It's amazing to think that there is still a lot of clamoring out there for Bob Stoops to be fired from his job with the Oklahoma Sooners. Yes, it has been a while since the Sooners have been relevant, but they’ve consistently been a good team with spurts in his tenure in which they had the best team in America.
Unfortunately for Stoops though, this looks like another year where really good isn't going to be good enough to whet the winning appetites of the OU boosters.
2015 SCHEDULE
9/5: vs. Akron
9/12: at Tennessee
9/19: vs. Tulsa
10/3: vs. West Virginia
10/10: vs. Texas (at Dallas)
10/17: at Kansas State
10/24: vs. Texas Tech
10/31: at Kansas
11/7: vs. Iowa State
11/14: at Baylor
11/21: vs. TCU
11/28: at Oklahoma State
The end of this docket for Oklahoma is just murderous. Quite possibly the three best teams (aside from OU) in the Big XII are all on the docket together, and two of those three games are being played on the road.
The non-conference schedule isn't anything spectacular, though all three games will provide their own challenges. Losing any of those first three could cause this year to get out of whack for the Sooners in a hurry.
SEASON WIN TOTAL
The Sooners have a season win total of nine this year, and that's really become the norm all of a sudden for them. They will be favored in each of the first nine games which they play, and they will be expected to go 9-0 in those duels.
We know that in actuality, they'll probably punt at least one of those games.
Any given loss could be devastating for the Sooners as well, as they haven't rebounded from losses all that well in recent history.
OFFENSIVE OUTLOOK
Samaje Perine came out of nowhere last year to be out of this world for the Sooners. He took over in a crowded backfield and ran for 1,713 yards and 21 TDs, and now as a sophomore, many believe that he is a legitimate Heisman Trophy contender.
The big problem that this OU offense has though, is at the quarterback position. We're just not sure that Trevor Knight is the real deal. He had almost as many picks (12) as touchdowns (14) last season, and he completed just 56.6 percent of his passes. There were some really good games in the mix, but there were some mind-boggling ones as well.
This offense is going to go as Knight takes it this year, as Perine can't do this all by himself once again.
DEFENSIVE OUTLOOK
There are three fantastic players on this OU defense in Dominique Alexander, Eric Striker and Zack Sanchez, and all three of these men are going to be on the radars of NFL teams for next season's NFL Draft.
There are a total of just six players coming back from last season's defense, but the argument could be made that these are the best six from that bunch.
The Sooners were really tough to run against last year, as they allowed just 106.4 yards per game on the ground. The problem? They ranked just No. 120 against the pass at 276.2 yards per game allowed.
SEASON PREDICTION
Stoops has assembled the talent around him to be able to win the National Championship this year, and just from that standpoint alone, a price of +3070 to win it all isn't a terrible one, especially if you really believe that this team is going to start 9-0 as it will be favored to do.
However, Knight just isn't trustworthy, and there are too many road games which could end up being massive banana peels.
Oklahoma is what it is at this point, and that's a 9-3 team with an outside chance of reaching a BCS bowl game if the chips all fall into place properly.
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