Clay Bennett must have mixed feelings. On one hand, his school OU has a legit chance at winning its third straight Heisman. On the other hand, this means other than O State fans no one will care what the Thunder will be doing if the Thunder unload Chris Paul before the OU football season comes to an end in what could be early January.
Three other quarterbacks as in Trevor Lawrence, Tua, and Joe Burrow will probably have stellar seasons, but Jalen Hurts will have the stats and a compelling story for voters if OU’s defense can just be functional.
Lincoln Riley knows this and he will give Jalen Hurts every chance possible to complete his story with a Final Four appearance and a possible ultimate game of redemption against Tua and the Tide.
But again…that OU defense. Will they really be better? Can we really tell anything just yet? It wasn’t Texas which exposed OU’s putrid defense last season…it was Army. Jim Traber has it right—we probably won’t know until Alex Grinch’s new defense plays Texas Tech.
On Saturday in the iconic setting of the Rose Bowl–Jalen Hurts looked like a Little League ringer playing against Chip Kelly’s awful UCLA squad. As I wrote yesterday…do we really know what Mike Gundy as a coach would have been without T Boone’s economic largesse? By the same token we’re seeing what Chip Kelly is as a coach without Phil Knight’s money at Oregon…and the answer to date is not much.
Jalen Hurts looked like a high school senior toying against JV players on Saturday evening as the Sooners strolled to a predictably easy 48-14 win over the Bruins.
Offensively—the Sooners might actually be better than last season. OU’s O line under Bill Bedenbaugh once again looks like one of the nation’s best. Trey Sermon is running with a cause and punishing opponents. And OU literally has so many receivers I don’t have all their names down yet.
But I have two down for sure….Lamb and Rambo. We knew about Lamb, but what we didn’t know was that Charleston Rambo would make us forget about Marquise ‘Downtown’ Brown by the third game. And the promising thing is we saw this from Rambo against Alabama in the national semi-finals last season. He’s shown he can do this against elite defenders…not just Houston and UCLA.
I’m not Clay Bennett. He can’t openly switch and start wearing a Warriors cap and cheer against his soon to be tanking Thunder. But he can take solace that at least until this OU football season comes to an end if Jalen Hurts stays healthy these Sooners should make a run at a third straight Heisman and a third straight Final Four.
Beyond that—none of us yet know if OU’s defense will be good enough to dream of a team which could hang with Clemson or Alabama.
Georgia, Notre Dame and LSU …yes. But the defense will have to get better every week to hang with Clemson and Alabama. You have to get stops and get off the field against those two powerhouses. You have to play real football.