Oklahoma Updates
Published 9:00 pm Sunday, September 3, 2006
Two papers cover Oklahoma regularly, and we’ll give you links to their coverage of Saturday’s game all week.
Today, both papers focused attention on Oklahoma’s defensive problems in the Sooners’ 24-17 victory over Alabama-Birmingham last Saturday. Oklahoma, like Washington, missed a lot of tackles. Much attention since the game have focused on the Sooners’ struggles against a mobile quarterback, and today’s stories talked about that fact and Isaiah Stanback as well.
From the Daily Oklahoman:
http://www.newsok.com/article/2841718/?template=sports/ou is a column from John Helsey about the fact that Oklahoma is better than the score against UAB indicated
http://www.newsok.com/article/2841720 says that the UAB game was a wake-up call to the OU defense
http://www.newsok.com/article/2841719 is a notebook that says some OU defensive starters may have their jobs in jeopardy this week, and also talks about how the Sooners’ defensive ends struggled with reading plays out of UAB’s one-back shotgun formation, a formation Washington runs pretty regularly.
From the Tulsa Daily World
http://www.tulsaworld.com/SportsStory.asp?ID=060904_Sp_B1_Soone23304 talks about the struggles of the defense as well, and also says Oklahoma simplified its offense and didn’t use many formations against UAB.
Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops was on the Big 12 coaches conference call this morning and said he was happy the way new quarterback Paul Thompson ran the offense but said the defense has work to do, but should be OK. He was also asked how he turned around the Oklahoma program when he took over eight years ago and said it isn’t easy but that it was about changing the work ethic and expectations, the same thing Tyrone Willingham has preached since he took over.
Oklahoma star running back Adrian Peterson will have a conference call with Seattle-area media later this afternoon and we’ll let you know what he says. The Huskies have their weekly media lunch at noon and we’ll have a report from that as well.
If you didn’t notice, the Jacksonville Jaguars re-signed Rich Alexis and put him on the practice squad. The Denver Broncos released Roc Alexander claimed him. Also, Denver released former Mariner High star Amon Gordon but then re-signed him to the practice squad.
