NORMAN, Okla. -- During his weekly news conference, Bob Stoops defended his team’s play calling while admitting that the passing game also needs to improve going forward.
Oklahoma quarterback Trevor Knight completed just 14 of 35 passes, as the Sooners were held scoreless in the fourth quarter of a 37-33 loss at TCU this past Saturday.
“I thought in the first half [the passing game] was really positive, in the second half it wasn’t,” Stoops said. “We weren’t nearly consistent as we need to be.”
After hitting Sterling Shepard and Durron Neal for a pair of bombs early, Knight struggled with his accuracy the rest of the way, dropping his season completion rate to 54.5 percent.
Stoops agreed that Knight missed some throws. But the coach placed blame elsewhere, as well.
“There’s three reasons for it,” Stoops said. “At times, we’re getting pressured, we didn’t protect as well as we have in some other games. At times, it’s an errant throw. At times, we’re covered. So it’s a little bit of everybody.”
The Sooners have struggled all year to get anyone other than Shepard involved in the passing attack. Shepard had another huge afternoon in Fort Worth with seven grabs for 215 yards and a touchdown. But after Neal’s four catches, no other wide receiver had a reception. Tight end Blake Bell and running backs Samaje Perine all had a reception apiece.
“I think we do have to make sure we’re spreading the ball around more,” Stoops said.
Stoops confessed that in hindsight he wished the Sooners would have run the ball more and passed less against TCU.
But otherwise, Stoops said he had no issues with coordinator Josh Heupel’s play calling, including the quarterback draw Heupel called on Oklahoma’s final drive. The draw was stuffed, and with no timeouts, the Sooners lost valuable seconds off the clock as they scrambled to attempt to win the game in the final minute.
“I thought it was a great call,” Stoops said. “I was all for it.”
The reason the Sooners were out of timeouts was due to a pair of mental errors in the fourth quarter. The Sooners burned one timeout struggling to get the snap off before the play clock expired. They burned another because they didn’t have enough men on the line of scrimmage.
The mental mistakes carried over through the rest of the team, too. Stoops said the Sooners had several busted defensive calls, while the offensive line missed blocks.
“Some of it is very fundamental in what we do, and for whatever reason, even guys with a lot of experience didn’t do it very well,” Stoops said. “I believe a lot of it is easily correctable in that some is just discipline and fundamentals. We’ve got to do a better job coaching them and they’ve got to do a better job of being mindful of their disciplines and what we’re doing.”