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The original was posted on /r/cfb by /u/JLewiii on 2023-10-07 23:50:46.

I’ve just gone through Oklahoma’s highlights from the season so far, and what has struck me is how unequipped their competitors have been. Talent-wise, OU’s competitors are just not playing anywhere near the same level of football as a ranked team would. Just on shear athleticism, most of these teams have never had a chance.

Arkansas St., SMU, and Tulsa are not exactly bursting at the seams with talent. Sure, OU blew out Arkansas State badly. But so did friggin Memphis.

Even still, Oklahoma just completely blows coverage on defense for no apparent reason. Tulsa scored 17 points despite the fact that a glance at a play or two clearly shows their players are running in lower gears.

And then there’s the more talented teams OU has faced. The juggernauts known as Cincinnati and Iowa State. Cincinnati held Oklahoma to just 20 points. At this point in the season, Cincinnati already has two other losses, one of which was to Miami…Ohio. Iowa State scored 20 on the Sooners and has also lost two other games. One of those losses was a 7–10 embarrassment against Ohio. Not Ohio State. Plain-ass Ohio. And OU let them score three times as much.

The straight stats are not telling a complete story here because they don’t account for who OU has played. The OU defense is actually shockingly bad in context. I’m not seeing any clear improvements from the defense that let an almost identical (and if anything worse) Texas offense hang 49 on them last year.

The OU offense is clearly the stronger side of the ball for OU. But the Cincinnati game shows it’s unreliable. From watching highlights, even on good runs, the OU running backs have poor vision. Once they get past the line of scrimmage, they practically home in on defenders ready to tackle them.

OU’s ability to stay in this game at all will hinge on the back of Dillon Gabriel’s raw talent. The problem for OU is that he’s going to be running for his life and throwing the ball away all game, and especially in the second half when teams lose their ability to keep up with Texas’s depth rotation of constantly fresh bulldozers on the D line.

To even make it close, OU will have to figure out a way to get the ball out of Gabriel’s hands fast and pass often.

On the other side of the ball, so long as Ewers shows up with a pulse, he will absolutely shred the OU defense. It will be especially bad if OU cannot match Texas in man-to-man coverage because its midrange zone defense is atrocious, and that happens to be Ewers’s sweet spot.

Don’t even get me started on Jonathan Brooks. I had this previously at 27–42, but after seeing that defense I think Texas may score near 50 again like it did last year. And in light of that Cincinnati struggle, I don’t know if I would trust the OU offense to produce 27 either. I think OU may be limited to 21, and Texas will comfortably win by 30 or so.

I think OU is basically just Dillon Gabriel. He’s super talented, but one guy can only do so much against a complete and deep team like Texas.