Who won Week 13 in the Big 12?
It was a relatively quiet weekend in the Big 12. Baylor’s narrow win over Texas Tech in the BU-TT Bowl didn’t avail them as the Sooners did what they tend to do and crushed Oklahoma State’s dream season with a huge road victory.
The crucial moments came after halftime when the dominant Sooner D-line inflicted a safety on the Cowboys, then their offense had to punt but the ball was fumbled and scooped in for an additional Sooner score, and then Oklahoma State’s ensuing drive ended with a missed field goal. The Cowboys were down 33-24 and never recovered. After the game, Lincoln Riley comforted Sooner fans by squashing the LSU rumors with two simple statements.
“Hold up, Carey. I’m not going to be the next head coach at LSU. Next question.”
Oh wait, no, that’s not quite what happened.
First of all, the Cowboys didn’t fold when they hit that rough patch in the third quarter. Their defense continued to clamp down Oklahoma’s offense and forced their own turnovers to help get back into the game while Spencer Sanders scored on a long speed option run.
The Cowboys played classic flyover defense down the stretch and sacked Caleb Williams four times in the fourth quarter, including on the final play of the game. They achieved this result primarily with a 3-man pass-rush, once again affirming the “teams who can pressure with three go to the Big 12 title” standard which has defined the last few years of conference play. Oklahoma will now miss the Big 12 title game and Oklahoma State will get a rematch with the Baylor Bears.
As for Riley, a parsing of his words proved to be key. He will not be the next head coach of the LSU Tigers and his urging to move on to the next question proved an important part of his PR strategy.
The “Riley to LSU” rumors really seemed to hit a snag when Bruce Feldman reported it was very unlikely. He then followed that tweet up with an interesting comment on the Ryen Russillo podcast where he said he didn’t see Riley taking “THAT job.” Russillo noticed the distinction as well but when questioned, Feldman hemmed and hawed the normal Riley rumor mill about how maybe he’d leave some day for the NFL.
Shortly after, Feldman and then many others were reporting something new. USC was after Riley. If you were reading all these tea leaves quickly in live time, you knew what was coming next.
Lincoln Riley and his staff exiting Norman in the night and leaving Oklahoma without a football staff with just over two weeks until National Signing Day 1.
Contrar-Ian says the glass is half-full
Tough weekend for the Oklahoma Sooners.
First they lost what might be the last Bedlam game ever played in Stillwater, knocking them out of contention for the Big 12 Championship and ending their streak of six straight titles.
Then they lost their head coach the following day to a more glamorous job. This isn’t supposed to happen to Oklahoma.
Next up the recruiting shock began to take hold. De-commits from 2022 haven’t taken off yet but much of the Sooners’ exciting, future 2023 class was built around 5-star Southern California quarterback Malachi Nelson. Where do you figure Nelson will end up now?
Now it’s clear Riley intends to bring virtually his entire staff, leaving Oklahoma with hardly any coaches left to hold together 2022 recruiting while preparing for a bowl game.
Finally, it’s clear the University didn’t see this coming. They are now left to try and conduct a coaching search in the same cycle as USC (already lost that competition), LSU, and Florida. They have to do this while staring at the loaded pistol of NSD1, the business end of the transfer portal, and the double-barrel shotgun of the upcoming move to the SEC.
For years, Oklahoma has drawn great strength from their stability. Bob Stoops re-oriented the program in 1999 and went on a tremendous run which ended when he hired his own successor in Lincoln Riley for 2015. This program hasn’t had a coaching transition and major shock to their culture and system for over two decades and it’s unquestionably a major reason why they’ve maintained such success. All of their evolution has been partial, tweaking an already functioning program to adapt to the changing landscape of the Big 12 and college football. Now?
Here’s the good news.
There’s no need for Oklahoma to completely overhaul their program, there’s a man at hand who can coach the team through the bowl game, aim to stabilize recruiting, and ultimately just take over the program and put it back on its feet for the next head coach perhaps years down the line.
He’s tan, rested, and ready.
Robert Anthony Stoops.
Bob Stoops has already taken over as the interim head coach, he seems to have rushed back into the picture after learning with horror that his successor Lincoln Riley intended to leave the kingdom he built on fire while fleeing the SEC for Hollywood.
It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen something like this occur. Barry Alvarez hardly ever stopped coaching Wisconsin. Bill Snyder retired, had the stadium named after him, then returned for another long stint when K-State fired Ron Prince.
Sure, Oklahoma could conduct a coaching search and try to replace Lincoln Riley. There’s a few names floating out there besides Kliff Kingsbury, the blessed, who’s name is probably out there because noted servant of NFL agents Adam Schefter is trying to help him get a raise.
Matt Campbell supposedly turned down USC. I can believe it, that’s a spotlight job where it’s harder to build a “5-star culture” of the sort Campbell learned in Mount Union. USC has loads of media attention, people hanging around the program, and diva athletes to try and get to buy-in.
Oklahoma is much closer to the sort of Midwest job Campbell has always been rumored to be eyeing. Close enough to a Notre Dame, Michigan, or Ohio State for him to accept? I’m sure Oklahoma will look into it.
Jeff Traylor is a great coach who’d have a decent chance to win over the existing locker room, keep recruiting going, and then certainly to build tough units in the future.
Brent Venables has been rumored as a possibility here for a long time. Is this the opportunity he’s been waiting on? His defenses at Oklahoma, even late in his tenure when fans hated him, were ahead of the curve and better than people realized. He recruits well, is familiar with the territory, and has now studied under both Stoops and Dabo Swinney on how to win National Championships. Never done it himself of course, but he’s been good within his own realm of responsibility (unless he can’t steal the other team’s signs).
Oklahoma will surely kick the tires on all these, but in the meantime Bob will tie them over, and ultimately you wonder if they’ll prefer the “known” of Bob Stoops 2.0 heading into the “unknown” of trying to compete in the SEC.
Right now everything is hot and emotional, but the Sooners have to be careful and calculating here. Bob Stoops could be a stable option who ties them over for a few years as they regather themselves. Perhaps he’ll hire another assistant who can replace him again, he did always have a knack for hires when family wasn’t involved.
Contrar-Ian says the glass is half-empty
Making the Big 12 Championship game is an amazing accomplishment for Baylor. They also may be signing Dave Aranda to a contract extension in the coming weeks, unless he suddenly becomes a candidate for the Sooners and jumps on that opportunity or reaches an understanding with LSU. It appears though as if he’s become comfortable in Waco. Aranda has never really been one to jump around quickly, he seems wise to “the grass is always greener” allure of the coaching carousel.
Ultimately a lot more positives than negatives for the Bears.
The only hangup is this, and it’s barely mentionable, but they are in a tough spot in terms of actually winning the Big 12 Championship.
They made a good show of pretending Gerry Bohanon would play against Texas Tech before rolling with Blake Shapen and they’ll likely do the same against Oklahoma leading into this title match on Saturday. In reality, hamstrings are notoriously fickle and trying to play through hamstring injuries routinely leads to massive overcompensations which cause other injuries. Bohanon could risk it, a Big 12 Championship is the pinnacle of what Baylor could get this season, but even if he was up for it the chances of him being effective against Oklahoma State with a bad wheel are pretty low.
He’s not bringing a ton of awareness and steady pocket play against the Cowboys’ shifting defense (although he’s at least faced it before), what value-add he brings to the Bears is mostly the ability to run the ball on zone-option or direct snap quarterback runs.
So it’ll likely be Shapen with Bohanon perhaps taking a shot in the bowl.
Here’s how Tech was defending Shapen in the BU-TT Bowl.
They loaded the box most of the time and sat on a lot of Baylor’s route combinations with flat-footed safeties. When they played single high, the deep safety was typically flat-footed for a run or pass read before getting depth.
Baylor ran the ball 49 times in this game for 183 yards at 3.7 ypc with one score against these aggressive run fits. Ostensibly this defense was begging to be beat over the top but Shapen was 20-34 for 254 yards at 7.5 ypa with two touchdowns and zero picks. Good enough to win and make the Big 12 title game, which is a major victory for the Bears, but against Oklahoma State it’s a dicey outlook. Aside from the throw above which Tech dropped, he had a few others which were near-picks the Raiders couldn’t quite bring in.
Shapen is an interesting talent, he’s a solid athlete if not much of a runner and he has a really quick release. He’s reading the field too slowly right now, which is common for young quarterbacks who can get the ball out quickly and are afforded the time to wait for a clear picture…until they aren’t. The game will slow down for him in time and he’ll be a pretty interesting prospect.
It’s just that they face Oklahoma State with a title on the line next Saturday.
So overall, the glass contains a rich drink for the Baylor Bears, but there may be a bittersweet aftertaste if they are pummeled in the Big 12 title. Right now, a pummeling seems likely. I think a nice consolation prize would be to win a big bowl game against a national program, which Baylor has long struggled to do.
Who won Week 13 in the Big 12?
A few minor winners…
- Kansas played West Virginia well with Jalon Daniels at quarterback and have a bright future.
- West Virginia won! They are now bowl eligible and will have those practices to develop their roster and aim for a breakout in 2022.
- Texas watched the Aggies lose on the last play of the game, saw Oklahoma miss out on the Big 12 Championship, bid farewell to Lincoln Riley, and avoided a bottom of the league finish when Kansas lost. All small victories, but victories nonetheless.
Big winner is Oklahoma State, obviously.
The Cowboys wanted this one badly and they got it in spectacular fashion. To beat your rival with your last chance (at home at least) and forestall the need to beat them in Arlington for the title is a major win. To then watch their coach bail on the program while their fans shriek in agony…what a deep drink of schadenfreude this must be for the ‘Pokes.
It’s extremely rare for Stillwater to have such bragging rights over the Sooners. They beat them now and again and have denied them in the past from Big 12 titles (2011) and National title chances (2001, although Miami would have crushed them, and 2002). This was a pretty sweet victory though and a tremendous feather in the cap for Mike Gundy’s career.
All year the Cowboys have maintained composure as a team in tight games and won with defense and disciplined play down the stretch. Spencer Sanders still makes questionable throws and mistakes, but late in the game often produces on the ground with his legs while protecting the ball. It’s a formula which is working for Oklahoma State and they now have a chance at their second Big 12 Championship.
In the future when Oklahoma and Texas are gone? Their chances at winning more obviously go up. It’s a bright and sunny day in Stillwater this Monday.
Who should Oklahoma hire? Who will win the Big 12 Championship? Discuss for free on the Flyover Football board!
