Plenty went wrong in Oklahoma's 54-48 double overtime loss to Georgia in the College Football Playoff.
The horrific ending was a sour way to ring for Sooner Nation to ring in the New Year, but the 2017-18 campaign was still one to be proud of. Here's how the Sooners let their national title aspirations slip away.
Playing not to lose
“It was an epic Rose Bowl game,” Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley said after the Sooners’ 54-48 double overtime loss to Georgia.
Indeed, it was epic, but in a sour way for OU.
The final six seconds of the first half proved costly in hindsight and it only led into the second half meltdown as Oklahoma looked as if it was playing not to lose in the final two quarters and two overtime sessions.
You hear it all the time. With a lead, it is better to play to win rather than play not to lose. If you try so hard to not lose the game by playing it safe, chances are you'll wind up on the losing end.
That’s exactly what happened to the Sooners, even if coach Riley doesn’t see it that way.
“We’ve been able to win a lot of games around here,” said Riley, who added he thought the Sooners kept their foot on the gas. “We were still plenty aggressive at times when we thought it was appropriate. There was never a time I was thinking conservative. We were always thinking, ‘How are we going to win this thing?’ And we felt like we would until the last snap.”
On the other side of the ball, Georgia was doing the exact opposite and playing to win.
The Bulldogs ratcheted up their defense after halftime, forcing four punts while snagging a Baker Mayfield interception to shut down OU on each of its first five second half possessions.
“We played with passion, energy, enthusiasm and more discipline,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said. “We ran to the ball better, tackled better and played more aggressive.”
How it all began — the infamous squib kick
If there is one thing Sooner fans will lose sleep over between now and kickoff next fall, it’s the dreaded squib kick seconds before halftime.
Oklahoma hasn’t allowed a single kickoff return touchdown in six years. Why all of a sudden were kicker Austin Seibert and the Sooners afraid to kick it deep?
Instead, they gave the Bulldogs excellent field position, and after a quick out-route to the sideline followed by a timeout, Rodrigo Blankenship drilled a 55-yard field goal to pull Georgia within two touchdowns at the break, trailing 31-17.
“They did a good job of executing,” Riley said. “It was kind of right there on the edge of, 'Do they throw a Hail Mary or not?' And we certainly didn’t want to give up the Hail Mary so we went into a defense against that.”
It was only three points at the time, but without it, the Bulldogs wouldn’t have been able to tie the game in the final minute and push it to overtime.
Georgia wound up scoring 24 unanswered points after the squib to take a 38-31 lead early in the fourth quarter.
“I don’t know that we necessarily lost momentum,” Riley said. “That probably gave them a little bit of juice.”
Hindsight is 20/20, but after that debacle, Sooner fans will never want to see a squib kick again.
Play-calling blunders
As if the squib wasn’t bad enough, play calling got hairy in overtime as Riley leaned conservative. The 34-year-old coach's puzzling play calls down the stretch have already received plenty of flack.
“There will be calls that I wish I could have done differently,” Riley said. “I’ve never had a game — even the ones that have went incredibly well — where there wasn’t some of that.”
Riley elected to go for the tying field goal in the first overtime instead of taking a gamble with only a yard to go on fourth down given a touchdown would win the game.
“I was close. I went back and forth on it a little bit,” Riley said. “My gut said to kick it. I just didn’t think the risk was worth the reward. Plus, their most talented point is stopping short-yardage runs.”
You can’t blame Riley for opting for the field goal. Let’s be realistic — if Riley goes for it on fourth down and the offense fails to pick up the first down, he looks like a fool in that scenario, too.
That being said, the play calls leading up to fourth down in both overtimes were the real blunder.
Here were the plays: In the first overtime, Rodney Anderson had a 4-yard run and Marquise Brown caught a 4-yard pass.
Then UGA proved Riley’s point of stuffing short runs when Butkus Award winner Roquan Smith made an impressive open field tackle and didn’t budge an inch, as he upended Jordan Smallwood for one measly yard.
Why Smallwood, a receiver, took a handoff instead of Anderson, Dimitri Flowers or Baker Mayfield, Sooner fans will never know.
In the second overtime, play calls included a run by Anderson for five yards, an incomplete pass and no gain on a rush by backup quarterback Kyler Murray. Throw in two ensuing dump-off passes for a total of nine yards, and it was fourth down once more.
Another overtime, another field goal.
Except this one was blocked by Georgia’s linebacker Lorenzo Carter. Moments later, the OU defense was exposed one final time on Michel’s game-winner, and the disadvantageous play calling had bitten Riley like a poisonous snake.
“I don’t know that there’s one thing,” Riley said. “It’s just that we had an opportunity to win the game. We just didn’t put our best foot forward. There were a ton of good plays on both sides of the ball, and they made one more than they did.”
The play-calling blunders during the Rose Bowl meltdown will likely haunt the Sooner fan base for much longer than it does Riley.
“Will there be plays that I want to have back? Yeah,” Riley said. “But again, you learn from those, so I’m not going to dwell on them.”
As head scratching as overtime was, the final two quarters were just as perplexing. The Sooners were 6 of 8 on third down in first half but converted only 1 of 10 third downs in the second half.
That’s a recipe for disaster.
“We just didn’t play well though early in the second half,” Riley said. “That was the stretch of the game I’m probably most disappointed in.”
solson@swoknews.com