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Oklahoma's season turned upside down with loss of key players-TW

  • Oklahoma's season turned upside down with loss of key players

    BY JOHN E. HOOVER World Sports Columnist
    Tuesday, August 07, 2012

    Foreheads all across the Big 12 Conference wrinkled upward on Monday, incredulous and morbidly optimistic.

    Oklahoma, they asked, lost another offensive lineman? Another returning starter? Another proven blocker?

    Where's that old defensive playbook, they wondered, the one about blitzing the quarterback on every play?

    This OU football team was already pockmarked with flaws. Now, that shaky No. 4 preseason ranking looks all too familiar - a house of cards, blown over by ridiculous misfortune, ready to come tumbling down on Landry Jones like it did on Sam Bradford back in 2009.

    Senior Tyler Evans, a 29-game starter at right guard, is on crutches after tearing his anterior cruciate ligament and is out for the season.

    Just last week, senior Ben Habern, a captain and 30-game starter at center, called it a career after a painful neck injury wouldn't heal.

    Dylan Dismuke, a promising redshirt freshman, had to quit because of chronic knee pain. John Michael McGee, an equally promising true freshman, got homesick and went back to Arkansas.

    There goes Jones' shot at a Heisman Trophy. There goes OU's shot at a national championship. There goes the Sooners' best hopes for a Big 12 title.

    Sorry, Sooner Nation. You can't win football games at a high level without a quality offensive line, and OU just went from having one of the nation's best and deepest offensive lines to suddenly one with two returning starters and not one backup who has ever started a college game.

    Furthermore, a bleak future: Of the four offensive linemen OU signed in February, only two remain. Will Latu never got eligible and McGee just quit.

    Sports fans want blame. But there is none.

    Certainly not offensive line coach James Patton.

    During his time in Norman, Patton has grown into a quality coach who inspires young players and relates to older ones. He molded and shaped various prospects the past two seasons to overachieve what many predicted for them. Two of Patton's prized pupils are tackle Lane Johnson and new center Gabe Ikard. Both converted from tight end, and both are all-conference material, maybe more.

    Adam Shead came in as an athletic but mostly raw freshman who in just over two years has developed into the Sooners' most efficient blocker.

    Some will try to blame strength coach Jerry Schmidt.

    Schmidt's in-your-face methods may have scared away a few players over the years, and his special-forces workout regimen may have caused more than one o-linemen to reconsider his place in the universe.

    But in terms of injury prevention, it's almost unthinkable - medically impossible, perhaps - that Schmidt's offseason meat grinder has left players susceptible to injury.

    So, no blame. This is just dumb luck. No, stupid luck. A voodoo curse carried out by some Bevo witch doctor. Maybe an incongruent alignment of Jupiter and Mars in the house of Aquarius or some such.

    Much the same thing happened in '09, when All-American tight end Jermaine Gresham jumped for a ball before practice and tore knee cartilage, out for the season. That year was completely ruined when an inexperienced offensive line couldn't pick up a routine linebacker blitz in the opener against BYU, and Bradford's shoulder was damaged. Brody Eldridge and Trent Williams - both current NFL players - also went down with weird injuries. So did a handful of others, including Evans and Habern, who were freshmen then.

    In any event, this Oklahoma football team will play with heart and pride, and those are too often underestimated in big-time athletics.

    Bronson Irwin is a good young talent (and maybe a sudden starter) at guard; Derek Farniok may join his big brother Tom at Iowa State as a Big 12 starter. Nila Kasitati might overcome his heart condition and bloom into the human road grader many think he is.

    But OU won't have the horsepower to compete for a championship. Not this season. Not with so many problems at such an important position.

    This post was edited by James Hale on 8/7/2012 at 9:08 AM

    Pressbox

  • I had no idea Hoover was so impressed with our O-line, that he has declared the season over. He must have scouted John Micheal McGee an knew he was the missing link. He probably guaranteed that Habern would be in for every snap. He obviously penciled in Dismuke for the 2012 Outland winner.

    I'm now convinced we have no hope. Great article, Hoover. You are a genius.

    This post was edited by schooner9 on 8/7/2012 at 9:04 AM

    schooner9

  • Now this is the kind of article I have been waiting to see. Fellas, get the tacks out!!!!!!!!!!!!

    There is nothing more dangerous in this world than a man with nothing to lose.

    bruthaman

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    James Hale

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    Pressbox

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    soonerbait

    Pontius Pilate

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    CrimsonMarc

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    Confidence is preparation. Everything else is beyond our control.

    TucsonSooner

  • Douchebag

    Scapegoat

  • Hoover goes a little overboard, I don't think this is a 2009 repeat. However I agree with his overall point: Sooner fans can't maintain the same performance expectations from back-ups, especially when the players you're missing were your most experienced linemen. No amount of kool-aid can hide it - we've lost two key players from the OL and it will hurt us at some point in the season, if not impercetibly on every play from scrimmage.

    Stuck in Mexas

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    kwest2

  • Well, at least he first month of ous schedule is fairly light... which gives everyone a chance to get some experience and confidence. The season will be won or lost from the Texas game on.

    MannaSooner

  • Ikard at OC and Shead at LG are our two best linemen, including Habern and Evans. Now, depth is a real issue but our starting 5 is every bit as good as the one projected in the spring.

    SoonerSeif

  • IMHO, what the o-line is really going to miss this year is having depth at that position. The o-lineman will have to stay in the game longer before they can get a breather. They'll just have to suck it up a little more this year than what they had expected. The sky is not falling, it just got a little cloudy that's all. OU will have to get the younger players up to speed a little faster than what they had planned.

    Now, it's apparent that they can't handle too many more injuries at that position to be consistent in keeping Landry clean and having a run game. Habern said that he'd only play 20 to 30 plays a game and Evans was being pushed but, the added depth would have been nice.

    JetDoc

  • From above article: "Dylan Dismuke, a promising redshirt freshman, had to quit because of chronic knee pain. John Michael McGee, an equally promising true freshman, got homesick and went back to Arkansas."

    I can understand why a whole town would pack up and move out of Texas but I hadn't heard about Texarkana moving to Arkansas. Actually moving to Arkansas isn't a whole lot better than staying in Texas.

    This post was edited by gyrene on 8/7/2012 at 3:36 PM

    gyrene

  • The line will be fine if they stay healthy but we are extremely thin at this point. It is also impossible to lose 2 multiyear starters and be as good as we were. If the replacements are better then the coaches were playing the wrong guys.
    Also it is bad for the future to have 2 recruits and a redshirt freshman no longer on the team for whatever reason. They can be replaced with new recruits who again will be inexperienced.

    vbdad

  • Hoover is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, more like a ull butter knife. He is about as astute with geography as he is wth football..

    This post was edited by Boz Vader on 8/9/2012 at 5:46 PM

    Boz Vader

  • Hoover and also Klein write some error filled columns. To be the beat writer for OU, Hoover is a big disappointment. Calling the Sooner Schooner a Conestoga, for example. Incorrect information about past Sooners. I could go on and on but I have to consider the source. Emig is a much better writer. Tulsa is filled with OSU types and Klein is a big homer. Oh well. I sure miss Connors.

    tulsajoe1