The Oklahoma Sooners are 3-1 heading into week five of the college football season. After three nonconference victories at home, OU lost on Saturday night in their first-ever SEC game against Tennessee.
The Volunteers won by a final score of 25-15, and the Sooners didn’t answer any of the lingering questions about their offense. In fact, there are plenty more of them now. Oklahoma will likely be without Nic Anderson for a significant period of time and are in the midst of a quarterback change.
Brent Venables’ team will hit the road for the first time in 2024, looking for a bounce back win against the Auburn Tigers. Many national pundits have sold all or most of their stock in the Sooners for this season.
Maybe those folks will prove to be right, but there are silver linings in Norman.
Venables’ defense is legit. For the first time in a long time, Oklahoma is back on that side of the ball. There’s talent, depth, and a defensive coordinator in (Zac Alley) who has been on a roll. The special teams unit has made a couple of mistakes, but nothing too major, and also has improved from last season.
However, that offense has flirted with the line between not very good and downright awful. A national TV audience watched the Sooners fall apart every time they had a chance to cut into an early Tennessee lead.
It’s lead to a downturn in where some believe this team could be headed in the postseason. CBS Sports college football writer Jerry Palm published his weekly bowl projections, and has the Sooners lower than he did a week ago.
Palm has predicted that Oklahoma will gain an at-large bid to the Las Vegas Bowl, a far cry from the lofty standard in Norman. The game would be played on December 27th, and he thinks the Sooners would face off against the Washington State Cougars.
Wazzu is currently in the Pac-12, one of two teams left behind (along with Oregon State) by realignment and the conference’s collapse last summer. The Las Vegas Bowl is still one of the bowl tie-ins for the Pac-12.
The Sooners and Cougars have played three times in history. OU is 3-0, with wins in 1938, 1967 and 2003. The most recent matchup between the two came in the Rose Bowl following the 2002 season, as the Sooners beat WSU by a final score of 34-14 in Oklahoma’s first appearance in the historic game.
The No. 8 Sooners toppled the No. 7 Cougars with a sound 20-point victory behind a Player of the Game performance from quarterback Nate Hybl in his final collegiate game. It was also the final game of Oklahoma’s second Big 12 Championship season in three years.
The time has come for the Sooners to address and fix their many issues on offense. Otherwise, a phenomenal defense will be wasted and a season that began with so much optimism could be headed toward an unacceptable bowl destination.
This article originally appeared on Sooners Wire: Where do Sooners land in CBS Sports’ new bowl predictions?
