The Football Brainiacs

Image via Tulsa World/Stephen Pingry

The first weekend of college football finally came. And now it’s gone. We were supposed to have some questions answered about the Sooners. Some questions were answered but many questions remain. I suspect we will know most of what we need to know about the Sooners after this coming weekends matchup with Tennessee.

Answered Questions: I’m sure there were many answered questions we could point to but here’s just a few that immediately stuck out.

– Baker Mayfield is accurate. I don’t know how he’s going to look with even more pressure in his face or against tighter coverage. But what we do know is that he makes the throws that are there. The Sooners have been missing that for a while. Mayfield has good accuracy on deep routes and when he’s got a guy open an easy stop route, he’s going to put it right in his chest. You don’t have to make all the throws but you’ve to pay off your open receivers. He does that.

Mayfield also has good awareness. Early in the game there were times he could’ve stepped up into the pocket but left the pocket early. He quickly remedied that though. When he’s in the pocket he seems to feel pressure well.

– Joe Mixon will be good. I’m not saying he set the world on fire in this past game. In fact he looked timid at times. But he flashed moments where you could see beyond his athleticism and really feel a sense of the instinct and moxie he has on the field.

– OU is back to a single gap front. To me, an essential quality of a 3 man front is at least one 2-gap player. OU, as we expected, is indeed back to playing single gap across the board.

Unanswered Questions: Again, there many be many more unanswered questions but here are a few that stood out to me.

– The offensive tackle position. I will concede that Akron had a few good defensive linemen but what OU will face this coming weekend will be better. St. John is athletic but his technique is unacceptable. At left tackle, Orlando Brown’s technique looks better than St. John’s but his athleticism is suspect. He looks heavy footed and appears to bend at the waist on his kick slide. He’s a young guy who went through a process of losing a lot of weight so I expect him to develop functional athleticism on the field but right now I think he could struggle against athletic defensive ends. I have to also add that Orlando is a huge guy so when judging the nuances of his athleticism it’s a little more difficult because of his size and length.

Having said that, if you’re going to have issues on the offensive line you’re better off having them on the edge than in the middle. Interior pressure is immediate. You can step up and avoid edge pressure, you often have to step out to avoid interior pressure.

– Center: Darlington gives OU a cerebral presence. You don’t always need great individual lineman but you need a line that works well together. The center plays a role there, recognizing pressure and getting everyone on the same page. Darlington gives OU that. What he doesn’t appear to give OU is the tip of the spear, that physical interior presence in the run game.

– Secondary: The secondary may be very good but Akron’s passing attack was so poor that it’s just hard to say one way or another. I was surprised to see Sanchez make two errors. One in cover 2 and the other in man.

– Defensive Line: Coach Reynolds has the defensive line playing downhill. But, Akron’s offensive line was suspect at best. How do I know? There was a point at which OU was in their 2-4-5 defense running a smaller front with Walker, Tapper, Striker and Bond on a run down and the Akron OL couldn’t move them off the ball. I’d like to believe that means that despite being undersized they are good. But it’s more realistic to believe that Akron’s offensive line is just not good.

Tennessee’s offensive line has grown quite a bit since last year so we should know a lot more about the defensive line after this week.

– Dom Alexander. Alexander appears to have gotten faster but he still isn’t the guy who’s going to put his face on someone. He’s always in the right place – we’ve said that many many times here. But unlike Jordan Evans, he isn’t the guy that’s going to fly through a window and stone a runner. At one point in the game, Evans appeared to be spill and Dom was the lever (may have been a force player but I haven’t gone back to look) but I just remember seeing Evan’s scrape across the formation and get into a gap and stone the runner before Dom managed to widen. What I do see in Dom is more decisiveness. He’s playing downhill a little more. But we’ll know better whether those downhill decisions are timely and what kind of physical presence he brings this week.