One :: Stout Pass Rush: Somewhat strange in that Texas Tech and OU are tied for 2nd … in the nation..
Have to agree Set .. the Raider def end and Def tackle rotation is pretty good. I guess I expected Coach Sadler to get a good solid product from these guys. Howard and Sharpe showed flashes of really solid play in 07 and 08. And in fact the old adage of addition by subtraction describes this situation. The media pundits all started the season saying " well they will never replace the sack production for M. Dixon and B. Williams.." I felt watching the two starters that they were chomping at the bit to play. The loss of Sandy Riley and B. Sesay hurt. The addition of Henley as def end helped. Ie 4 – 5 sacks for him alone? The nose and Def Tackle positions really are better than advertised and generally we just want them to stuff up the middle and keep the linebackers free. The thing that goes a bit unnoticed from those down lineman is the tackles for a loss. Tech D linemen have over 35 so far in the 09 campaign? The addition of solid to above average play by the linebackers adds into equation because it goes to taking options from the offense.

Two :: Which QB: OU’s Landry Jones went from throwing 5 interceptions against Nebraska to throwing 5 touchdowns against Texas A&M…
Watched both games and that’s exactly accurate. L. Jones wasn’t hurried by the TAMU down linemen he was slapped at least 6 times by Nebraska. And the Sooner O line did pretty well.

Three :: Scoring Defense: It may have been this time last year when the OU scoring defense was actually ranked higher than the Texas Tech offense. …
I think it’s more along these lines. Tech offense is a slice and dice operation. Catch passes, run draws and shovels. Never let the defense out number you at the point of attack. Find the mismatch and expose somebody for yards by Raider skill folks. The losses come when the opposing defense starts tackling in space or getting pass break ups or we have drops. The accuracy thing with the QB is not really an issue in that all the Leach QB’s are accurate that’s what they do. Leach has said it’s not required to have a rifle arm. Just put the ball out in the same place where they receiver can get his hands on it. 90 % of the time if a guy coached by L. Riley or D. Simmons gets their hands on it they come down with it. The rub is when the thrower is being disrupted and the receiver is not getting that 3 foot cone of excellence where the ball should be at every time – I.e. how they practiced it. Examples of def.disruption include TCU 06, Colorado 07, Gator Bowl 08, OU 08, Cotton Bowl 09.

Four :: 3rd Down Conversions: Prior to the Nebraska (7.14%) and TAMU (27.27%) games, the OU defense gave up a 3rd down conversion rate of 41.18%…
A very telling statistic since it’s what defensive coordinators ultimately get graded on. Look at the top 25 college def coordinators all of them have a defense which routinely keeps the opposing offense from converting 3rd downs. It’s a mark of honor for those that make their living throttling offenses.. Force punts or FG’s. Get the defense off the field. BTW twice the Raider defense got OSU into punting situations and twice we hit their punter trying to make the game changer special teams play. That the Raider special teamers even got that close is encouraging to me. But that’s another topic for another day.

Five :: Turnovers: This is easy. When Oklahoma loses the turnover battle, it’s a loss (Texas and Nebraska) while Texas Tech is winning despite being in the red in turnover margin…
Here is where sometimes productivity out weighs performance. It’s why people don’t mind playing keep away with a Mike Leach coached team. It’s highly likely that the Raider offense is going to get into the Red Zone and score a TD. Last week the Cowboys – here is a shock – ran off 8 plus minutes start the 3rd quarter. So even though this team throws a lot of interceptions (not really statistically significant because they throw a lot of passes) they also move the ball into the end zone. The other dropped balls, muffed punts and miscues are pretty rare. The one category of fumble which absolutely kills this type offense is the QB drop when hit. Again it’s a tendency thing. It’s what the defense is doing to survive the onslaught of passes. So when it happens examples – Baylor 08, Cotton Bowl 09, UT 09 & UH 09, KU 09 it’s really a killer the loss of yardage virtually guarantees a Raider punt and usually the opposition scores.

Lincoln Riley just said on 104.3 that the coaching staff was up game planning until 4:30am today. I hope they came up with something good;)