The Football Brainiacs

Still in the 1st half here and the Sooners are running a counter again with another variation.  Instead of pulling Powers & Brown, they put Flowers on a Wham block (when an H-Back traps or kicks out on a counter), and then brought Brown around behind him to clean the hole.  Again, Baker is in the read option look to offset any potential blitzers.  Even still, Powers is blocking back to cut off the backside, and Andrews is there to clean up the trash as well.

As Flowers gets his guy handled, O is getting ready to kick his guy out.  Bobby Evans is lucky he didn’t get called for a hold here.  Get ready for the Sooners to run a play action off of this read option counter look to Andrews sneaking out the back door… coming soon to a D coordinator near you.

Rodney makes a beautiful soft-shoulder cut to get up inside that safety and head for the goalpost.  Since AD, I don’t know if we’ve had someone as big and as fast as Anderson.  Not saying he’s in the same league, but the guy is dang good.

During the game, somebody tweeted that they wondered whether Baker’s Heisman statue would go on the north or south end of Heisman park.  I tweeted the better question was where Anderson’s would go next year.  Lord have mercy this guy was lights out.

As he caught this pass on a checkdown from Baker, I was just hoping that he would get the 1st down.  I was thinking how tough it would be against this defense to have 1st and goal just inside the 10.  It looked like he was going to be dead in the water with all of those white jerseys ready to pounce.

While I gotta give credit to Is u or Is u ain’t a TCU defender for sticking his head in there and getting trucked by Rodney, if he gets his head across and puts his helmet on Rodney’s right shoulder, he most likely makes the tackle.  He’ll get run over still, but like in baseball where it’s more important to knock the ball down, Rodney would have to go over top of him to keep going.

As Anderson just levels him, he shows great balance staying on his feet.  The still shots really don’t do justice to the hit that Rodney laid on em, so the highlights below are set to start at that play.

A few of you long timers may remember Chris Trulove.  He used to be the Director of Pro Scouting for the Denver Broncos and has been a guest poster for us at TFB from time to time.  I got to go to a couple of practices they had when I lived out in Denver in the early 2000’s.  One of the things I noticed about the practice was how good the guys, all of em, were at staying on their feet.  I literally thought to myself as Anderson took the hit and stayed on his feet… “That’s an NFL run.”  This guy is really starting to come into his own.

Speaking of guys coming into their own, Manchild #1 Du’Vonta Lampkin checking in again.  He flat wore that Horned Frog center clean out Saturday night.

He grabbed the RB on this play and pulled him backwards.  How powerful this kid is can’t be overstated.  If he has a good offseason this year and comes into his Jr. year in shape, man alive this guy could be legit all the time.

On 3rd and short, we’ve seen for a lot of years Sooner defenses not fare so well.  I was hopeful that the Sooners would stop TCU, but I was afraid it would be 4 down territory on the +38 yardline with only 2 minutes to go before half.  Still, the Sooners showed up and showed out.  Obo got crazy penetration and Murray is scraping perfectly across the formation behind #33.  Ward is protecting the inside gap and pushing the doubleteam back while Kelly’s closing the back door.

This shot shows it a little better and gives you a chance to see how well Murray got into his lane.  Turpin literally had no place to go if Obo didn’t get him down.  Keep an eye on Steven Parker up by the stripe…

This was just a heck of a play to end the drive and get the ball back for the Sooners.  Patterson was in a tough spot, because if you give Mayfield and co. a short field it almost guarantees points.  Kick it deep and you haven’t stopped em all night.  The back on the outside did a great job cutting the heck out of Parker, but if you watch the film on this, Steven showed outstanding effort here getting right back up and getting back into the play.  Great play by Obo.

Holly-Wood-Brown!

After that play to Marquise, the Sooners were right back in business.  Like you’ve heard me say a hundred times, if they’re even, they’re leavin’… At this point, Rodney’s even with the linebacker.  Great job by the OL sealing everyone down inside.

Lon Kruger must have helped Riley draw this one up because he basically got the other four receivers to get to the corners and clear it out for Rodney to drive to the bucket.  This was another great throw down the seam into a tight window for Baker.  He made throw after throw all night.

And Anderson made play after play after play.  Hey, at least he kissed the Frogs goodnight before he put em to bed.

Lee Morris and Smallwood were right there to congratulate Rodney as he came to the sideline and tell em that he had just scored 4 touchdowns in the 1st half.

Crazy good game for all of the Sooners, and the energy and togetherness they played with was definitely noticeable.  The guys are in it together and, with these new freshmen corners, I’m excited to see how they close out the regular season.  I’m itchy for #8.