A more ‘disruptive’ defensive line is ‘wonderful thing’ for Sooners

NORMAN — One of the most encouraging signs for OU’s defense in Saturday’s 66-17 thrashing of Tulsa was the performance of the Sooners’ defensive line.

Not only did the Sooners have 15 tackles for loss — their most since the 2019 Big 12 Championship Game — but most of those (8.5) came from the defensive line.

Freshman Adepoju Adebawore led the way with 2.5 with Gracen Halton adding 1.5. Nine defensive linemen in total were at least in on one tackle for loss.

“We were more disruptive,” Sooners defensive coordinator Ted Roof said. “I thought our guys inside were more disruptive and certainly that’s a wonderful thing, especially when you’re going into a week like we’re going into right now where we know our inside guys have to win and get knock-back because if we’re at the line of scrimmage and we go backwards, there’s gonna be some big-time seams.”

Here’s a look at more of what we learned from the Sooners’ victory over the Golden Hurricane:

More: Big 12 football tiers: Where OU, Oklahoma State rank entering conference play

Top 5 players of the week

Quarterback Dillon Gabriel: Gabriel was fantastic once again, going 28 of 31 for 421 yards and five touchdowns with one interception. He set a single-game school record for completion percentage (90.3%, minimum 25 attempts) and posted a 251.2 pass efficiency rating — the highest by a Power Five player over the weekend. Only three others FBS quarterbacks since 1996 have completed at least 90% of their passes and threw for at least 400 yards in a game.

Linebacker Danny Stutsman: Stutsman once again led the way for the Sooners’ defense, with nine tackles, two for loss, and an interception return for a touchdown. Stutsman said he wasn’t going to be stopped short of the end zone after being brought down by a quarterback near the goal line in…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/ou-football-rewind-more-disruptive-110407263.html?src=rss

Author : The Oklahoman

Publish date : 2023-09-19 11:04:07

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