had a couple of nice little returns and they tried to run a reverse and a throwback and we snuck those out as well.”
Big plays, familiar mistakes hurt Sooners’ defense
Through the first quarter of Saturday’s contest, OU’s defense looked poised to pitch a shutout against the Knights.
UCF’s 15 first quarter plays resulted in 15 yards, one first down, a sack, 1.1 yards per carry on 10 rushing attempts and four punts. A seemingly legitimate question of whether the Knights would cross the 50-yard line or eclipse 100 total yards arose until the second play of the second quarter, when UCF running back RJ Harvey broke free for a 54-yard rush to the OU one-yard line.
The play seemed to mark a dramatic shift from the Sooners dominating every defensive aspect to resorting to the mistakes they frequently made in 2022, which defensive coordinator Ted Roof chalks up to one thing:
“Inconsistencies.”
OU’s pass coverage reached a low with under two minutes to play in the first half when UCF quarterback John Rhys Plumlee took advantage of a blown coverage assignment and found Javon Baker for an 86-yard touchdown to give the Knights the lead.
Trailing by eight points with less than four minutes left and facing a 3rd and 15, Plumlee once again exploited the Sooners’ weak coverage and found Randy Pittman for a 39-yard gain on a drive that resulted in a touchdown.
The big plays, which OU has defended so well this season, flooded in from the second quarter throughout the game, to the point where what seemed like a shutout performance turned into a dogfight where a two-point conversion stand was necessary to seal its win.
“It wasn't, but man it had all the makings of being a dominant performance on defense,” Venables said. “We got punished for making some mistakes. It doesn't take much to be on the right side of it, though. And I believe in those guys that were a part of some of the mistakes we made today.”
A flash of dominance — and relief — came in the form of OU stuffing the Knights potentially game-tying two-point conversion, a play which could erase the 2022-esque mistake-ridden performance seen from quarters two through four.
“I saw a disciplined football play,” Roof said. “It looked like it was going to be a double pass and the coverage guys stayed in coverage and the guy that was supposed to come get his man came and got his man and tackled him. Usually when that happens, good things happen.”
Julie Venables update
The pink ribbons painted in each end zone and nearly all coaches decked out in pink OU gear to honor Breast Cancer Awareness Month meant a little more for Venables, whose wife, Julie, was diagnosed with the disease this summer.
Venables himself was dressed in a pink quarter zip with an OU logo on it worn over a pink polo shirt with pink shoes.
“Obviously when it hits home, it's personal,” Venables said. “It creates a lot of awareness, hopefully, for everybody. And as I said before, she's great, she's a fighter.”
Venables also took the moment to give an update on Julie, who will be undergoing a “pretty extensive surgery” in early November and “will be gone for a couple of weeks.”
“She's ready for that and we got a great game plan for us,” Venables said. And again, (we’re) using this moment in this journey to be a blessing for other people, to create awareness. As we know, breast cancer is one of the most beatable cancers there is but early detection is important.
“So using this moment and our foundation as an opportunity to try to create a pathway to help people with early detection and the importance of getting scans and being mindful that way.”
