Lessons learned from Oklahoma’s FSU victory

The Oklahoma Sooners have been college football’s top-ranked team in the Associated Press poll from the preseason on this year, but Saturday marked their first real chance to live up to the hype.

Week 1’s 47-14 win over Tulsa was impressive, but it was the Week 2 road clash against No. 5 Florida State that not only gave the Sooners the chance to prove they were for real, but also ranked as one of the toughest tests of their entire schedule. They overcame that obstacle in style, though, picking up an impressive 23-13 win in a tough road environment with a national audience tuning in.

The Sooners weren’t overly dominant, and this was a close game for most of the night, but in the end, they picked up a very solid victory. Landry Jones’ quarterbacking performance wasn’t great, but it was enough against a strong Seminoles’ defense; Jones completed 18 of 27 attempts (66.7 percent) for 199 yards and a touchdown with two interceptions, but also ran for an early touchdown. The Oklahoma ground game also didn’t impress from an efficiency perspective, with Dominque Whaley averaging just 3.4 yards per carry and Brennan Clay only slightly better at 4.3, but the two featured backs combined to pick up 123 yards on the day.

In the end, it was the Sooners’ defense that really came through, though – and that’s crucial to their title hopes, as that unit carried the majority of the questions heading into this year.

Following the departure of top defensive end Jeremy Beal, the injury to star linebacker Travis Lewis and tragic offseason death of linebacker Austin Box, it wasn’t certain Oklahoma could even maintain their middling defensive performance from 2010. They did more than that Saturday, though, and held Florida State to just 27 total rushing yards and 219 passing yards in a hostile environment. If the defense can continue to play like that down the stretch, this could be a very good year for Oklahoma.

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This might just be Oklahoma’s toughest test until the postseason. The remainder of their schedule really isn’t all that difficult, as two of the ranked teams on there at the moment (No. 23 Texas and No. 19 Baylor) aren’t likely to put up much of a fight, and they get potential spoiler Texas A&M (ranked ninth right now) at home. They will have a challenging game to close the regular season at current No. 8 Oklahoma State, but the Cowboys’ chief threat is their explosive offensive pairing of quarterback Brandon Weeden and receiver Justin Blackmon. If the Sooners’ defense can step up the way it did against FSU, that might be a very surmountable hurdle.

As Sports Illustrated‘s Andy Staples pointed out, scheduling a tough out-of-conference game against Florida State instead of a Division I-AA cupcake may prove very valuable for Oklahoma; this win not only alleviates some concerns about the Sooners’ strength-of-schedule, but it also gives them some experience in persevering through adversity, which may come in very useful as the season progresses.

Florida State’s season is anything but doomed despite the loss, though. For one thing, the Seminoles can take comfort from the fact that they only lost to the nation’s top-ranked team by 10 despite a mid-game injury to starting quarterback E.J. Manuel. They hung right in there with Oklahoma for most of the night, and even though their offense couldn’t get much done against the OU defense, their own defense did a terrific job of containing the vaunted Sooner passing game.

The Seminoles fell to No. 11 in this week’s AP poll, but they’re still the top ACC team (Virginia Tech is next at No. 13) and the favourite to win the conference. If they do that, they’ll get a BCS spot. The national championship game is probably out of reach now, as the Seminoles don’t really have the strength of schedule to be picked above a one-loss team from a more prominent conference, but if enough dominoes fall the right way, that might even be a possibility.

The Seminoles turned in a decent showing given the circumstances, and still have a lot to play for despite their failure to pull off the upset. This game showed us a lot of promising things about Oklahoma, but it also had some positive takeaways for FSU. If the Seminoles can build on what they did right (particularly on defense) and improve the areas where they had issues (especially the ground game), it could yet be an excellent year in Tallahassee as well as in Norman.

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