Why does Oklahoma need extra time to beat the army

It was shocking to see the army so close to beating Oklahoma on Saturday. It probably should not have been. The Black Knights have not lost in 18 victories in the last two years. They were neglected by 28.5 points in the top 12 favorites, but when the service academies are supposed to be crushed like that, they almost always exceed expectations.

The army is always competing with two perceptions. One of them is that the triple-option offense is a gimmick, executed exclusively because the Knights do not have the players to do anything else. There is a little truth in this feeling, but it goes much further. The other perception is that the army is always bad, as it has been for most of the century before Jeff Monken began a revival.

This post does not mainly concern the army. This is the team that needed extra time to beat them at home, 28-21, at week 4. How should we care about Oklahoma?

A little, but it's not automatically the day of death.

The Army's style of play made it increasingly difficult for the Oklahoma elite to put together the numbers it used to post.

The army is hardly throwing. The army is not often short of limits. The vast majority of army games are executed in line or the speed options are not as wide as the sideline. The Black Knights launched nine times and completed three of those passes against the OU, which is more of an air raid than they usually are. Last year, they had more than three completions once and launched five times on average.

The result is that the clock is still running. Even if your defense leaves the field against the army (and the OUs have certainly not been), the Knights attack is slowing down. The opponents of the army this year have disputed 68, 72, 76 and now 40 plays. These are numbers ranging from the average to the lowercase, and they come from the schematic shortening of the Knights' games.

The 21 regulatory points of Okahoma were derisory. They have been the least numerous of the school since 2015, the first year as offensive coordinator of Lincoln Riley, when the Sooners scored 17 times. Unlike those defeats against Texas and Clemson, the fundamentals of this game were healthy. The Sooners got 8.9 yards per pressure. The problem was that OU only had the ball for 15:19 an hour.

The Oklahoma defense having problems with the flexbone option was a predictable problem. This is not an easy task, as many teams are running variants of the triple option now. But that does not give us much New information.

Oklahoma's question is always defense. It's always defense. And the defense was nothing special. The army was allowed to run for 4.3 yards per run, with seven more than 10 yards rushing the average Knight. Most of the Knights' night consisted of packs of 1 to 5 yards, the chains moving slowly upward. The Army had 26 first wins against Oklahoma 19, despite only 4.4 yards per game overall.

The inability to get off the pitch was not good.

The good news: Oklahoma plays in the Big 12. The program recruited a group of first-rate defenders who had virtually no interest in the army's ground attack. They will be more involved in the future. And in a league that likes to pass, the games will actually be longer. Even though OU, Kyler Murray and Offensive defense must see the field in abundance, the OU can win shots on goal.

The bad news: while Oklahoma will not see the option system like that of the military, everyone now knows that the Sooners can not get off the field against well executed running systems that give the offensive several chances to read the defense. Everyone in the Big 12 has noticed this and will try to poke the Sooners with their own triple option look.

So Oklahoma has a summary defense. It's nice to have some familiarity in this rapidly changing world.

If there is a good long-term side of the military game, it is that the unit is getting closer to a long-term answer.

Now in two games of the season in the absence of injured Rodney Anderson, the Sooners seem to have found their marks on the field. Trey Sermon ran 18 times for 119 yards, and Murray ran six times for 80 if he was filtered the first time he was sacked. Sermon had run 13 times for 74 yards the week before against Iowa State, a good result.

The defense of the army is not good. The Knights are regularly placed at the bottom of the national rankings in the major defensive statistics, and they are again present this year. They took part in Saturday's 124th of 130 FBS teams at 7.4 yards per game. The defense against the race was 90th to 4.7. Oklahoma has aggravated all these numbers.

Sermon, which has many soldiers against the army, does not mean much, but it is encouraging that he has achieved his best game. The possible emergence of a fourth year student as a quality student could tell more about the OU's chances rather than reduce it to the military.