The Football Brainiacs

The ONE Thing Between OU and a Championship Run

Oklahoma won 10 games in 2025 with a ground game that was measurably worse than the one that lost six times the year before. The numbers don’t lie. But they demand an explanation.

THE  10 WINS

Oklahoma won 10 games in 2025. They reached the College Football Playoff. They beat Alabama on the road. They sent seven players to the NFL Draft. By every surface-level standard, the Sooners had arrived in the SEC.

The run game had almost nothing to do with it.

That’s not an opinion. That’s a data verdict. And as the Sooners head into a 2026 campaign with a brutal opening schedule and a program-wide mandate to establish a physical identity, the question looming over everything coming out of spring camp isn’t whether Oklahoma can win. It’s whether they’ve actually built a running football team or whether they’ve just gotten better at hiding that they haven’t.

THE PARADOX NOBODY WANTS TO SAY OUT LOUD

Here is the contradiction at the center of Oklahoma’s last two seasons: they ran the ball better when they lost.

Not marginally better. In their two 2025 SEC losses with Texas and Ole Miss. Oklahoma averaged 4.78 yards per designed carry. In their six conference wins, they averaged 3.93. The team that supposedly arrived as a physical, improved running outfit ran for more yards, at higher efficiency, in the games they didn’t win.

“OU ran the ball better in their two 2025 SEC losses than in their six wins. If you’re telling me this was a run-first team, the data says no.”

From 2024 to 2025, Oklahoma’s designed-run yards per carry fell from 4.59 to 4.11. Their rushing success rate dropped 8.1 percentage points, from 40.3 percent to 32.2. Their EPA per rush flipped from positive territory — plus 0.127 — into the negative, at minus 0.046. Their stuff rate climbed from 18.3 percent to nearly one in four attempts. 

Nearly 24 percent of Oklahoma’s designed runs in 2025 SEC play gained zero yards or fewer.

These are not the numbers of a team that improved its ground game. These are the numbers of a team that learned to survive without one.

THE RUN GAME LIE

Before indicting 2025, let’s talk about what the 2024 box scores were actually saying — because the box scores were lying to you.

Oklahoma’s 2024 NCAA rushing yards per carry in SEC play was 3.17. That number made national analysts write off the Sooners as physically overmatched. It wasn’t wrong, exactly. But it was profoundly misleading. Here’s what the NCAA accounting convention buried inside that number: sacks. 

In NCAA statistics, sack yardage counts against a team’s rushing total. And Oklahoma was sacked 4.62 times per SEC game in 2024,  dead last in the entire conference, and it wasn’t close.

Strip those 37 sacks out and apply the yardage to passing plays where it belongs, and Oklahoma’s true designed-run yards per carry in 2024 SEC play was 4.59. That ranked better than 11 of 16 SEC teams. It was within striking distance of Auburn, the conference’s top adjusted rusher.

“You net the sacks out, and you looked at yards per carry from 24 to 25. In conference play, we actually dropped like a half yard in yards per carry.” — Brad

The numbers lied to you in 2024. 

And in 2025, they told a more complicated truth than anyone wanted to hear.

THE 2025 REALITY CHECK

The story of Oklahoma’s 2025 SEC run game, told honestly, sounds like this: they ran it less, ran it worse, and won anyway.

Designed rush attempts per game fell from 33.5 to 28.4. Rushing yards per game dropped from 153.9 to 116.8 — a 24 percent collapse in volume. Explosive run rate, plays of 10 or more yards, fell from 13.8% to 10.6%. Short-yardage conversion on third or fourth down with two or fewer yards to go, the “manhood plays” of the game, the ones that define physical identity cratered from 80 percent in 2024 to 46.7 percent in 2025.

That last number is the most damning thing in the entire dataset. Oklahoma was elite at the prove-it runs in 2024. In 2025, they were barely better than a coin flip. The interior run-blocking didn’t improve. It regressed. The team just stopped putting itself in those situations.

“Our run game actually genuinely got worse from 24 to 25. That is a bad trend when you see all the advanced metrics literally dropping 5, 6, 8, 10 percent.” — Rob

WHAT ACTUALLY FIXED THE SOONERS

So if the run game didn’t drive the improvement, what did?

 Two things: pass protection and red-zone finishing.

Oklahoma went from 4.62 sacks allowed per SEC game in 2024 — the worst mark in the conference to 2.44 in 2025. That single improvement unlocked the entire passing offense. With John Mateer healthy and upright in the pocket, with injection of youthful talent in Fasusi, Fodje, and EPL into a developing front, the Sooners suddenly had an passing offense that could function. They went from dead last in the SEC in sacks taken to 8th out of 16. That’s not elite. But it’s no longer catastrophic.

The red zone transformation was equally dramatic. Oklahoma’s rushing yards per carry inside the 20 went from 2.19 in 2024 to 5.22 in 2025. Their red-zone rushing touchdown rate jumped from 15.6 percent to 38.9. The 2024 unit moved the ball and stalled. The 2025 unit finished drives. And then there was the defense points allowed per SEC game fell from 26.4 to 20.2. In a conference where margin is everything, that’s the difference between 2-6 and 6-2.

NO EXCUSE LEFT TO MAKE

Which brings us to 2026, and to a conversation building all spring with a quiet, growing urgency.

“There is no excuse for there not to be a better run game. You have to have a better run game. Go three straight years of struggling to run the football and that is a systematic issue.” — Rob

They have done everything right this offseason. A new running backs coach. Portal depth at the position. Jason Witten’s arrival at tight end is specifically a run-game-adjacent hire. The linemen who struggled in 2025 are veteran players now entering their third year in the SEC system. Fasusi, Fodje and EPL — the program’s emerging bash brothers on the offensive front are healthy and ascending.

“If we end up midway in 26 or ending 26 with similar stats,” Rob said on the pod, “that becomes a genuine problem. Something with the system is broken.” 

The excuses have run out. The investment has been made. What comes next is proof.

2026: THE ANSWER CAN’T WAIT

Oklahoma opens 2026 with Michigan, then Georgia in week four, then Texas. Those are not teams you survive on a ground game that gains nothing and a defense that bails you out. The margin is too thin. The opponents are too good.

What the Sooners proved in 2025 is that this offense can function and reach a playoff without a dominant run game — as long as pass protection holds and the defense is elite. But that formula has a ceiling. It has a ceiling against Georgia. It has a ceiling in the Cotton Bowl. It has a ceiling in any game where the other side of the ball breaks down.

“Brad, they got 10 wins off that bad run game, which is incredible. We could not run the football at all.” — Rob

“Look, I’ll say what nobody wants to say — we got away with it. We genuinely got away with it. And I love this team, but you can’t get away with it in 2026.”

They made the playoffs when the run game did not matter. That will not be replicated in 2026.

Here are two new sections and a finale — no run game, pure content from the pod:

FINALE: The Window Is Open. It Won’t Stay That Way.

A listener sent in a question during the pod that reframed everything: 

“Why does this feel like a natty run year?”

Look at the roster. That’s your answer.

Seven Sooners just heard their names called in this weekend’s NFL Draft — R Mason Thomas to Kansas City, Gracen Halton to San Francisco, Kendal Daniels to Atlanta, Febechi Nwaiwu to Houston, and three more behind them. And what remains is a group that has everything to prove.

John Mateer. David Stone. Jayden Jackson. Cole Sullivan. Kip Lewis. Peyton Bowen. Isaiah Sategna. Trell Harris. Owen Heineke. Rocky Beers. Hayden Hansen. PJ Adebawore.

These are not depth pieces. These are players with NFL dreams and if they have banner seasons in 2026, the NFL will be their new home. Every single one of them knows this is their moment. One shot at film that changes a draft stock forever.

David Stone will be the best 3-tech in college football. Sategna has the speed the NFL covets. Mateer, if he has the season many believe him capable of, can catapult up mock draft lists. Kip Lewis and Peyton Bowen should both hear their names called.

This is not a rebuilding year. 

This is not a development year. 

This is a roster full of men who watched seven teammates get drafted this weekend and are now sitting in Norman counting down the days to August. 

The hunger in that building is not manufactured. 

The schedule is violent. The margin for error is zero. But this program has two full SEC seasons of scar tissue, a defense that can win games by itself, a quarterback healthy for the first time in a year, and a room full of players whose professional futures depend on what happens between September and January.

They made the playoffs when the run game did not matter. 

In 2026, against that schedule, it has to and for the first time, they might actually have the pieces to make it.

There are no excuses left.