MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — This might be a good time for Oklahoma to indulge in a little introspection.
The Sooners are still looking for their first College Football Playoff victory, now 0-3 all-time in the CFP after Saturday night’s rout at the hands of No. 1 Alabama. Two of those games — both in the Orange Bowl — were not that close.
But a 20-point loss to Clemson in 2015 probably didn’t hurt as much as this year’s 45-34 loss to the Crimson Tide.
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Bama (14-0) effortlessly scored touchdowns on each of its first four possessions and led 28-0 before the Sooners (12-2) found the scoreboard. Bama’s defense overwhelmed college football’s most prolific offense at the start. Kyler Murray and the Sooners tried to rally in the second half, but the margin never got inside of 11 points.
“It’s agonizingly close. It is,” said coach Lincoln Riley. “But we’ve got to continue to take steps in the right direction, and we’re going to continue to try to get that done.”
OU was also painfully close last season. The Sooners led Georgia 31-14 but lost 54-48 in overtime. That Georgia team then led Alabama 13-0 at halftime before Nick Saban famously switched quarterbacks and won his sixth national championship with an OT victory over the Bulldogs. Oklahoma was that close to a national title in 2017.
These Sooners — No. 4 in the CFP rankings, No. 1 in FBS on offense, and No. 108 in defense — are not on Alabama’s level. No one may be, really, although No. 2 Clemson gets its shot Jan. 7 in Santa Clara, Calif.
“We’ll see what happens here in eight or nine days,” Riley said, “but I think it’s pretty clear that Alabama’s a national championship-caliber team. Just like Georgia was.”
The Crimson Tide’s senior class owns an NCAA-record 55 career victories, and counting. Saban can flat-out coach, of course — if Bama beats Clemson, he’ll own the all-time FBS record of seven national titles — but he can also flat-out recruit. In the last five recruiting cycles, Alabama signed 20 five-star prospects according to 247Sports’ Composite rankings. The Sooners, meanwhile, have signed four.
That disparity showed up early in Saturday’s semifinal, with Bama owning the line of scrimmage on both offense and defense, knocking back OU’s runners, covering the Sooners’ receivers, harassing Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Kyler Murray into arguably his worst game as a Sooner, then physically punishing an OU defense that already was overmatched.
Things did turn in the second half. Alabama defensive tackle Quinnen Williams, who wreaked havoc in the first half, struggled with a leg injury.
“He’s a good player. Probably the best I’ve played against,” said Sooner guard Ben Powers. “But I think we wore him down.”
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After two possessions each, Alabama had amassed 14 points and 130 yards total offense, while Oklahoma had zero points and zero net yards. At halftime, the Crimson Tide had a 31-10 lead and a 318-191 advantage in total yards, but the Sooners out-gained Alabama 280-210 in the second half and outscored the Tide 24-14.
“We just kind of picked a bad time. We played our worst ball at the beginning, very simply,” Riley said. “We were just kind of waiting for that spark, and it took longer. They just outplayed us early. I think it’s as simple as that. It was the tale of two games. They completely outplayed us early and then we completely outplayed them after that."
Murray finished with 308 yards passing, completing 19 of 37 passes for two touchdowns and zero interceptions. He also rushed for 109 yards and a score, becoming just the second Sooners quarterback (joining Jack Mildren) to rush for 1,000 yards in a season (1,001), and the second FBS quarterback (joining Clemson’s Deshaun Watson) to rush for 1,000 yards and pass for 4,000 yards in a season.
“He did all he could,” Alabama quarterback Tua Tagovailoa said of Murray.
Murray didn’t have his top target, speedy wideout Marquise Brown, healthy enough to contribute. Brown caught 75 passes for 1,318 yards and 10 touchdowns this season, but pulled a muscle in his foot on Dec. 1 in the Big 12 championship game. He didn’t catch a pass against the Tide.
“Hollywood, he obviously wasn’t as good as we probably thought he was going be,” Riley said. “But I thought there was honestly just some rust.”
“I knew I wasn’t 100 percent,” Brown said, “but I wanted to go out there and do my best and help in any way that I could.”
On the other sideline, Tagovailoa — Heisman runner-up to Murray after coming off the bench to save last year’s national championship — looked perfectly fine coming off minor ankle surgery following his injury in the SEC title game. Tagovailoa completed 24 of 27 passes for 318 yards and four touchdowns.
“We knew what was coming,” said OU quarterback Tre Brown. “But it sucks that we couldn’t make plays.”
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Riley’s first recruiting class in 2018 ranked No. 9 in the nation, per 247Sports Composite, and the 2019 class currently ranks No. 7 with time to move up before February. If Riley hopes to win a Playoff game by upgrading the talent, those are steps in the right direction: Bob Stoops’ last three complete recruiting classes at Oklahoma ranked 15th, 19th and eighth.
But the kind of growth Riley needs to change the Sooners’ Playoff fortunes will take time, especially for a defense that ranks dead last in FBS in pass defense. That’s a defense that was bad enough to get Mike Stoops fired at midseason (Riley has yet to announce interim DC Ruffin McNeill’s full-time replacement).
Meanwhile, Alabama and Clemson look stronger than ever.
Maybe Riley’s Sooners have been a bit unlucky. They caught Georgia at its best last year, with two NFL running backs and a precocious freshman quarterback and a defense that could play with anyone. And they caught Bama this year at a time when the Crimson Tide are in the discussion as one of the best teams in college football history.
Oklahoma fans will continue to lament the defense, which just couldn’t carry its weight despite an offense that produced back-to-back Heisman winners, transformative quarterbacks and outlandish statistical achievements. In a typical year, maybe the Sooners can survive a CFP semifinal. Maybe they can even win the program’s first national championship in almost two decades.
For now, it’s just another semifinal setback.
“Four straight Big 12s, countless other honors, awards and great wins — it’s been a hell of a ride,” Riley said. “Hate that it ends right now because you’re sick.
"We're going to hold that tall, skinny one here in a couple years."