Oklahoma-Houston Preview: One Big Thing

NORMAN — One game into the 2024 college football season, No. 15-ranked Oklahoma is struggling with the one thing no team wants to endure.

Injuries.

And it’s not a lot of injuries all over the place. It’s a handful injuries at two positions: offensive line and wide receiver.

The Sooners have enough players to beat Houston this week. The Cougars were routed at home last week by UNLV, 27-7 and are 28-point underdogs against Oklahoma.

But what of OU’s game next week against Tulane? The jury is still out on the Green Wave this year. With a new coach, new quarterback and new vision, Tulane beat FCS opponent Southeastern Louisiana 52-0 last week. There will be more clarity this week as Kansas State visits New Orleans on Saturday ahead of Tulane’s Sept. 14 trip to Norman.

After that, of course, No. 14 Tennessee comes to town.

So Oklahoma needs to get to work right away on fixing its problems — in this case, that means getting healthy at wideout and o-line, or at least getting better production from the replacements.

As always, the discussion begins up front.

Coach Brent Venables has already said he expects right tackle Jake Taylor to be back Saturday night. That alleviates some consternation over the blocking, as Taylor, a third-year player, won the starting job over Michigan State transfer Spencer Brown in the preseason. Brown, a two-year starter in East Lansing, is a good player, but clearly is still getting comfortable at OU and last week posted an overall offensive grade of 58.1, according to Pro Football Focus, which included a pass-blocking grade of 49.4 and a run-blocking grade of 60.1. Those both need to be closer to 70. 

Taylor’s return would mean USC transfer Michael Tarquin can stay at left tackle this week, which means third-year player Jacob Sexton can stay at left guard. Sources have indicated that was the Sooners’ best combination on the left side during training camp.

Venables offered a little less insight on the center position, where he said Monday that starter and SMU transfer Branson Hickman “looked remarkably good” without confirming that Hickman was actually back at practice fighting through an ankle sprain. 

Hickman’s first-quarter injury last week wasn’t a massive setback. If there was a championship or playoff berth on the line, maybe Hickman could have stayed in the game. And his replacements weren’t bad. But there was no reason to push the envelope against a team like Temple.

If Hickman is back, that means backup guard and Washington transfer Geirean Hatchett won’t be pressed into emergency action with his own arm injury to deal with. It also means maybe second-year center Joshua Bates can get some more quality snaps this week (he played 16 snaps there last week, per PFF).

And maybe it means another week “closer,” as Venables put it, for senior Troy Everett, who played 311 offensive snaps at center and guard last season and gave up just one quarterback hit, two hurries, three pressures and no sacks. Everett is working his way back from a knee injury sustained during spring practice.

Good play at center, Venables said, is a priority.

“Having somebody available there is really important,” he said. “So we’re working through that. I like where we’re at from that standpoint and I expect us to only get better there.”

Hard as it may be to believe, things are actually quite a bit darker at the wideout position.

Purdue transfer Deion Burks caught three short touchdown passes last week against Temple and tends to make it look easy. As such, he papers over a lot of problems.

Once considered the Sooners’ deepest and probably most talented position on the team, the new reality is stark — and has only gotten worse since the start of training camp.

Former Michigan transfer Andrel Anthony was WR1 early last year but is still coming back from a 2023 midseason knee injury. He made just one catch last week for 4 yards, and his contributions this season will be limited until probably October or even November.

Then big-play junior Jayden Gibson went down early in camp with a knee injury that will cost him the entire season. He averaged 27 yards per catch last year and scored five touchdowns.

Then last week, after hauling in a 47-yard deep ball on the second play of the game, senior Jalil Farooq suffered a broken foot — a re-break of the injury that knocked him out of spring practice. Farooq’s career numbers have been impactful: 87 catches, 1,276 yards and seven scores.

Third-year sophomore Nic Anderson also missed last week’s game with an undisclosed injury that limited him in preseason camp, and Venables said Monday he was “hopeful” that Anderson could be back this week (although it would seem wise to bring him back slowly, if at all, against Houston). Anderson led the nation in yards per catch for most of last season and hauled in 10 touchdowns. His health and big-play presence against the rest of the Southeastern Conference is paramount.

Replacements J.J. Hester and Brenen Thompson committed three drops last week and need to show coaches that they’re ready for the moment.

Oklahoma struggled to run the football early against Temple, averaging just 4.1 yards in the first half and getting stuffed eight times for gains of 2 yards or less. Only a 30-yard run by Tennessee-Martin transfer Sam Franklin and runs of 19 and 35 by freshman Taylor Tatum late in the game skewed the yards-per-carry to an acceptable 6.2.

And with quarterback Jackson Arnold enduring three sacks, he only averaged 8.1 yards per completion. Other than Farooq’s catch, Arnold’s longest completion was just 14 yards. 

If Taylor and Hickman return this week, both the pass blocking and run blocking will improve, and then the Sooners can work on developing consistency and chemistry up front with their best starting five.

And when that happens, if Anderson comes back and Anthony continues to heal, Arnold and the OU passing game will get better, too.

Assuming no one else on the o-line or at receiver gets hurt.