there are some interesting nuggets that came out of this last game that I think y'all should hear about especially on the defense let's talk about it next up here on locked on Sooners you are locked on Sooners your daily podcast on the Oklahoma Sooners part of the locked on podcast Network your team every day college football is back and it's not too late to catch up before your team plays or if they've already played you can keep yourself going check it out SEC ACC Big 10 Big 12 all of them are available you can get it all from our locked on stable of college experts by subscribing to locked on college football podcast who has a chance to make the playoffs what teams will cause chaos in their new conferences everything you need to know all in one place be sure to follow And subscribe to locked on college football podcast part of locked on podcast Network your team every day so one of the big ones there's some big nuggets or some nice nuggets in my personal opinion that came down when I did some digging from this last game that I think you all will appreciate I want to talk about of course we all know about the big numbers but I want to add them all together and contextualize just how excited I am about this defense first and foremost you had what I would like to call the Brent venables stat yes I call this the BV stat because it's a stat that to me leads directly to br venables which is the tackles for loss if you've ever listened to me talk about venables and what he does that's one stat I've always looked at he's always had a team that's ranked in the top 10 around tackles for loss and in this game we've got nine of those right that puts us in a very nice ranking in college football because keeping it a buck the better you are in tackles for loss that means you've got longer third Downs longer second Downs which of course leads to passes and if your defense is in a position to be really good there guess what happens then you get turnover on Downs you get Force punts you get turnovers because you make teams get more anany than what they want to be and it throws off a lot of Rhythm that got your boy excited so then of course you got the six turnovers in their right four fumbles two interceptions one of the interceptions was kind of a throwaway late in the game but shout out to Hardy he got his interception not only is his first interception in college when he was in high school his first ever high school game he also got an inter reception so now he's keeping that streak alive love to hear that and then getting six sacks last season we struggled in getting sacks mainly because a lot of teams went into max protect against us very very early plus with our linebacker room there was still a lot of adjusting and learning how the system works because we all know in a Brent venal defense the most critical thing you have is the linebackers have to make sure they're in the right spots and they got to make sure the defensive linemen are in their right spots so that front seven is critical in doing what is successful in a b venables defense well it appears that we have a three deep in that of people that can handle calling that those plays or calling the defense from Danny stman who you know is the one that's miked up but then you got Kip Lewis who understands the defense well and he can adjust people we got to watch Kobe McKenzie go out there as well and he was adjusting guys and telling guys where to move here and go there when you've got Defenders like that that can adjust on the Fly that's huge so nine tackles for loss six turnovers six sacks yeah that to me is an amazing trifecta in the Brent venables era of what we're trying to do one other cool one that came down the line and it just happened uh early yesterday we got the special team SEC special teams player of the week Tyler Keltner I know right who had it on their bingo card that the kicker was going to get SC special teams player of the week I didn't I didn't even think about that and that and we joked about it yesterday's episode that for the most part y'all shouldn't even know who the kicker is like at all like that's one dude that y'all should not know that even exists and you feel bad for him because if he has a bad game then everybody knows who he is and he's the one that everybody goes after well the good thing for Mr Kelner is that now y'all know who he is but y'all don't know about him in a bad way y'all are actually pretty happy to you know know about who he is and what he's trying to do and so that was a very interesting stat to go in there and one other one that really jumped out to me that I felt like really emphasizes the direction that we're going with this defense we gave up 197 yards in this game this is the first time that we gave up less than 200 yards to an FBS school as in a P4 G5 or G6 now but someone in the F in the bowl series Football Bowl series uh subdivision FBS first time since 2017 in 2017 UTEP we had uh held them under 200 yards and then we held Kansas to under 200 yards in that season since then we haven't done it outside of like the Western Carolinas of the world and schools that are in the FCS we haven't done this to a FBS school at all even in our cupcake games right as you would consider Temple was considered a cupcake we didn't do that in any of those cupcake games we allowed less than 2 200 yards in the game that is something to be proud of of what this defense is able to do because again 2017 was the last time we were capable of doing that that was the last I guess you could say really group of players from the Bob Stoops era that played we weren't shutting teams down like this we weren't preventing teams from being able to get yards 200 yards is huge when you're you're playing against FBS schools yeah feels the FCS yes the expectation is that we got close against Arkansas State last year we allow 208 yards which was very low that was the lowest since 2017 but this game was the first time under 200 yards and Bren vbl pointed that out and that was the one thing he got really excited about with the defense was them being able to hold a team sub 200 it's really really hard to hold a team under 200 yards because no matter what they're going to find a way to get yards FBS school right they're getting three star players and decent Talent on their teams the occasional fourstar and the occasional five star we've seen that at FBS schools at group of fives getting those players but Oklahoma was able to take that and even even though Temple like I says FBS we held them under that is a huge accomplishment and that's something that we should all be excited about because that means that the defense is going in the right direction right now we've got Houston coming up next week they struggled mightily against you LV and so there's a chance that if we handle things the way we should if we control the game with game Management on the offensive side and let the defense go out there and get them off the field quickly we could possibly do that again I'm not saying we are but I'm saying that if we can hold Houston Under 250 yards in this game it's a massive accomplishment for this defense because truth be told I saw in the comments section some of y'all made some comments of yeah we should be happy we won 51 to3 because if it was in the old regime it have been 5147 I don't believe it would have been that high but at the same time you're not wrong you're not wrong to think that right you're not wrong to believe that schematically we would have gave up a lot more yards than we probably should have or even thought about allowing it but again Arkansas State we only gave up 208 and that one was because that game was going so fast we just gave up a whole we gave him a whole bunch of possessions in this one we were able to control more of those possessions and when the young players got in that's when you kind of saw a couple broken coverages and that's the good thing about playing your young players right they get the experience to recognize the experience on tape against a team that's not their own that's not that doesn't know what they're going to do and they're able to get that on tape and look at it and be like hey so when this play happens instead of you going this direction you were supposed to go here now they have the opportunity to understand that a lot of you had said and even Brent vinal said he wish he had played more young players before now a lot of you have said this before I've seen you in the comment section I've seen you say well we should have played more young players in this one we played 84 which is another great interesting takeaway from the game venol let those guys play he let them make their mistakes but the good thing is they were able to make up for it and those making up for it was us only giving up three points right playing more young players gives them the experience needed so that if later on we need them to play we're not stressed out about some dude going in there we're not stressed out about Lis Carter going in there and saying oh this is his first time playing is he ready no he was able to make a mistake here and there and he was able to clean it up quickly right same thing with Kobe mckeny last year Kip Lewis last year you saw some of the mistakes that were made when Danny stman wasn't out there now that in that stuff is cleaned up it's getting cleaned up at least right so we don't know about perfection we're never perfect but never never best we're always getting better and better better better never best our goal is to always improve week after week so sooner fans you should be excited about that because that's probably the one thing that got your boy really excited because we need to have a defense I expect that out of Brent venables I know you all do too so we're going to ride with that now Brent venables talked about injury updates y'all know we got to jump into that next up here on locked 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